Things I Wish I'd Known As A Fresher...
Hi everyone!
I thought, that as someone who has recently graduated from the joys of three years at university, and with the new university year around the corner, it would be helpful to do a little advice post. Not the kind of advice that you get given by the university itself or by UCAS or your mum, but advice from someone thats done it, lived it and come out of the other side. A tongue in cheek (but equally useful...hopefully) list of the little things you won't find out from reading the prospectus.
Don't try and take everything from your room with you...
You want your new uni room to feel homely, but also remember that you are most likely moving into halls, most of which have rooms that are pretty teeny tiny. Theres not a huge amount of storage in halls bedrooms and you have to find space for everything you take with you! Also bear in mind, you'll be there for a year, think of all the things you'll collect and buy in that time, add all that together and you have A LOT of stuff to fit in the car to bring home at the end of the year! Plus, all that extra stuff has to fit back into your room at home once you're done... think it through, be brutal, you can buy a lot of stuff up there if you really need it! Take photos and posters but bear in mind that a lot of halls won't let you stick things to the walls, white tack is your friend! Think bunting that you can tie to curtain rails instead of sticking or pretty vintage papers or fabric pinned to your notice board...theres ways and means to make your room feel like home without taking your actual home with you!
Take every fancy dress item you own!
Even if not in first year, you will dress up A LOT during your years at uni. I've done Wheres Wally, My Little Pony, 80's Glamrock and Barbie among many more. Theme nights are biiiig for student nights out so it's worth taking everything with you! Freshers week especially tend to have things like a school disco themed night (think bunches, drawn on freckles and your old school tie...), beach parties (grass skirts, cocoanut bras - boys included unfortunately - and flower garlands) and battle of the halls which tend to have different dressing up themes for each of the cites halls. Toga parties are also pretty popular! It's a lot of fun and you never know when one will pop up so it's all worth packing!
Remember that a lot of responsibility comes with being in charge of the iPod at pre-drinks...
Playlist very wisely. If you're anything like me and have an iPod full of every song you've ever downloaded (even those regrettable Boys2Men ones you downloaded as your 'break-up songs' or those songs that remind you of the under 18's nights at Oceana...we all have them) innocently putting your iPod on shuffle could make you the laughing stock of the flat, very, very quickly. My personal moment was when Taylor Swift blasted out and my flatmates looked at me in utter horror (I may be a closet Swifty fan, they were not...). Make a playlist to avoid this! You'll thank yourself in later years...
Buy a university hoodie!
It's one of those things that you just have to do at some point in your time at uni. Not only is it snuggly and warm for those chilly nights in writing essays (the heating in halls isn't always the best!) but it will serve you well in hiding a multitude of sins...namely waking up horribly late for your 9am lecture having only arrived home at 4am, throwing some leggings, Uggs and your hoodie on and being good to go...if you look a bit of mess but you're wearing your uni hoodie, people will automatically assume you've been out the night before and you're feeling a little worse for wear... turn up in your onesie and they'll just think you're a lunatic. They're also good for your first trip home at Christmas as you can almost guarantee that every one of your friends that have gone to university will be wearing hoodies from their respective ones, and well, you've got to represent haven't you?!
Try and avoid buying things like kitchen appliences until you move in.
I got over excited as most people will and marched off to Argos to purchase a matching pink spotty toaster and kettle. I was chuffed until I arrived at university to discover that my new flatmates had done the same and we'd ended up with 5 of everything...now don't get me wrong, multiple toasters and kettles are handy when theres a load of you all trying to grab breakfast at the same time before your 9am's but by multiple, we're talking two. 5 toasters is as i'm sure you'd agree, is just a little bit excessive! If you can, wait until you're all there together, and sort something out amongst yourselves, you'll save yourself some pennies and a lot of space in your kitchen! Things like mops, dustpans and brushes, kitchen bins and things like that are generally included in halls so check whats included to save yourself doubling up on things!
Don't get lured in by the convenience of the university bookshop!
It's handy because no doubt it will be a mere 10 minutes from your halls, right on the uni campus, but do try, if you can not to buy your books in the uni bookshop. If you have a super specific course and this is your only option then of course, make use of it. I could only get certain plays from ours and things like textbooks are generally stocked as they keep a full list of every book on every course at your uni so they will have everything you need or the ability to order it in very quickly. Generally though, most books can be bought on Amazon for as little as a penny! When I think back to some of my books, for plays that were sometimes only one hundred odd pages long, they were charging £9 in the uni bookshop...pop onto Amazon and you can get a secondhand copy in fab condition for about 30p! It will save you so much money and mean that you can spend your student loan pennies on lots of other things! Of course, i'm not saying don't bother buying your books at all, just weigh up your options, you'll thank yourself in the long-run when your book bill is a third of what it could have been!
Be prepared for the promoters...
You will get used to being approached by every single leaflet wielding person, every single promoter for local takeaways and every club promoter that hangs around your uni SU in your first few weeks at uni. As much as you'll try and look like you've been there forever, promoters can spot a fresher from miles away. Most of it is (for want of a better word) just crap... you can only have so many chinese takeaway menus on your notice board. However, some will come in very, very handy. Seek out the Dominoes representative. There will almost certainly be one. They'll give you a whole sheet of discount vouchers which equates to two for tuesday every day of the week in other words! So those are definitely worth picking up. The ones, in my experience anyway, to avoid are the LoveFilm people. I got sucked in to a supposedly amazing deal which turned out to be not so amazing and what I was told would be free turned out not to be and it was a nightmare to eventually cancel. It's not really worth it and your student loan monies can be spent on better things!
Thats everything for the first part of this, I have a few more nuggets of wisdom to come so stay tuned! If anyone has anymore advice for soon to be freshers then pop it in the comments below, i'm sure they'll find it useful!
Hope this has been vaguely helpful!
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