Freshers Week: Day Two

This day will probably start a few hours later than most, especially if you’re nursing a hangover from the night before! It’s probably a good time to switch Facebook on, because no doubt you’ve met a couple of people the night before who were still sober enough to send you a friend request when they got home. It also might be worth posting on Facebook/sending a text, just to let your family know that you’re still alive – they’ll probably appreciate that. 

For me, day two was a Tuesday. Once I’d woken up and cleared away the hangover – it wasn’t too bad, in all honesty – I finished unpacking and sorting my room out, making sure everything was nice and tidy, and taking some pictures to show my family at home. 

In the afternoon, the uni and the students guild had arranged a treasure hunt to help us get to know the campus and other people. It was quite fun really, we all got into groups and had to go around the campus finding all these places (which really helped later in the term, I’d have gotten lost without it!), and finishing with dinner in the student bar. 

In the evening, my fiance came up to visit and stay the night (it’s allowed in our halls, check with your halls residence agreement and policies to find out if it’s the same for you), and we spent the evening together. However, the student bar had a DJ on from 8pm until late, so for people who did want to go out, there was the option of doing so. 

Freshers Week: Day One

This day is also commonly known as “Move-In-Day”, or “D-Day” if you’re really nervous about it. This also tends to be the day that students dread the most – perhaps second only to the first day of induction or lectures. This day only really applies to students who move into halls, as opposed to commuting from home, because from experience you move in about a week or so before you start your first lectures.

I moved into my halls on September 17th 2012, my first induction was on the 24th and my lectures properly started on October 1st, so we had two weeks to settle in before we had any real lectures – and a whole week before we actually met our lecturers and found out about our course for the first time! Other places do things a little differently, but this post is focusing on what happens the day you move into halls.

A particularly contentious issue always seems to be whether parents go with you and how long they stay for. Truth is, there’s no right or wrong answer, and if people laugh at you because your parents stay for a while, that’s their problem – not yours. If they’re immature enough to care about something like that, they’re probably not mature enough to be at university. Having a good relationship with your family is never a bad thing.

I left quite early in the morning, because I didn’t want to be too late arriving. I said goodbye to my family – it was really difficult, and I cried at first in the car, but eventually that was replaced by excitement. It was a two hour drive from home to uni, and my Mom drove me up there, with all my stuff in the back of the car – we have a people carrier, so we managed to fit everything in, but if you’re taking a lot of stuff and only have a small car, I think you can rent out vans or bigger cars for a day – always worth keeping it in mind.

Don’t worry if your whole family want to come, or if none of your family can make it and you have to make your own way by bus or train (although good luck hiking all your stuff about by train – try and get it sent up to you by car or post later on if you can’t take it up in a car). At the end of the day it should be your choice, but obviously sometimes family kick up a fuss and get their way, or there are commitments they really can’t handle, and you may feel pressured into letting your whole family come and wave you off. Don’t get too stressed – when we moved in, there were some new students where it seemed like it wasn’t just parents and brothers and sisters – it was grandparents and aunties and uncles and cousins and goodness-knows-how-many-other relations coming to wave them off. Others turned up with just immediate family, others – like me – were with just one parent and some even arrived on their own. There’s no right or wrong way of doing it.

As for how long the family members stay, it helps to remember that it’s a big event for them too – yes, it’s your day, and that needs to be remembered, but it’s a big shift in the family dynamic, especially if you’re the first in your family to go to university. Your parents will probably have issues when it comes to leaving, because it’s like relinquishing their son or daughter into the big wide world – understandable, but also annoying when all you want to do is settle in! For me, Mom helped me get all my stuff out of the car and into my room, and then she left, to do a bit of shopping before going home – more because we knew both of us would end up in tears and find it harder to say goodbye the longer we put it off. It’s difficult, but usually parents are pretty good at knowing when the suitable time to leave is.

If your parents aren’t so blessed with tact and want to stick around for hours/days/weeks, there comes a time when you have to put your foot down and gently but firmly explain that you want to settle in and get to know your new flatmates, and you can’t do that with your parents hanging around (obviously you can, but it might be difficult, but it’s always easiest to say you can’t do it with them around). In some cases, if you’re travelling from a distance, parents have to stay overnight – but if possible, have them stay in a hotel rather than in your flat/room, because the first night is when you get to know each other and go out as a group for the first time.

Sometimes your parents will want to take you shopping for your first full shop, and don’t turn it down – hey, free food! – but also, when your flatmates inevitably get together when you’ve all arrived and decide to go shopping, as we all did, don’t hide away in your room. We all went on a trip to Sainsbury’s and ALDI, and we also wandered around the town for ages, and although we didn’t buy very much at all, we got our bearings with regards to the town and also we made friends pretty quickly. It’s really good for getting to know each other – in the first few days, do as much as you can in a group with your flatmates. There’s no guarantees that they’ll be your best friends, or even that you won’t drift apart during the year and realise you’re not similar, but it’s better than being alone for the first few days!

Then, in the evening, there’ll generally be some sort of party – there was for us. We had pre-drinks at our flat first, where we played Ring Of Fire and had a laugh, and then we all went out to the club. Personally, I’m not a huge fan of the nightclub in town that serves as the “student night”, but if you feel the same, don’t worry – I know quite a few people at uni who are yet to actually go there because it doesn’t interest them, and they don’t seem to have suffered for it. Similarly, don’t worry if you don’t drink, or aren’t a huge drinker – it’s perfectly possible to still have a good time during freshers’ week.

In the end we all got home at around three in the morning and I fell fast asleep, still with most of my stuff in boxes on my bedroom floor.

If you have any other questions about the first day of freshers – or starting uni in general – feel free to ask them in the comments box below!

Freshers Week – Day By Day

This time last year, when I was all excited about starting uni, one of the most exciting – and nervewracking! – prospects was Freshers’ Week. I was excited for the freedom – the partying and settling in and meeting new people – but I was also worried that I’d hate the parties, and I wouldn’t settle in, and I’d hate everyone I met. From what I’ve heard from others, their experiences have been very much the same, so I’m here once again to try and soothe a few more nerves any prospective students may have about Freshers’ Week.

On paper, it sounds great – a week (or two, at some unis, and actually three weeks at mine!) of partying and activities and getting to know people, with a few taster lessons of your course but nothing too intense, and time to settle in, get used to living away from your parents and take those tentative baby steps into the big wide world of suddenly being an adult.

Then you start to think about it, and the doubts start to creep in. What if everyone hates me? What if I end up alone in my room on the first night, crying and wanting to go home? What if people don’t like me because I drink too much/don’t drink/don’t want to go out every night? These worries are all normal, and anyone who tells you it’s abnormal to have these worries is lying through their teeth.

Before I started uni, I went on The Student Room and found loads of conflicting threads, and came to one basic conclusion – Freshers’ Week is the Marmite of university life. From what I read, you’ll either love it or you’ll hate it. The threads were full of people saying “I have no friends, I hate it here, I don’t drink, I want to go home” – and, conversely, there were people posting drunk threads about what a great time they were having and how they couldn’t believe they’d been missing out on this for the last eighteen years of their lives. It didn’t seem like there was any middle ground. However, my experience proved that wrong.

My Freshers’ week was enjoyable. It wasn’t incredible and amazing, but it wasn’t bad at all. The great thing about Glyndwr is that we had three weeks of Freshers – pre-Freshers, Freshers and Re-Freshers. This meant that there was something for pretty much everyone to do, regardless of whether they liked drinking or not.

I’m going to be brutally honest and say that there is a lot of drinking at uni, particularly during Freshers’ Week – but if you’re teetotal, you won’t have a terrible time by any means. I have a few friends who drink very little, and I think they all enjoyed their Freshers’ week too. If you don’t go in there expecting one week to change your whole life, you won’t be disappointed.

Don’t worry too much about not making friends immediately during Freshers. Chances are you won’t have started your course yet, so the only people you’ll know will be your flatmates. If you’re lucky, like me, and you have great flatmates, you’ll get on with them and have a whale of a time. If you’re not so lucky, you and your flatmates may not be so compatible, but don’t give up hope! If things are beyond salvaging and you know you won’t be happy with these people, contact your university’s accommodation services team and request a room change. It may cost a bit, but it could be worth it!

So I’m going to do a bit of a day-by-day on what my Freshers was like, and what kind of things you’re likely to do/encounter throughout the week(s). Stay tuned!

At Uni, “I’ll Just Have A Few”, Never Works

I believe that I am living proof of the above statement. Most Mondays (you see, Monday night is karaoke night, and as a performance student I’m drawn to karaoke like a fly to… well, you get the picture), I sit in my lecture and say “I’ll just have a few” or, “I’m not going to drink much”. It never works. If I go out – and it doesn’t happen often, but it does happen – I end up getting drunk. Often, I get very drunk. 

Tonight I’ve had a smidge more self-control, although posting this is making me go all blurry-eyed. What started off as a glass of cider escalated into a game of Ring Of Fire (more on that to follow), then it became a shot of Apple Sourz, then it became a vodka shot, a jagermeister shot and an apple VK. Doesn’t sound like a lot, but when you combine it all with the dirty pints involved in Ring Of Fire, it escalates quite quickly. And results in me belting out karaoke at the top of my voice. 

I pride myself on my voice, usually. I can sing – I’ve sang at events and in shows; I’ve done solos and I’ve been the principal boy/girl in pantomimes, meaning I’ve had to sing on my own. If I do say so myself, I have a pretty good voice. It’s just that my judgement is so shot when I’m drunk that I pick the worst songs possible, and sing them terribly. 

For example, tonight I picked “Gives You Hell”, “Everything Changes” and “Call Me Maybe”. When sober, I can sing all of those songs fairly well. When drunk, I can’t sing them at all. In fact, I don’t just murder them – I dismember those songs and dump their remains somewhere that has no sense of tune. That’s how bad it is. 

So, kids and kidettes, when you’re planning on going to uni and thinking “I won’t get too drunk – just a few here and there”, think again. If you’re anything like me, you either won’t drink, or you’ll get absolutely hammered – there is no middle ground. 

*This post comes to you from a slightly more sober mind thanks to copious amounts of squash and toast with butter. Cures what ails ya. 

Well… I’m here!

I am now officially a student at Glyndwr University! Today is the start of Freshers Week (last week was pre-freshers, and while it was awesome, I really am looking forwards to this week!) and we had a matriculation ceremony today which was a bit extravagant but I guess it’s a big thing. I’m here now for two weeks and then I’ll go home for the weekend maybe, but I really am enjoying it. All the independence is a little overwhelming at first – having to do things like cook and wash up and empty bins for yourself every day is actually more difficult to get used to than I was expecting, but the biggest thing is shopping! I’m not used to doing grocery shopping and I keep forgetting things, but I think I’m doing alright.

I love my room; it’s big and airy and not a horrible colour, and it’s en-suite too. I’ve got all my little home comforts set up – my playstation, my teddies, all my pictures – and I really do like it. When my camera is properly charged, I’ll get some pictures up on here. My course sounds really good, even though the hours are so long! Thankfully the classes are right opposite my accommodation, so it’s not like I have a huge walk in a morning to get there, but it still seems really long – and that’s without the elective I have to take too! That doesn’t start until January, thankfully.

I do miss my family and especially Daf, but I think it’ll get easier as the time goes on, and I am going to see them regularly. I think uni has to be an individual experience – if someone wants to stay until Christmas with no visits home, good for them, but if I want to go home every so often, that’s my choice. Thankfully no-one’s been funny about it, which is good. My best friend from college is up here doing the same course, and I saw her today and we’re going to the school uniform party tonight, which should be fun! I’ve managed to get drunk a couple of times quite badly, and I’m not sure I want to repeat it quite that bad – I’ll still drink, just not as much!

So that’s it for now really. Sorry it’s been a while since I updated, everything really is mad! It’s hard to believe how far I’ve come in the past few years, from not thinking I’d even manage to complete my GCSEs to having done pretty well in my A Levels and now being at university, doing a course that sounds amazing, making new friends and having a great time!

Getting Ready To Go…

I’m actually feeling fairly organized with regards to uni. A lot of my stuff is packed into boxes and ready, 12 days ahead of schedule, and all that really remains is the bits and bobs that I have in my bedroom that I can’t pack until the last minute – my lava lamp, TV and ps2 etc.

It’s been weird seeing people go back to college and school this year – my brother and sister have both gone back to school, and some of my friends in the year below have been posting on Facebook about how they’re back at college, and it really is strange to see. It sounds stupid but I can’t help wondering who’s sitting in my seat in class, who likes the teachers who taught me, what they’re studying right now. Saying that, you couldn’t pay me enough to get me to go back there and do two more years. Whereas when I finished secondary school, once I started college I would have loved to re-do my last year at school, because I had a great group of friends and enjoyed it, now I just can’t wait to get to university. It’s a shame I didn’t enjoy college, but there’s no point sitting and moping about it – time to look to the future and enjoy it.

I’m struggling with the thought of leaving my family behind. Most people seem to be really excited about it, but I’ve always been so close to my family that it is going to be very hard – and my dog is definitely included in that, I’m going to miss her and I really hope she recognizes me when I come back! My plan  of going home every weekend isn’t going to work out too well – for starters, the first three weeks are going to be so hectic with pre-freshers, freshers and re-freshers, so there’ll be no going home in that time. Also, I don’t want to be backwards and forwards every weekend, because travel will cost a lot. Still, I really want to see my family – and especially my fiance – as often as possible, because words can’t even describe how much I’m going to miss him. I’m already dreading the last time we see each other before I leave, because I know I’m going to cry buckets.

On a brighter note, it’s not like we’re not going to see each other at all – we’re going to talk over video chat as much as possible, and it’s not even like he won’t see me until Christmas – as many weekends as I’m able to, money and work permitting, I’ll be back to see him, and hopefully he’ll be able to come and see me sometimes. Also on a brighter note, and regarding my fiance – well, it’s a brighter note for me, but not so much for him – is his sponsored walk this Saturday! He’s in a medievel re-enactment group, and part of that involves wearing the armour – all 8 stone (5okg) of it. So, he and two other knights are doing a 30 mile walk from one castle to another in full armour to raise money for Diabetes UK – that’s 30 miles carrying the equivalent of 50 bags of sugar, each! They’d really appreciate it if you could sponsor them – http://www.justgiving.com/ardudwy-knights-glyndwr-march

I’m hoping to blog more often once things are settled, but I’m also doing some video blogs for http://www.thestudentroom.com all about the experience of going to university, so that’s going to take up some time. However, if you’re a fresher this year – or will be next year or the year after etc – and you want to check out the video blogs so you know what to expect, I’ll post a link to them once it’s all up and running.

**** Just Got Real.

So… three weeks today, I go to university. I move away from home three weeks today, to a new place with new people and new experiences. I’m excited, don’t get me wrong – I can’t wait to meet new people, and the thought of independence is exciting – but it’s also really scary. I’m in the same town for uni where I was in hospital back in April, and I think a lot of my fears stem from the fact that I was so aware of how far away everyone was from me when I was up there. I think I need to remind myself that in April, I was in hospital – I was poorly, I didn’t want to be there and I didn’t have a choice about it. In this case, I’ve made the choice to go to university, I can visit home whenever I want, I can easily chat to my family on Skype or Facebook and I’ll be having fun – I won’t be ill (save for the Freshers Flu, which I’m bound to end up with), and I’ll be with new friends.

I think this will only get more nervewracking in the next three weeks. Looking at my bedroom, with the pile of bags and boxes ready for uni, only serves to remind me of just how soon it is. I’ve got loads of stuff ready – pillows and sheets, boxes and decorations and towels and bathroom stuff – so I know that physically, I’m pretty prepared. The question is, am I prepared mentally? I’m looking forwards to the course – my best friend from college is doing the exact same course as me, so I know that friends won’t be too much of an issue. I also know that I got great results at A Level, so I’m ready for it. I’m looking forwards to meeting the people who’ll be in my flat – I’ve already spoken to some of them on Facebook, so I’m looking forward to actually meeting them. I’m looking forward to parties, to nights in with pizza and films, to living independently and shopping for myself and cleaning up after myself.

I’m dreading leaving my family behind.

I’m so scared that my fiance will get sick of me being away, and I’ll get home to find out he’s with someone else. I’m terrified that my dog won’t recognise me when I go home. I’m scared of being away from my family, purely because I’ve never been away from them for so long. It’ll be nice to challenge myself, to live on my own without my parents there to correct me before I go wrong, but that doesn’t make it any less scary. I’m worried I’ll be really homesick and end up shutting myself away and not make any new friends. I’m worried that people will think I’ve changed since I’ve been at uni. I’m worried because I’ll miss my fiance so much – he’s everything to me, and I hate the thought of being so far away from him. It’s not a huge distance – people continue relationships across continents – but for me, it’ll seem massive, because I’m so used to being so conveniently close to him.

So, in short, the feelings are a bit mixed at the moment. Excitement and fear are having a bit of a battle, and I’m not sure who’s going to win. All I can do is hope that by the time I’m settled in at uni, all my fears will be gone, replaced with excitement for what’s bound to be a great year – and as many chances to go back and visit my family (and yes, I do include my fiance in that) as often as possible.

The distractions of a university place.

So, as you can probably tell from the title, I GOT INTO UNI! Yes indeedy, so as you can imagine I’ve been very excited, but also kinda distracted. My results were so much better than what I anticipated though – an A in English (HOW?!?!?), a B in Psychology (3 marks off an A, I’m toying with the idea of getting it remarked even though it doesn’t really matter) and a B in Drama, which really surprised me! So there was much celebrating and a little bit of alcohol consumed that evening. I should’ve updated you all sooner but things have just been crazy – I’ve been trying to sort out accommodation, clearing – yeah, had a change of heart, decided I didn’t want to go to my Firm so there was a bit of a palaver with that, but I’m going to do a blog post in the future for anyone else who chooses to go through clearing, to give any advice I can -, got to go shopping for uni stuff, at the same time as sorting out appointments and trying to have some semblance of a social life!

So, I’m going to Glyndwr University in Wrexham to study Theatre, Television and Performance. I’m so excited, and a little bit nervous but I’m sure it’ll settle down once I’m there. For a small uni it’s got a reputation as a party university, and although I like a drink and to have a laugh, I’m not one for going properly crazy and stealing traffic cones (don’t get me wrong, I’m sure it’ll happen during Freshers, just not every evening of every week!). So I’m worried that there won’t be anyone like me there – that there’ll be two distinct groups; the ones who want to go crazy every night, who I won’t fit in with, and ones who never go out, who I also won’t fit in with. I don’t want to stay in every night and study; yes the main reason for going to university is to learn but there’s also the whole experience, the independence and the fun. However, I also don’t want to lose control of myself by getting too drunk – things are so wonderful at the moment that I think to upset the balance could be disasterous.

Hopefully my fears are just rubbish and there’ll be plenty of people there like me, and I’ll never feel pressured to go out and get drunk if I don’t fancy it. I’m sure everyone there is really nice, and the good thing is that my best friend is going there doing the same course, so things won’t be too bad. I’ll keep you all posted 🙂