Meeting your new housemates can be one of the most intimidating parts of freshers week. People often put a lot of pressure on themselves to make their housemates their best friends from day one. While this isn’t always realistic, friendships with housemates can be some of the strongest bonds that you form at the start of university, so, if you’re looking for ways to spend time with them, here are our ideas.
For most students, freshers week is a chance to drink and party, so a good way to bond with your housemates is to organise pre drinks at your house. Putting together a playlist with each other will help you to get to know their music taste and open opportunities to find things in common. Alternatively, you can just roast each other’s bad taste in music and bond over making fun of each other (the sign of any great friendship).
Pre drinks is also the perfect opportunity to find out more about your housemates through a friendly game of never have I ever. There’s no better way to get at each other’s secrets and embarrassing stories than by interrogating them through drinking games.
One of the things that students miss the most about home is the food. Sure, a bowl of pasta sounds great but when you have one every night for dinner you’ll start to miss those Sunday roasts. Cooking a big meal for one is not exactly ideal, and it’s not easy to manage alone, so why not get your new housemates involved?
At the end of freshers week, when everyone is feeling a bit run down, have a quiet night in and eat together. Each person can contribute towards the meal in some way, either by donating ingredients or actually cooking. Through the journey that is working out how to work an unfamiliar oven and a nice dinner time chat, you’ll get to spend some quality time with these new people.
Again, if you’re feeling run down from the non-stop activities of freshers week, a quiet night in with your housemates is a good opportunity for you to bond. Hopefully at least one of you will have a Netflix subscription, otherwise the trusty student alternative of using dodgy websites is available to find the perfect movie for a night in together.
It’s a great way to work out who the people are in this new group. Who’s the one that only recognises Leonardo DiCaprio ten minutes before the end? Which of you is the person that jumps at the most minor scary moment? Who is the person that rather annoyingly talks through everything? You can also share around popcorn and drinks to win extra points with them if you are feeling particularly generous.
Freshers week isn’t all about what you get up to in the evenings, you also have to find a way to pass the day in a new and unfamiliar place. Taking a look around your university or local area is a key part of settling in and it can feel even better if you take along some of your housemates.
Bonding over getting lost is a great memory to look back on after freshers week and you might stumble across a cute coffee shop or local pub that you can come back to all year long. It’s also just nice to have the reassurance of other people around you when you’re exploring somewhere alone, especially if you’ve moved to a big city. Taking the train to your local shopping centre can be intimidating by yourself.
This one may not sound like much fun but at the end of the day you’re an adult now so you’ve got to be responsible. To make the most of it, do things alongside your new housemates. Wash up their dishes while they dry, help them to unpack and organise the fridge together. Some of the best chats happen when you’re doing the most mundane things and that is how you really get to know people.
Also, take a trip to the laundry room together. So many students have never used a washing machine before university and, with the help of Circuit Laundry, the process becomes even trickier. It’s always best to work it out while there is someone with you to laugh at your confusion.
Board games are the perfect chance to get competitive with your new housemates and can be a really fun way to spend time together. If you aren’t into drinking and want a way to socialise while sober, this is a great way to do it and trust us when we say that all the best people bring board games to university.
If you still want to make it a typically freshers week activity then you can of course introduce alcohol, and turn them into some pretty creative drinking games. Just don’t get too competitive. You don’t want to fall out over Monopoly in week one.
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