#freshers 2019

so a lot of you will be starting uni or college soon! here are a few things NOT to do in your first few weeks:

Don’t hide in your room - this one is obvious but it needs to be said! As soon as you’ve moved in and anyone that came with you has left then get out of your room and meet new people!

Do not miss intro lectures. I know you don’t actually learn anything in a lot of these type of lectures, but they're a great chance to socialise and meet the people on your course for the first time. 

Don’t think you have to be best mates with people you meet in freshers - friendships change a lot and that is 100% normal!

Don’t be that person on the night out - aka don’t go get blackout drunk and need looking after. In freshers week you don’t really know people, so you want to stay in control and aware in order to stay safe and have fun!

Don’t get deep into your overdraft in freshers (if you can help it), it can be tempting to buy everything and anything - but really try and get used to budgeting early on in term.

Don’t stress about work - in my freshers week I was given some essay titles and a huge reading list before the term had officially started. My advice is to just ignore all of it and enjoy yourself until lectures properly start.

Don’t say yes to everything. It can be tempting to say yes to every social engagement/offer, club or society, night out etc. While it is important to get stuck in and involved in extra-curriculars and making friends, it is important not to go mad on this. Take time for yourself too, as you have to get through an entire term of uni after freshers - so don’t burn out in the first week (although you’ll probably get freshers flu regardless!) Saying no to some things can also save you some money (as nights out and costs for societies can add up to a lot!)

Don’t worry about who to live with in 2nd year during freshers! At a lot of unis you move out of halls after first year, and people generally start looking for houses towards the end of first term (Nov/Dec). This seems very soon, but don’t panic and rush it. 

Don’t buy books brand new - a lot of older students sell second hand books cheap, and a lot of uni libraries are well stocked. Ask older students what they think it’s worth buying and what to not bother with.

Do not forget to register with a GP in your uni town - you never know when you might need to go to the doctors!

Don’t forget to register to VOTE in your new city. Students can be registered at their home address and in their uni town (as long as you only vote once in each election). This is very important with the threat of a general election in the UK at the moment (eek!)

Don’t think you are the only one who is homesick. Everyone is in the same boat and missing home. It is so common for people to think they’re the only one and put up a front of being totally fine. Give someone at home a call, have a catch up and a bit of a cry.

First of all, the jump from A-Levels to university is hard. I get that - I finished A-Levels literally 4 months ago, and I was never the best student anyway. The best thing to do is try and get into good habits on the first day of term, during freshers week.

That means turning up on time with your coffee, not 15 minutes late with Starbucks...

Even if you had a raging party the night before. Even if you sleep through the lecture or dont take anything in, you’ve taken the first step!

It’s likely you’ll have introductory lectures where the heads of department etc. Introduce themselves, the modules and the lecturers, as well as online resources and emails.

Make notes of emails on a page even if your uni offers them online - it will be so much easier if you have it to hand.

Alternatively, open up the ‘notes’ page on your phone and put them in there, so you’ll always have it!

Try and look for visual and verbal clues in the lecturer’s body language. When they emphasize something that is important, how do they react? What language do they use to signpost this? On their powerpoints what is highlighted in bold, or larger font? Why is it important?

If they mumble or it’s small text, it’s unlikely to be particularly important to the lecture.

That being said, go to at least half of your welcome week activities, and prioritise your society tasters and meet-ups with friends/housemates! There will be plenty of time for study later :) go and socialise and make a steady group of friends you can eat lunch with and go out with!

Freshers Week is about fun, so go to more parties and society meet ups than you do lectures! Study will come later!

So on Friday was my last day of lectures for the semester! Now it’s revision week then I’ve got my exams spread out between 9th December and 20th December so it’s likely to be a slightly boring couple of weeks. Here’s a little update of how I’ve found my modules this semester.

Physics 1A: probably my most enjoyable module, no surprises there given I study a physics degree so I do love the subject. I’ve got my coursework mark back (physics coursework is a combination of weekly reading tests, fortnightly written assignments and a class test we did). My overall (unmoderated) coursework grade is 92% which is an A1 grade (the gradings for Pre-Honours go from A1 down to A3 which are all Firsts, then B is a 2:1 and C is a 2:2)

Introduction to Linear Algebra: I’d say this is the most conceptually challenging course I’ve taken this semester, a lot of the concepts are new and it’s mainly vectors. I’ve definitely spend more hours on this than any of my other courses, because we’ve had 2 weekly reading quizzes, a weekly assessment, and a weekly hand in so if you get behind on just one of these it’s very hard to catch up. My advice to anyone thinking of taking this course is do everything as it comes so you don’t end up all stressed. My coursework mark for this was 97% (A1).

Astrobiology: this course is a bit out there, and it’s a mash up of all the sciences nd geology so it’s very hard to perform well on all of it as everyone has different strengths, and it’s kind of helped me overcome my obsession with wanting to do perfectly at everything. I haven’t got my coursework mark yet as they use your best 4/5 assignments and my 5th one hasn’t been marked yet and because I did badly on the first assignment I’m hoping my mark will go up. If I didn’t, my mark is at least 84%, which is an A2.

Spending Saturday afternoon writing a blog post as I told myself I’m giving myself today completely off studying - I shall not touch a textbook today. I’ve been quite drained and stressed this week and I think it’s because I just haven’t been giving myself any days off or breaks longer than half an hour for a sandwich at lunch. So today I have just had a good old clean of my flat, scrubbed the sink, did some laundry, went for parkrun with my flatmate this morning, and have sorted out all the recycling bins. It sounds pretty standard but honestly I keep ignoring the “non critical” adulting tasks and it was making my flat a bit unpleasant lol with so many pieces of paper and notes strewn across the floor that I have finally taken the time to file. I’ve also spent some time reading my running magazine, and a popular science book (How To by Randall Munroe - i really recommend) as I’ve not spent much time reading (other than textbooks) recently and it’s something I really enjoy. I’ve become a lot more conscious of my use of social media and I’ve stopped just mindlessly taking out instagram whilst I’m waiting for the bus or whatever, and just taking those moments to occupy myself without just distracting myself with social media (this was prompted by listening to this podcast episode of The Deliciously Ella podcast - I love it!!) I do think I need to start committing myself to taking (at least) a full day off per week because otherwise I get far too caught up in work I forget what else I enjoy. Particularly from a place of suffering with anxiety for many years, sometimes you do end up getting so worked up about the little things, that you lose the reasons why you’re doing what you’re doing, for me I had been considering dropping out of my degree, but I realised that the reasons I was considering dropping out was from fear of not being good enough - which is a shit reason. I’ve just taken a step back and said to myself “No, you have as much of a right to be here as everyone else does. You study physics because you enjoy it, if you still enjoy it, which you do, then you should keep going”.

Highlights of this week were my maths lecturer buying me a hot drink and a cookie and having a nice long chat after I had a mini meltdown in maths workshop. It really made me feel a lot better, and, like, less terrified of my lecturers, because I’m damn scared of most of them.

Everyone’s still struggling quite a lot at the moment but I think we’re all starting to get there, as, well, we’re over 2/3 of the way through the semester now so we’ve got over the mid-semester hump, and so we’ve only got to hang on for a few more weeks until we go on revision week then exams, then Christmas!!!!! I’m already super excited for Christmas and hot chocolate and mulled wine and ahhhh cute lil Christmas trees.

I’m thinking of starting a 50 days of productivity (not 100 as I have Christmas break in the middle and I fully intend on NOT being productive and just enjoying the heck out of Christmas I won’t lie). I’m hoping to start either tomorrow or Monday!!!! :D 

Having a weekend at home after I had quite a meltdown this week. I’ve had a lot of insecurities at uni - everyone else just seems like they’re absolutely thriving, and I just feel like I’m really struggling with managing work and life and knowing how much is the right amount of work to do, and that everyone seems like they’re doing really well at the moment, academically and they all have vibrant social lives. As someone who suffers with social anxiety, I find it extremely difficult to adjust to things, to socialise with new people, to look after myself properly. I had a workshop on Thursday and I was very tired, and everyone else just seemed to understand absolutely everything that was going on, and I knew nothing! I ended up completely breaking down in tears in front of a workshop full of about 40 people, and I just grabbed my bag and did the one thing my anxiety always tells me to do - ran away. I honestly think I would’ve dropped out of my course there and then if it hadn’t been for the director of teaching / course organiser / lecturer who was in the workshop and saw what happened and knew something wasn’t right. He followed me out and stood in my way so I didn’t just leave in the state I was in. He listened to everything I said, and was so reassuring, literally saying that other people pretending they knew everything going on was “bullshit” and I couldn’t agree more. People cope with new environments in different ways, some people try to protect themselves by pretending they’re not vulnerable, they want people to think they know everything because they’re scared people will think they’re stupid, and I completely understand why people respond like that. But I am almost a polar opposite, I honestly will straight up say when I don’t understand something or when I’m stuck, but because so many people around me are acting as if they know it all, I do feel like the ugly duckling who is just a bit dumber than everyone else, and I’m struggling a lot. I feel very lucky that I’ve got such a good team of lecturers and tutors around me because the one who saw me on Thursday has sent me such a nice email and I’m going to see him next week to go through some stuff. I’ve been in a similar situation in maths workshops as well but not to the same level of breakdown because I’m high key terrified of everyone there so I’m actually too scared to show any sign of weakness as they’re all a lot smarter than me. I really am working on maths at trying to get better.