Moving to your new home away from home is as stimulating as it is overwhelming, hair raising and quite frankly, dam right scary. Keep reading to find out 20 mistakes that every fresher makes and see where you’ve gone wrong in your first week!
we’ve all been there, the awkward hello hugs and handshakes as you arrive into your new halls of residence but its working out the kitchen arrangements where the nightmare begins. With only a limited amount of shelves and cupboards to store your belongings it was inevitable we would run out of space, but when we all arrive with our ikea bought 5 piece saucepan set it sure was going to be a tight squeeze.
“Whats your name?” “where are you from?” “what course are you studying?”, three phrases that become laughable by the end of the week as a fresher. From your flatmates, to your teachers to the random people you meet out whose names you’ve forgotten by the morning, its a conversation that you simply cannot avoid as hard as you may try. The biggest issue with this however is embarrassing yourself when you ask those questions to the same person you had the conversation with just the day before. Oops.
For those of you coming from the country side or somewhere that seems to just be non existent on the world map, i feel you. The repetitive small talk i mentioned above also includes conversations involving where you’re from and questions like ‘what kind of accent is that?’ which causes quite the difficulty for us agrarian occupants. This is made worse however when for the next year your friends think you’re from the centre of manchester when realistically there’s no sign of Uber or McDonalds for miles from your hometown.
An essential item for university that is often overlooked is of course the honoured doorstop. Opening your room up to your flatmates is fundamental in making friends with the people you’re going to be living with for the year to come. so invite them in, find out the gossip and dig the dirt because the last thing you want in your new city life is to spend it on your own.
Mixing alcohol with nerves often ends in catastrophe so adding games to the equation is a situation that should be avoided at all costs (even more so if you’ve got a past to be guilty of). Regardless of what our sober selves think though we spill the beans and have to live with the nicknames that come of it for the rest of our university career.
Meeting people is hard so seeing your new found friends going out without you makes the FFOMO (freshers fear of missing out) kick in and you make the mistake of going to every single freshers event thats on offer. From beach parties to UV raves you’ve seen them all, however this doesn’t seem to bode to well with your bank account (or the inevitable freshers flu that creeps up on you).
While you may have gone to every single freshers event under the sun, many of you (like me) probably didn’t go to the ones your pro-active, budgeting self bought in advance, simply leading to more bankruptcy and lack of having a POA. Maybe for you 2019 freshers, just wait and see and save your money.
As much as the drinks in your student union may appear cheap, doubles for £4, Jäger bombs for £2, you tend to become overly generous and offer out your card to anyone who’s within a 20 yard radius of you. You’ll soon come to figure, however, that not everyone is as giving as they are accepting and you’ll be scraping the barrel for money by the end of the week.
Getting your student loan when you start university is probably the most money any of you have seen in your bank accounts before. While you walk around the city centre feeling like Richard Branson or Kylie Jenner, shopping in shops you’ve never stepped foot in before, its not long before your rent kicks in and you become the poverted student, heavily in your overdraft, that you were always meant to be.
One of the downsides to living alone is that you have to do the graft that your parents have put in for you over the past 18/19 years of your life, one of which involves washing up. As we walk past the same bowl of cereal everyday over the course of the week, it’s not until we run out of crockery that we decide it’ll be best for us to maybe make an effort in our kitchen. However, by the time we reach this point the smell of the sour milk and the sight of the green mould growing on top of it is enough to put us off our food for the next few meals to come.
Living in a city means you have plenty of options of eateries and restaurants to get your chops around. With an endless list of possibilities you just want to try them all however as your waistline increases and the money in your account decreases, this soon becomes a regretful decision (not to mention the kebabs and fast food we repeatedly get on our way home from each night out).
As much as we may be loving university life and the independence, its undeniable that at some point we will miss home and our friends and family. However, a common mistake that is made by a lot of freshers is going home too soon and getting used to the routine of it, and like i said, you don’t want the FFOMO kicking in while your back with the rents.
Budgeting at university is tough when you’re not used to it, as is planning your meals ahead and deciding on the food you need for the week so a weekly shop with most students is usually not on the cards. This is where many go wrong though, just popping to your local Waitrose or Sainsburys to pick up a few groceries here and there isn’t going to quite cut the budget. This is made even worse when you go shopping on an empty stomach!
However hard you convince yourself and your family before you leave that you’re going to be changing your lifestyle, having a healthy diet and joining the university gym, it never happens and if it does, it doesn’t last long. It’s not long before the salads are swapped to spaghetti hoops and the clear liquid in your glass is no longer water. The lazier amongst us though tend not to eat a thing and are convincing themselves that (only) an apple a day will keep the doctor away.
Whether its because the cost of your laundrette is extortionate or more likely because you don’t yet know how to use a washing machine, leaving laundry until you have literally no clothes left is a mistake every fresher makes. This isn’t such an issue until it comes to the time you brave it and head down to do you’re washing but all the machines are taken up and you have no clothes to last you until your next opportunity.
A common and dangerous mistake will always be leaving your drinks unattended. Whether it’s in the city’s biggest nightclub or during prinks in your flat you should always keep it handy. No, this isn’t because of the danger of your mate downing it while your back is turned and then convincing you that you drank it yourself (although that’s something to look out for), but anything can get slipped into their and being in a new environment its a necessity to keep your whits about you.
Yes, the cupboard space (although limited) is there for you to store your food, however using it for that purpose is a dangerous game. With drunk teenagers storming in at 5am when their last meal was 10 hours ago, they tend to pounce at the kitchen like a congregation of racoons and ransack it for anything and everything, unless they picked up a kebab earlier of course.
The biggest regret amongst many freshers after their first week is that they didn’t get a job as soon as they started, or apply to one prior to that had they got a wise head on young shoulders. Although in the first week your high off the feeling of wealth and prestige, it soon hits home in the weeks to come when you’re drowning in debt to your parents, your bank and your friends that you need a job at the point where all vacancies seem to have gone AWOL.
Whether you’re doing the walk of shame while watching the sunrise as a fresher or decided the night wasn’t for you and fancied heading home as a fresher, your vulnerability is at a peak when you’re on your own and worse still if you’re in the dark in a city that you are just familiarising yourself with. With that in mind, always ask someone to walk you home, or offer yourself if there’s a friend in need. Its an easy solution to what could easily become a bigger problem.
Regardless of all the mistakes made by a fresher over their first few weeks of independent living, these are the best years of your life and its a time you will never forget. However the future freshers amongst us cannot expect plain sailing or an easy experience. Yes, you will probably cry (more than once) and it will likely drain all the energy you have left inside of you. Just embrace it, appreciate it and have the best time.
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