Moving into to student accommodation for the first time can be a scary but wonderful experience. I moved into on-campus accommodation for my first year. I chose Clarice Cliff accommodation as I wanted to have an en-suite room. Honestly, I was so terrified about moving in and leaving my life in Essex and starting everything new: new city, new place to live, new place to study, new friends, and living with new people. So here is a brief story of what happened for me when I moved into student accommodation for the first time.
As soon as I got my allocation of my room number, I went onto hello-freshers which is a site that connects students to who they will be living with. I also went onto the new student group on Facebook and posted where my room would be to see who was in my flat. Very soon all the people in my flat had found each other on Facebook and we created a group chat. This was a great way to get to know each other and break the ice so it wasn’t so difficult to start conversations when we arrived for move-in day.
On move-in day, my parents and I loaded up the car and made the journey to Stoke. The first stop was enrolment where I also got my flat and room keys. After that it was time to go see where I would be living for the next 9 months. We unpacked the car into my room and then headed out to get some food shopping and have some lunch. Once we got back to my room, my parents helped me to unpack a little before they left. My advice is, with or without your parents, spend a little time unpacking the essentials on the first day. You may unpack everything but if you don’t then make sure you have you bed made and ready when you crash after the long day and you have some kitchen and bathroom stuff out to keep you going. I decided to unpack the essentials and leave the rest as I wanted to head to the kitchen and sit with my new flatmates.
We chatted in the kitchen for a little while and then we ended up in one of the rooms putting up photos. As I remember it, the pins wouldn’t go in very well so we used a fake tan bottle as a hammer. Strange first day thing to do but, it broke the ice and we were all laughing and bonding really quickly. After that we started getting ready to go out to the LRV for the move-in party. We went as a flat and met more people while we were there.
You will find your own way through your first day and your moving-in experience. Just remember, it is totally normal to be scared, nervous, excited, unsure, happy, sad at some point or all at once. Everyone feels differently about the experience and feeling different to someone else doesn’t mean that you, or they, are wrong and it doesn’t mean you will always feel like this.
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