FRESHER'S FACTS & FICTIONS PART 1; WHAT TO EXPECT | Jazz Blackwell.
So it's that time of the year again.
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The academic year is drawing to a close and across the length and breadth of Britain 17-19 year olds are waiting with baited breath for exam results, UCAS confirmations and, ultimately, the beginning of their university career.
I know it's daunting: trust me, I was there myself two years ago. It's difficult to know what to expect. What do you do with yourself during fresher's week? What are halls like? What do you need to bring, and what is better left behind? What can you do to ensure that you have the absolute best possible experience with higher education?
I won't lie to you and pretend I'm an expert. I don't know the sciencey, psychology bits behind it all and I'm fully aware that everyone's experience is different. Don't think of this as the be all, end all, definitive guide to how to survive the Warfield of university. See it as more friendly advice from a pal who's been there, done that and got the t-shirt.
WHAT TO EXPECT FROM...
HALLS
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For many - if not most - going to university is the first time you're standing on your own two feet. The majority live with their parents until they hop skip and jump off to uni. The prospect of living independently for the first time can be frightening. You're now responsible for your own cooking, your own grocery shopping and your own cleaning.
It's not just the thought of having to be a real, fully fledged adult that frightens a lot of people; many spend their first year in university residence, or "halls". Essentially, you're signing yourself up to spend the next academic year living with a group of strangers. If you're lucky, your university may have some programme in place where you can find out your hallmates ahead of time, so that you can preemptively get to know each other via social media. Others, however (my uni included), simply have you wait until the first day of living together to introduce yourselves.
The most important thing to remember here is to communicate with the people you live with. For the next nine months or so, you're gonna be sharing a relatively small space with them - including sharing a kitchen and, oftentimes, also a bathroom. You're not going to be doing anyone any favours if you're limiting your interaction with each other to awkward smiles and stilted conversation when you both go foraging for midnight snacks. Introduce yourself as soon as you can, and perhaps propose that you all spend the first night of fresher's week at the bar together, getting to know each other.
Also, make sure you're considerate and respectful. Ask before you use things, and don't fill the flat with people they don't know every single night. Remember that everyone has different ideas of fun; just because you love to have loud, wild parties doesn't mean your hallmates do. Give them a heads up if you're planning on having people over and if they're not comfortable with that, respect their reasons and see if you can reach a compromise, or if your party can take place elsewhere.
I'm a firm believer that you can never have too many friends, and your year is going to go a lot more smoothly if you get along with the people you live with.
CLASSES
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Allow me to state the completely, stupidly obvious; university is nothing like school. The class structure is no exception from this.
It varies slightly between unis, and even between courses at the same uni. I can only speak to my own experience, but generally your course will be divided between lectures - in which you'll find everyone from your course, often well upwards of one hundred people - and smaller classes, which may be called "seminars", "tutorials" or "labs", depending on what you're doing and where. Lectures tend to be more generalised, whereas seminars are more focused. To give an example from my own English course, a lecture will give an overview of a particular book or text, while the seminar will look specifically at one chapter, or at exactly what the author was trying to do with a particular character. While both types of class are equally important and you should be trying your best to have full attendance at all of them, seminars are especially vital for getting that detailed information which will score you the big marks on your assessments and exams.
Another thing to note; while any university professor worth their salt will certainly be willing to offer help and guidance to their students, it's important to remember that you're expected to be much more independent. A university professor may have the same number of students in one class as a school teacher has overall. It's totally unreasonable to expect your lecturer to dedicate the same amount of time to each individual student as your year nine English teacher could.
Don't panic though; its perfectly doable if you make good study plans and divide your time properly (more on that in an upcoming post). If you find yourself truly stuck, acquaint yourself with the services available to you; there's likely a course or faculty support team who are more than willing to point you in the right direction and if studying is getting overwhelming, your universitiy's mental health or counselling services are there to help you out.
PEERS/SOCIAL LIFE
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As important as your experience with classes in your uni experience is your interactions with those around you.
If, like me, you're moving from a small, rural town to a major city for university it can be startling beyond just being a culture shock. The sheer number of people around you can be quite overwhelming. Fun fact about my life; there are almost as many students at my university alone as there are people in the town where I grew up, and my uni's student body is approximately 20,000 people larger than the entire population of the village where my entire family lives now. If you're in the same boat, it may be daunting - going from at least "sort of knowing" all the people around you to being immersed in a whole army's worth of strangers is quite the shock to the system.
I won't lie to you - I'm not someone who's ever had trouble making friends. I'm rather sociable and confident, and there are very few people with whom I struggle to get on. As it was once eloquently worded to me by a friend in a beer garden, I'd be friends with a floormop if there was nobody else around. However, I do appreciate that not everyone is the same. I know that for some, the idea of meeting new people is absolutely panic-inducing. Even if that's the situation for you, there are things you can do to grow your social circle at university.
First off, as soon as your place is confirmed, take to Facebook. More often than not, there'll be a group page for your course at your uni, from which you can be added to a group chat with the people who will be in your classes. There are two huge benefits to this; first of all, you get all the awkward introductions and "getting to know each other" bits out of the way virtually, which is a godsend if you're anxious about talking to strangers face to face. You can go into your classes with at least a little bit of prior knowledge about those around you. Secondly, the people on your course are likely to have similar interests to you, at least to some extent. After all, you all chose the same class for a reason, right?
If similar interests are a must for you in a friendship, it'll be a good idea for you to join a couple of societies. There are generally a couple of ways to go about this; check your university's website before the year starts and see if they have a page showing the societies on offer. Failing that, there'll be fresher's fairs in the initial week of the semester, where most - if not all - of the societies will have a booth where you can sign up and learn more about what they do. Societies exist for almost everything: be it sociopolitical values, sports, hobbies or even movie and book fandoms,
you're almost guaranteed to find a group of like-minded people with whom you can connect.
BUDGETING
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A great, wise and noble man (okay, Jay-Z) once said "you can't afford something unless you can buy it twice."
While I don't know that this is necessarily applicable in all life circumstances, it's certainly a good place to start with your university budgeting. Much like moving out, for many first year students, this will be the first time that you're 100% responsible for your own finances; now that you're not under your parents roof any more, you're the only one responsible for paying your rent, for doing your grocery shopping. The prospect of being the only one in charge of your money can be exciting - but it also means you've got to be responsible. It's all too tempting when you get that first maintenance loan payment to spend it on all the things you always wanted but never could buy before but remember that payment has to last you until the next one comes in and it has to cover your rent, your groceries and any transport you may need, be that public or your own car. If you blow all your dough within Fresher's Week you're kind of, sort of, well and truly screwed until your next payment comes in.
So, I hear you ask, what's the best course of action to take to make sure you have enough to survive and have fun? The answer: budget, budget, budget.
The largest payment you're going to be making is likely going to be your rent. A good place to start budgeting is calculating how much per term your rent is going to cost you and then deducting this amount from your maintenance loan payments. This will leave you with a good idea of how much you've got left per term to spend on... well, everything else.
The next thing; work out how much you want to spend on groceries per week. Stay tuned for a full post on how to shop smart as a student, as well as several affordable recipes to come. A basic rundown is to remember that there's nothing wrong with supermarket's own-brand products, and that frozen veg is just as good as fresh, keeps for longer and is usually much better value. Tinned goods like beans and tomatoes also have good, long shelf lives and can be found at low prices. Make sure you keep stocked with the quintessential student staples; dried noodles, pasta and rice can be bought in bulk and don't really go off.
While going out is always fun, and I definitely sound like your mum right now, don't do it if you can't afford to. I know it might seem, in the moment, like you care more about getting that sixth double vodka and coke than restocking your shelves in the morning, but sober-three-days-later you will be furious and drunk you for blowing all your cash on one night (trust me, I've been there). When you are going out, consider having pre-drinks at somebody's place, where you can provide your own alcohol and mixers and reduce the number of drinks you'll want while out. Also consider preparing a snack for when you get home, so you're not tempted by expensive and less-than-healthy fast food at the end of the night.
This is as complete an advice guide for surviving your first year without a hitch that I can come up with. If you have any further questions that you'd like me to answer, feel free to leave me a comment or drop me a message, either via email at jazz.blackwell.17@gmail.com, or over on my Facebook page. The most important thing to remember about starting uni is that everyone else is in the exact same position that you are, and that, while it can seem frightening to start off with, you're beginning a journey that will not only benefit you in terms of finding a career, but will allow you to make lifelong friendships. Stay tuned for the next post in this series, where I'll advise you on what you should take with you to uni and what's better left at home.
Thanks for reading,
Keep it weird,
Jazz xo
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