Tristan Thomas, gair rhydd editor (2003-4)

Part of me likes to think that I can still perform many of the skills required of the stereotypical student. A keen eye for a drinks offer, legs that won’t ever let me walk past an open takeaway, a tendency to claim that I’m busy without thinking (a 1500 word essay? In six weeks? You poor souls).

Yet while university folklore is cluttered with tales of lazy days and messy nights, the most vivid and grimly rewarding memories I take from my four years at Cardiff were those spent toiling through the night, churning out pages for early editions of the magazine you hold in your hands.

For a bored journalism student struggling to justify why his course was described as ‘full-time’, gair rhydd provided a satisfying blend of red-brick worthiness and barely-legal pissing about. One week we’d be picking up awards in London, the next we were launching well-drilled snowball attacks on rival newspaper sections. Sadly, two keyboards were lost in the Great Battle for the Editor’s Office.

The GR office seems to cultivate both the sublime – many of its alumni are scattered throughout the national media – to the ridiculous: I’m reminded of the South Wales Echo headline ‘Simon Weston blast at student paper’. It’s even possible to take some perverse pleasure from gair rhydd’s recent national notoriety. Many a former contributor exchanged bemused text messages 12 months ago.

Of my friends who have left university in the last few years – and I’m aware this may sound glib and a little patronising – the ones who talk about Cardiff the most are those who ‘got involved’. Watching Neighbours twice a day may be a noble student pasttime, but it isn’t nearly as fun as working for the UK’s leading student media publications.