🎉 Finding a Society at Freshers Fair 🎉

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🎉 Finding a Society at Freshers Fair 🎉

Societies are a great way to make friends and spend time doing something you love. Yet, there are so many to pick from that Freshers Fair can become a little overwhelming.

Firstly, work out what you already enjoy. Some people know immediately that they want to join a football team or performing arts club, but not everyone has that instant passion that they always refer to. Think about what you’ve done in the past and whether it’d be something you’d want to pursue further. We all have that one thing we enjoyed but never taken seriously or as far as we’d want to, but university is a great time to explore those routes.

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🏠 Top Tips for Moving out of Home 🏠

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🏠 Top Tips for Moving out of Home 🏠

You never quite realise how invaluable a frying pan is until you leave home. Or bowls. Or spoons. I can’t quite tell you how many pieces of cutlery I’ve lost over the years. For some reason, cutlery at university takes on the roles of socks in the dryer: they just…disappear.  

Leaving the comfort of your home where meals are cooked for you each night, everything is readily available, and there are no fights over who used your barbecue sauce (queue black and white war flashback) can be quite a daunting task. You soon realise you don’t quite know what you use at home and what you don’t. I can guarantee there will be or has been a shopping trip for supplies where you’ve asked questions such as: 

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✅ It’s Never Too Late to Pick the Right Course ✅

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Picking your uni course can kind of feel like you’re signing your life away. I remember choosing my GCSEs and trying to somehow work out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. Just picking four subjects to do seemed like the most daunting task in the world. I ended up going with Graphics, Drama, History and Critical Thinking despite not wanting to pursue a career in any of them.

The next step was college, which seemed like the biggest deal in the world.

Hang on…so I only have to pick four subjects? Yep.

And then I drop one after just a year? Yep.

And I don’t have to be in college 9-4 every day? No.

What’s the catch? If you mess these up, then you won’t get into the right university, and then you’ll have to settle for something less, and then you’ll become so frustrated with your life that you’ll become addicted to Night Nurse and end up dealing second-hand beany babies in run down side streets.

But I get Friday’s off? Yeah. Ok, I’m in.

 
 

Turns out that I didn’t really know what I wanted to do at college either. I ended up going with Business Studies, Economics, Music Technology, and Philosophy. As you can probably well notice, none of these related to my GCSEs in any shape, way or form. I picked the former two because I thought it would look good on a CV and the latter two because I was vaguely interested in them.

After doing fairly shockingly in the CV buffers and falling out of love with music, I was once again at a crossroads for what I wanted to do. All I knew was that I wanted to go to uni and had developed a slight interest in health and fitness. I ended up visiting four or five different universities to check out their nutrition courses, but none of them really took my eye. I applied nevertheless and got into Plymouth, plus a couple of others.

However, I quickly realised that this wasn’t the path I wanted to go down. I didn’t want to go to university on a whim, so I took a gap year to really rattle my brains for what the next step was going to be. I started writing my own blog, checking our various health and fitness courses, and working out what I truly enjoyed doing and could see myself doing for the foreseeable future.

 
 

Finally, I found something that really caught my eye. Sports Therapy. That was it! Hoorah! Party poppers exploded, confetti rained down from the sky, and all was well with the world. And that’s where the story ends!

Psych! About three-quarters of my way through that course I realised I much preferred writing than massaging oily bodies every day and swapped courses to study English. Next year I’ll be entering into my third year of a course I absolutely love without any regrets whatsoever.

The moral of the story is that it may take a while to settle on a path you want to take. You might end up applying to a fair few and only when you get accepted on one do you realise what you truly want to do. It may seem like there’s a lot of pressure now, but if it takes you a little while longer than others to decide where you want to, then that’s absolutely fine. Some people find the course they want to do right away, others take gap years or switch courses. The only thing that matters is that you end up on a course YOU enjoy doing what YOU love. If you haven’t quite figured that out yet, then explore your options and see if anything tickles your fancy.

 
 

Take your time.

Don’t rush things.

Everything will be alright in the end.

🌞 Having a Summer Job 🌞

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🌞 Having a Summer Job 🌞

Summer at university is weird. You go from a state of hubbub and business to waking up each day wondering what you’re going to do. Sure, you might have an exciting holiday planned or a couple of events lined up, but if you’re not careful, the majority of the days can be spent watching daytime television and swiping through Instagram.

So, instead, people end up finding a summer job to not only fill their time, but to try and rake in some dollar before the new term starts. Some people work so they can eat and others work to pay off some of that overdraft built up from parties and pizza.

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💸 Learning to Budget 💸

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💸 Learning to Budget 💸

Budgeting isn’t exactly a sexy word. Most people when they first come to uni end up being overwhelmed by the sheer amount of shops and options that they blow all of their money in the first month, shoving them deep into their overdraft. 

Honestly, the best thing that I did to force myself to be wise about money was to not get an overdraft in the first place. When you go into your online banking and see you only have £50 but it says ‘£2050 available’, you’re far more likely to think “ahh, who cares?” and hit up Domino’s for the sixth time that month.

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