#ediuni2016

18 things to do while living in Edinburgh

I have been living in Edinburgh for two years, but there is still so much I have not done and so many places I have not seen. Don’t be like me and make the most out of your time here!

1. Watch the sunrise from the top of Arthur’s Seat

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHboZaW1WBQ) 

2. Go to the Stockbridge Market  on Sundays

© Macumba at English Wikipedia

3. Visit the Royal Botanic Garden

By Ham via Wikimedia Commons

4. Go to Beltane Fire Festival

© 2010 Martin Robertson

5. Soak in the charm of Edinburgh’s peculiar second hand shops and bookstores

© Anne at https://www.flickr.com/photos/ilike/5361213627/

6. Visit the Castle

7. Get lost and discover the hidden gems of this city

© Sir Gawain / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0

8. Go for a walk on Portobello beach

© 2016 CODE Hostel Edinburgh

9. Enjoy the free museums and galleries

10. Go to a ceilidh

© Jonas Hickson 2014

11. Take a stroll down the Royal Mile

© Paul Zanre Photography

12. Walk along the Water of Leith  and find the Dean Village

13. Take a tour of Scottish Parliament

© Paul Dodds

14. Look for all the places of literary interest

15. Find the Union Canal

16. Try out Scottish cuisine

© Colin via Wikimedia Commons

Deep fried Mars bar? Haggis? Irn Bru? There is plenty of choice.

17. Enjoy the view of the city from Carlton Hill

18. Experience the Fringe Festival 

It’s normal to worry about not knowing anyone at university. Expectations for Welcome Week are high, but the reality of leaving your room and go mingling with perfect strangers might be scarier than you’d anticipated. Here are 9 ideas on how to meet new people at university. 

1. Open doors

Confession: I spent the first few days in my room, decorating and avoiding any human contact.

If you live at Pollock and you feel too awkward to go talk to people, let them come to you: leave your door open while unpacking.

2. Housemates 

If you live in a self-catered accommodation, don’t hide from your flatmates: offer them some food, go shopping together, and team up for welcome week events.

In the end, they might turn out not to be your closest friends, but you can stick together for the first few weeks. And they will be around for the next 8 months, so it can’t hurt to get off on the right foot.

3. Stock up on tea and cookies 

This one is valid for any living arrangement. People love food, and it gives you an excuse to start conversations. 

4. Connect with people on your courses 

Top three most popular questions in Welcome Week: 

What’s your name? 

Where are you from? 

What do you study? 

After three days you’ll be sick of hearing them, but don’t underestimate their power. You will never see again most of the people you meet during Welcome Week. However,  if you meet someone your course make a mental note and look for them in lectures. 

It’s nice to have some lecture buddies to get through that one 9 am class.

5. Join societies 

They are an amazing way to meet people who share interests and passions!

6. Talk with random students  

Welcome Week has a wonderful atmosphere, where starting conversations with someone sitting next to you in the Student Union is perfectly acceptable - encouraged, even.

I know that it sounds scary, but remember that everyone is just as lost as you!

7. Go out even if you are alone 

Be safe, but don’t miss out on opportunities just because you have no one to go with. You won’t meet people if you don’t leave your room!

8. Don’t forget about day events

Welcome Week might seem unappealing to all those who are not big party-goers or drinkers because so much emphasis is put on the evening events. However, Welcome week is a lot more. Hundreds of events take place in one week, including tours, gatherings, meet-ups and taster sessions with different societies.

In my experience, the people you’ll meet during the day, when you’re sober enough to remember them, are a lot more likely to stick around. 

9. Branch out 

In the end, everyone’s experience of Freshers week is different.  If you are lucky enough to meet your new best friends during the first few days at uni, develop those friendships but keep expanding the social circle: the more, the merrier! 

Going to a school like the University of Edinburgh can be quite intimidating. It’s becoming real and you might be starting to worry about whether you’ll be able to do well academically. Don’t worry: if you made it so far, it means you are talented and amazing and have all the attributes you need to thrive here. Nonetheless, it might take some time to adjust to university-level education. To help you with the transition, I gathered some tips on how to succeed.

1. Meet With Your Personal Tutor

The first few weeks at university are unique experience: there is so much to see, so many people to meet and so much partying to do. It’s all very hectic and confusing, and dealing with all the academic stuff is the last thing on everyone’s mind. 

But don’t underestimate the importance of meeting your academic advisor. They can help you with stuff like course selection, degree change, fees payments and a lot more. 

2. Show Up To Lectures

No one likes mornings. Not even your lecturer, trust me.

But lectures are there for a reason. They familiarise you with the topics so even if you fall behind with readings and assignments, you will know where to start. 

3. Time Management

Basically, get a planner. As soon as the course handbooks are out, take note of the key dates for each course. Once you know what needs to be done and by when, keeping up with work will be a piece of cake. 

4. Planned Procrastination

When you’re making a study plan, be realistic: chances are you will not be able to to be actively focused for 14 hours a day, every day. Of course, it depends on the person: some of you work better with scheduled breaks, while I rely on “planned procrastination”.

I know that I regularly end up wasting time on my phone, but my concentration span varies a lot from one day to the next so I can’t really plan my breaks. So, when I make my study plan for the weekend, I include a couple extra hours that I can devote to some healthy procrastination.

5. Do Your Readings

First year is busy: you’re meeting new people, trying to figure your way around uni, discovering the city, partying. It’s easy to fall behind on readings.

That’s all part of the “uni experience”, but don’t forget that you are studying a Social Science, and that means you will be expected to read extensively. There is just not enough time to do that the night before an essay or the week before finals. Try to keep up, it’s worth it.

6. Understand The Marking Criteria 

One of the scariest things at uni is thinking you know how to do something and then discovering that it not what they are looking for at university. Entering higher education means having to up your game to new standards, but there is no need to panic: first year is all about gaining confidence in this new learning environment. 

The first step towards doing well in an assignment is to really understand what the markers are looking for. Your courses will provide a guide to the criteria they use: dedicate some time to understand what they mean and how that would look in terms of an essay, a policy brief or other forms of assessment.

7. Know your Strengths and Weaknesses

For instance, in my first semester at uni I discovered I am bad at exams. Like, really terrible. It takes me three time the level of effort to write a decent exam than to write a decent essay. 

First year is meant for you to learn what kind of a learner you are, and improving from there. Honestly, I don’t think I will ever get to the point in which I enjoy writing an exam the same way I enjoy writing an essay. However, knowing my weaknesses means I can focus my energies and time to improve them.

8. Don’t Be Afraid To Ask Questions

If you are struggling with a topic or if you are unclear about the assignments, don’t hesitate to ask your tutors for help. It is in everyone’s interest for you to succeed and it’s their job to help you finding the resources you need to move forward.  

9. Get To Know Your Lecturers And Tutors 

Lecturers are often perceived as some sorts of mystic and at times scary creatures. But they are actually super approachable and willing to meet up with their students.

Whether you are particularly interested in a certain topic or you need clarification on a lecture, make use of lecturers office hours. When will you, once you leave university, have the chance to chat with great academics that are often leading experts in their field? Exactly. 

10. Academic Support

As I mentioned above, is in the interest of the university for you to thrive here. Because of that, numerous forms of academic support are in place to help you through the rough patches. Among these, the Personal Tutor system, the Disability Office, Proofreading service for non-native English speakers and various forms of Peer support and Peer assisted learning. 

11. Feedback

Even if you don’t like to think about your mistakes, feedback on you previous work is one of the most effective way to improve in future. 

When you get feedback on a piece of work, don’t just check the grade but go through the comments and take note of any pattern you might identify. 

12. Be On Time

Showing respect towards the work academics put in the lectures and tutorials is a great way of contributing to a positive and happy academic community. And also don’t forget that those people are the ones who will mark your papers. It’s in your interest to keep them happy.

13. Keep A Healthy Lifestyle 

Sleep and eat well, and you are much more likely to survive the rounds of flu that takes over uni when midterms or finals come around. You are also much more likely to perform better. I myself have a tendency to procrastinate too much and then go for two weeks with no sleep and too many caffeinated drinks. And in my experience, that is never a good idea.

Doing a thousand readings and being sleep deprived will never, ever be better than doing 10 readings well, sleeping enough, and get to the exams well rested. 

14. Have Fun!

When academic deadlines are approaching you might end up not leaving your rooms for weeks, alternating between studying and procrastinating (while worrying about the fact that you are not studying).

Don’t forget that it’s ok to have fun once in a while. Taking your mind off work for a few hours can actually result in increased productivity.

15. Keep Things In Perspective 

In the end, Freshers year is all about finding your balance. Sure, we all want to do well and be successful. But five years from now, we will not remember the one assignment we got a 71% on or that one class we just could not seem to understand. We will remember the people we met, the things we learnt and the opportunities we took. 

So don’t obsess too much about the grades and remember what bought you here in the first place: 

Money is not something we like to worry about, but it is essential to think about it before starting university. 

Higher education is a great investment in your future and it’s worth every penny. But it is also the first time you will be fully responsible for you spending, from the house you live in to what you eat for dinner. Whether or not you qualify for loans, you need to be prepared in order to avoid bigger issues down the road.  

Here are some tips!

1. Make a Budget

In order to start off on the right foot, it is good to know what your income is, what you fixed costs will be and how much you will have left for all the extras. 

Financial matters differ significantly from person to person, so you will need to sit down and put some thought into it.

There are numerous tools you can use, depending on how detailed you want you budget estimate to be. Personally, I prefer the Brightside calculators: they are very straightforward, if  not very detailed. The thing I love about their International student calculator is the currency converter function. 

Student calculator

International student calculator

The government’s Money Advice Service offer a very intuitive, customisable and visual representation of you budget.  It has two version - one is more general, the other very detailed.

Budget Planner

Important note: be realistic.

It will benefit no one to underestimate your expenses. If you don’t know where to start, the University compiled a useful list of estimated living costs. 

2. Track your expenses

Now you know what your budget is, but the tricky part is sticking to it! In my first year I saw people blowing through their ENTIRE student loan during Welcome Week. 

While that might seem worth it at the time, please trust me on this one: not a good idea.

My way of tracking money is quite old fashioned: every month, I go though my bank statement and figure out where unnecessary spending is happening. Then I cap my budget the following month for that specific item.

 It doesn’t really matter how you go about it, but it’s important to keep an eye on you finances throughout the year.

3. Bank Accounts

Once you get here, you will need to open a bank account (if you don’t have one in this country already). I know it’s a hassle, I myself tried to postpone all this bureaucracy as much as possible and tried to use my Italian account for as long as possible. But they charge you a lot more for taking out cash, and if anything goes wrong you will need to spend hours (and money) on international phone calls. 

Don’t underestimate the importance of your bank account. Try to find the best match for you needs. If you’re an EU or International student, check how much they charge for international money transfers; if you travel in the UK a lot, look for banks that offer free railcards; if you tend to forget things easily, perhaps it’s worth choosing a bank that has a branch on campus. 

You can start with this comparison table of the main banks in Scotland.

4. Career service 

Despite all that, you might find yourself needing or wanting a job. Luckily, the University has this great thing called career service.

I only started using this service a few month ago, so don’t follow my example. They can help you through the whole process of finding a job, from writing a resume to practice interviews. 

They also offer a selection of the best employment opportunities for students, checking for quality of employers and working hours compatibility with university commitments.

5. Emergency plan

Finally, it is probably worth noting that if things go wrong and you find yourself short on money, the University has a system of support to guide you through it. While borrowing parents and friends can be an option, the Advice place offers guidance for this kind of situation.

EUSA Advice Place 

It’s important to know you budget so that you can plan the practicalities of next year, but don’t worry too much about the details: everything will become clearer once you get here in September. The university offers great money and job guidance throughout your degree, and you will be have the chance to identify these resources during Welcome Week.

Any question? Inbox me!

We asked current students to tell us their favourite place to hang out on campus. Here is what they told us!

1. Old Medical School

Clara, Archaeology and social anthropology

2. The International Student Centre Lounge in the winter...

... and George Square in the summer! 

Lindsey, Sociology and Psychology

3. The Library

T.O., Chemical Engineering

4. David Hume Tower Cafe

Lilian, Politics

5. Potterrow and the Chaplaincy

Larissa, Social Policy and Politics

6. CMB on the weekend

Elizabeth, International Relations

7. Teviot 

Kristyna, Philosophy & Economics

Old College Quad

Steph, International Relations

The Meadows

Dylan, History

1. Our university has been around for a long time. A really long time. 433 years, to be precise.

...I KNOW!

2. Speaking of old things: UoE also has the oldest student union in the world, Teviot Row House… 

By Sydney Mitchell, via Wikimedia Commons

3. …. and the UK’s oldest student newspaper, The Student 

It was started by Robert Louis Stevenson (author of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde) in 1887. 

via Wikimedia Commons

 4. The School of Social and Political Science is the second  largest School in the university

You're going to be one out of 1,100 undergraduate students. So many people to meet! In addition, there are more than 800 postgraduates, some of which will be guiding your tutorials. But don't worry, you won't be ignored: with over 220 academic staff, the school has an excellent staff-student ratio.

5. In 2008, SSPS defied the tradition of naming the University building after influential 18th century men and named it after Chrystal Macmillan, the first woman to earn a degree in sciences from the university in 1896. 

She later became a lawyer and a key figure in the suffragette movement. 

 6. The University gives you puppy sessions during exams.

“Therapets”is a scheme that has been running for a few years now, in which therapy dogs from Scottish charity Canine Concern visit the Uni during exam season to help students relax. 

 7. UoE has over 240 Societies

You'll find groups catering for all interests, from the Allotment & Permaculture Society to the Cocktail Society to the Doctor Who Society. You'll find plenty of opportunities to further you interests or discover new ones.  

8. We have many notable alumni, including:

Writer Robert Louis Stevenson, who you might remember from ‘The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde' or ‘Treasure Island’.

Athlete and missionary Eric Liddell, often referred to as the ‘Flying Scotsman’. His life inspired the Oscar-winning 1981 movie Chariots of Fire. 

And novelist J M Barrie, the father of our favourite eternal child Peter Pan.

These are just a few of the inspirational figures that walked down our hallways over the centuries. The University of Edinburgh fostered talents in all areas, and helped philosophers, doctors, presidents, scientists, artists and change-makers of all sorts to reach their full potential. 

Think of what you could do!

We asked current students to tell us their favourite thing about being here. 

1. The independence. 

2. The facilities available to students.

3. All the activities and events that the university organises.

4. The variety of clubs and societies.

5. The way the city feels safe.

6. The international atmosphere.

7. The fact that the university is integrated into the city, while there are still students absolutely everywhere. It has all the best features of both a campus university and a city based university.

8. The wide range of courses available, and the fact that you are able to take subjects from outside the school you have matriculated into.

9. All the amazing opportunities this city offers.

10. The students.

11. Always being able to get dominos 50% off snap fax. 

12. The educational environment and the excellent teaching.

13. The student life.

14. The fact that it allows to alternate a relaxed University life with intense periods of studying. 

15. Making some of the closest friends.

16. The many ways to enrich oneself with interesting courses and work experiences.

17. The diverse student body.

18. The chance to explore the city and Europe. 

19. The student union.

20. The academic support, especially the Personal Tutor scheme and Peer Learning.

21. The people.

22. The freedom.

23. The great community. 

24. The memories.

We asked current students to tell us what is a must-have item to survive at UoE. Here is what they said.

1. Topped-up University Card

...for printing and getting discounted coffee at uni cafes. It also gives you access to the library and all kind of buildings - pretty essential. (Kristyna, Philosophy & economics)

2. Laptop

... the library has plenty of computer workstations, but it can get quite busy. If you don’t own one, the university provides a Laptop Loan service easily accessible to all students.

3. Warm clothes...

4... and a rain poncho

It doesn't rain as much as you expect it to in Scotland, but when it does it's super windy. When you're going to Uni and trying to avoid getting really wet, a rain poncho is great!  (Larissa, Social Policy and Politics)

5. Parents on speed dial

...because living as a adult is hard (Dylan, History).

6. Tartan scarf

...because we’re in Scotland after all (Gaia, International Relations).

7. Something to join both taps 

...so you can have a normal tap like in the rest of the world, and not two separate taps - one that spews water from the depths of hell, another straight from the centre of Antarctica. I've seen these on pictures on the internet - if they really exist, then one is a definite must-have (Ivan, Ecological and Environmental Sciences).

8. Social skills...

...because you’ll meet a LOT of new people.

9... and food

...because it makes life better  (T.O., Chemical Engineering). 

10. Patience

Things might get tough, but please - don’t be this guy:

(Lindsey, Sociology and Psychology)

11. Caffeine

...for all the all-nighters followed by 9 am lectures (Clara, Archaeology and social anthropology).

Despite all this amazing tips, just remember - be your amazing self and you’ll be fine!

CAN’T CONTAIN THE EXCITEMENT? Neither can we!