Fresh­ers’ Week Maidstone

Chapter 1

Fresh­ers’ week

Ar­riv­ing at uni for the first time, you’ll prob­ably feel a bit like you did on your first day at pri­ma­ry school – ner­vous about the work and teach­ers (re-​brand­ed as tu­tors this time), ex­cit­ed about meet­ing new friends, and ea­ger to check out your new sur­round­ings (a whole room this time, and not just a coat peg). You might be a bit keen­er to say good­bye to the par­ents this time, and prob­ably won’t hang on to their trous­er legs as they try to edge to­wards the door, but don’t be sur­prised if you sud­den­ly feel a tiny bit pan­icked on the first day. It’s nat­ural that you might have mixed feel­ings when you ac­tu­al­ly face in­de­pen­dence for the first time.

But your first day at uni will be so busy that you won’t have much time to stay pon­der­ing – you’ll be un­pack­ing, or­gan­is­ing, learn­ing end­less names, for­get­ting them, get­ting lost, be­ing found, ac­cept­ing Face­book friends, swap­ping num­bers, meet­ing neigh­bours, eat­ing, drink­ing and gen­er­al­ly rush­ing around. Fresh­ers’ week is a time when you’ll smile, laugh, drink, dance, cry and for­get hun­dreds of names. At times you might wish you were some­where else, at oth­er times you’ll wish the week could go on for­ev­er. You’ll have hours when you love uni, and hours when you hate it – and some­times you’ll feel all these feel­ings at the same time. That’s nor­mal. It’s stress­ful to move to a new place, start a new course, meet hun­dreds of new peo­ple, sift through those peo­ple to find friends, ar­range a new room, cook and eat new foods, ex­plore a new town, or­gan­ise new fund­ing, im­press new tu­tors, and go from be­ing top ba­nana in the high­est year of school to bot­tom of the pack as a fresh­er at uni­ver­si­ty – all with­in one very busy week.

Ar­riv­ing at uni: what to ex­pect

When you ar­rive at uni­ver­si­ty for the first time, with all your stuff, head for your halls of res­idence or wher­ev­er you’re liv­ing. If you’re liv­ing in halls, there will prob­ably be a stand set up to wel­come you and your fam­ily and tell you where to go. If you’re liv­ing in pri­vate ac­com­mo­da­tion, re­mem­ber to ar­range when and where you will pick up the key be­fore you set off from home.

TIP

‘I found that fresh­ers’ week was an an­ti-​cli­max – don’t wor­ry if you don’t en­joy it – uni soon gets bet­ter!’

Daniel, 23, Ox­ford

Once you’ve ar­rived in your room (or ‘digs’, as old peo­ple like your par­ents will prob­ably in­sist on call­ing your uni room), it’s a good idea to start un­pack­ing as soon as pos­si­ble. Ask any friends or fam­ily who have come with you to help you to un­pack be­fore they go, be­cause once your room starts look­ing nice and home­ly, you’ll feel much hap­pi­er about set­tling in. Don’t wor­ry about un­pack­ing ev­ery lit­tle thing (it can be nice to have some­thing left to do when your fam­ily leave) but un­pack your du­vet, make your bed, put up some posters, un­l...

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