3rd yr student takes three weeks off to play Pokemon

A student has taken two weeks off uni in order to play Pokemon.

The student, Chrissie, took two weeks off lectures and seminars without permission in order to finish two Pokemon games, even though she's a third year and was heading toward exam time.

"It was three weeks if you include reading week."

"It wasn't even one of the new ones," she told Student Money Saver. "It was Pokemon red and Pokemon f*cking Blue."

The third year student, at the University of Warwick, said she started playing the game after her friend brought an N64 with a Gameboy-compatible cartridge back with him after the holiday.

She started playing through the classic games, and soon found them hard to put it down. Soon enough she stopped going to class and washing.

"I sat there for two weeks and played a 20 year old gameboy game on a massive cathode-ray TV. Three weeks, if you include reading week. I probably should have been doing essays. Or read [a] book at least."

"By by the second week I hadn't gone to a single lecture and I was getting concerning emails [...] but I had a level 62 Zapdos and a Psyduck that would beat the crap out of most trainers. I was living the dream."

But it wasn't long before she was getting terrifying "non attendance" emails from her tutors, and suspicious looks from her housemates.

"I considered moving the N64 into my room, for privacy."

Suspicious housemates, angry tutors

By the second week she began to get concerned by her own behaviour and lack of motivation in her final year at uni.

"My Ivysaur finally evolved into a Venusaur and I let out this huge f*cking cheer at about 3am on a Tuesday," she said. "It felt like this huge achievement for about ten minutes, then I just sat there thinking 'what the hell are you doing with your life?'"

"After that I did some trading with myself, so I could use my Arbok in Pokemon Blue and that made me feel better for a while."

On top of these troubling moments, two of her course tutors emailed her asking where she was after she didn't show up for two seminars in a row, and her friends were starting to get suspicious.

"Yeah I got emails from tutors asking where I was. I told them I was sick and prayed they wouldn't ask me for a doctor's note. My friends were worse."

"My housemates came back after their seminars and ask why I was sat around in my pyjamas on the sofa again underneath a duvet."

"I'd make up sh*t like 'my clothes got wet' on the way home and I changed. They'd say stuff like 'it isn't raining, though' and 'why is Snorlax at level 92?' and look at me like they knew what was up."

"I shouldn't have levelled them up so high, that was an amateur move," she confessed. "They would watch me playing in the evenings and get back the next day. It was obvious I had played for a long time."

By the end of the second week, she knew it was probably time to fess up.

One of her friend's reaction when she told them about her week off.

Confession

After two weeks of no work and a hell of a lot of Pokemon, Chrissie, 21, realised she only had a couple of options left:

"Either I go back to work right now - right this second - and get a good degree, or I buy Pokemon Yellow and get myself a Bellsprout."

"At the time I really struggled to choose between the two."

Realising she might have a "bit of a problem", when a friend asked her what she'd done that day, she confessed everything.

"He looked so suspicious," she said. "He clearly knew what had been going on, so I told him everything."

"Turns out he hadn't got a clue and I'd confessed for nothing. Then he made me tell the whole house."

Drag me to class

Her friends, being extremely supportive, took her to her department from then on until she "could be trusted" again. Her friend Steven confiscated the cartridges during the day, and during the evening when he knew she had an essay she should be doing.

She plans on getting the new Pokemon games as soon as it's financially viable to do so.

*Names changed to keep "Chrissie" anonymous.