The time has come. Whether you have already secured an unconditional place, or are hopefully awaiting your conditional offer to be accepted on Results Day, your life as a student is just around the corner.
Despite being a year into my degree, I can still vividly remember how I felt at this time. I had little to no expectations for my year as a Fresher, choosing instead to live in the moment and enjoy as much as I could. But, now that I can reflect on the year, I can reveal the three main reasons why you should be getting excited about starting university.
1. Financial independence
The biggest thing for every student, whether it is destined to be their downfall or not, is getting that first student loan through. Contrary to expectation, the likelihood is that this won’t be sitting in your shiny new student bank account by the time you’re moving into your accommodation, so if you’re planning to go all out in Fresher’s Week, you may have to use your overdraft (if you’ve opted to get one).
In my experience, I was fairly good at budgeting and only went into my overdraft in the second semester due to an expensive field trip to Iceland, but I knew many students who were always in the red due to going out nearly every night a week or utilising the very convenient Amazon Lockers on campus probably a bit too much, but I also knew many students who thrived from the financial independence and saved their loans for weekly/monthly treats. For me, the latter was usually a day trip somewhere on the train.
2. Meeting new people
It may sound cliché but you will meet people from all over the country, and possibly the world, when you begin your life at university. The majority of people will have lived in the same area throughout their academic lives and therefore not studied/socialised with many different kinds of people, but that will all change as a student.
Whether you are closer to your flatmates or your coursemates, you will have arguments over pronunciation of words, where places are and what you should eat with your chips. But equally you will learn so much about things you hadn’t even considered before, and bond over things that you discover you have in common. You will make acquaintances, you will make friends, and you will make close friends for life – but once your first year is up, they may not be the ones you predicted.
3. Food
You may think you’re a bad eater now, but just wait until you have the ability to walk to McDonald’s every day without having to ask for money. Yes, that’s right – with your newfound life as a student comes the independence to buy whatever food you want. Gone are the days when you’re forced to eat cottage pie just because its been cooked for you (even if you really fancied pizza)! Now you can order a takeaway every Saturday, from different places, with friends or even on your own. You can eat breakfast for lunch and lunch for dinner. You can eat whatever you want, but my advice – just go easy on the chocolate Digestives after midnight.
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