College parties: the home of dented beer cans, sloppy shifts and deep meaningful conversations with your own reflection.

As anyone who has spent even one semester in university will know, the impromptu college party is like making friends with the weirdo on orientation day – something you simply cannot avoid.

And why would you want to?

They’re a veritable haven after you’ve been booted out of the pub, and can’t imagine going home alone.

And then you get there.

And there’s much less drink than you were promised, a lot more gobshites than you anticipated, and an overpowering smell from the kitchen bin.

And suddenly you regret ever ‘accidentally overhearing’ session-talk from a group who you knew lived a stone’s throw from the local.

"I’ve brought this on myself,” you’ll think as you begin checking kitchen cupboards for booze – not that students actually keep their hooch anywhere as predictable as the kitchen cupboard, but you’re desperate.

If you haven’t spent an awkward hour slugging from a can you liberated from beneath a stained cushion while your friend – who promised she wouldn’t disappear upstairs – disappears upstairs, were you even in college?

They say university is about furthering your prospects and broadening your horizons, but we all know it’s about the experiences that take place outside the lecture hall.

Frantic phonecalls home, furtive stealing of food, and feverish but ultimately disappointing relationships are what the vast majority of us remember about our time as students.

Oh, and the parties.

The late nights we found ourselves with seven random strangers who hid their enthusiasm for Dungeons and Dragons until there was no escape.

The early mornings we spent huddled beneath a coat in the hallway of a student house after realising we lost our purses and didn’t have the money for a taxi home.

The times we thought doing the robot on a kitchen table held up with a Psychology textbook would be gas craic until we ended up in A&E.

A college party wouldn’t be a college party without a dank brown carpet, a pyramid of empty cans, and one randomer in a stolen coat who no one knows.

If teen movies were to be believed, we’d rock up to a student house, be handed a red plastic cup full of vodka, and leave looking as good as we did ten hours earlier when we put the finishing touches on our winged eyeliner.

But college parties in Ireland don’t work like that.

You’re either too drunk to be a functioning member of society or you’re too sober to look past the mould growing on the inside of the fridge.

You attend because you’re mad for the shift, your mate is mad for the jacks and you heard someone came back from holidays with more Bacardi than you could shake a stick at.

You stay because it’s cold outside, someone mentioned grilling a few waffles, and your mate – who disappeared upstairs – inexplicably has your phone.

And you leave looking like you’ve been through a war despite the fact the atmosphere was as much use as Beyoncé in an elevator, and you once got your hands on more alcohol at mass.

And yet the thing that keeps bringing you back to these random gatherings is the memory – the memory of that one heady night when the stars aligned, the drink flowed, and the college party was everything you had dreamed of and more.

You were hilarious, they were hilarious, and nobody hid their booze in the washing machine.

Like an addict, you desperately try to recreate that high, and find yourself wandering deserted housing estates at 2am in search of a gaf party that your man in the chipper said would be chock-full of cans

It wasn’t of course, but there’s always next time.

Remember when Laura from HR sauntered into the staff room and casually asked for a tampon while Mick from Accounts busied himself with the teabags?

Yeah, me neither.

And that’s because it never happened.

If Laura from HR needed a tampon, you can be damn sure you’ll have found out via email or through a secret gesture the pair of you perfected for moments when you’re packing and she’s lacking.

Despite the fact millions of women deal with the inconvenience of a period every single month for half their lives, many of us still act like it’s something we should whisper about in case we embarrass ourselves… or anyone else.

Yes, there are those athletes who run marathons while free-bleeding and those college students who share photos of blood-stained underwear online, but these acts are often done as a form of statement.

In general, these efforts are made in order to raise awareness of 'period-shaming', sanitation failures in third world countries or global corporations’ stance on censorship.

But when referred to in day-to-day life, periods are spoken of in brief with a friend, in hushed tones with a colleague or in confidence with a practitioner.

And while menstruating is as normal a bodily function as peeing, sneezing or yawning, it’s only the former we approach in a covert manner.

If your co-worker began sliding packets of tissues up her sleeve before whispering she needed to sneeze in the other room, you’d begin asking questions.

If she commando-crawled to the bathroom so no one would guess she needed to pee, you’d definitely have a quiet word.

And if she assigned a non-specific gender to a common complaint by calling a headcold 'human problems', for example, you'd reassess your relationship.

When it comes to periods, we’re all in this together which – on the surface – sounds comforting, but it doesn’t do much to remove the taboo.

When they whisper, we whisper back. When they nudge, we nudge back.

And while no one’s suggesting we forego public decency in the name of our monthly cycle, is it too much ask that we don’t feel the need to go Ocean's Eleven on a co-worker when looking for a tampon?

Earlier this week, Chinese swimmer, Fu Yuanhui, left viewers slackjawed when she dared to refer to the arrival of her period in a matter of fact manner… in front of billions.

Unlike other instances where periods are discussed on a public platform – think stand-up comics, for example – it wasn’t said to provoke a reaction, but merely to help account for her performance.

“I didn’t swim well enough this time because my period came yesterday, so I felt particularly tired – but this isn’t a reason. I still didn’t swim well enough,” she told reporters.

These moments offer hope that there might come a time when periods will be referred to on a public platform as nothing more than a fact of life, and not something to be used as comedy club fodder, a political tool or a vehicle for men to express their repulsion/ wonder (delete as applicable) for the menstrual cycle

Although if the response to a recent furore in Georgia is anything to go by, we may be waiting.

A fitness centre in the city of Tbilisi recently made headlines after advising women they should bow out of that week’s swim sessions if they were wearing anything other than a pair of togs.

You know, like a tampon.

Concerned that menstruating women may contaminate the pool’s water, the powers that be went to the effort of creating and distributing signs that told women they could essentially eff off if they were on their period.

Ladies, if we make figurative lepers of ourselves by acting like our bodies are something to be embarrassed by every month, these guys made it literal.

And, unfortunately for us women, a worrying number of people agreed with the policy.

“Some people have strong periods that even when they use Tampax the blood leaks out,” wrote one Facebook user named Nawrus Akkam. “I am sorry but if I am swimming in the pool I do not want to see that.”

Really, Nawrus? Tell that to Fu Yuanhui.