FRESHERS SURVIVAL GUIDE #4: WHAT I WISH I HAD KNOWN

I am now a full grown graduate of university, therefore, I have been through all of the stress, the anxiety, the 'shall I just run you over and you run me over, so we don't have to take our exams' - scenarios and yes that was a legit conversation. My point is that I now feel that I am pretty experienced and can offer some advice about all the things I wish I knew when I was at uni, to make sure you get the most out of your uni experience. 

If you're going to uni next month, you may want to read my previous 'fresher's survival guides' about packing, making friends and fresher's week, for some extra tips. 

When I started university I don't remember being overly excited about it or particularly wanting to go, it was just what you did after sixth form or you would end up a failure at life - which obviously I now know isn't true, but someone may want to tell the sixth form teachers that! This leads me onto my first tip:

Only go to university if you want to

Yep, seems pretty straightforward. I am glad I went to uni but thinking about it now I would advise people who are unsure to maybe wait it out a few years to see what you really want to do. There is no rush in going to university and if you're relying on student finance I think they only help you for one degree, therefore if I now decide I want to be something very specific that I need a different degree for, I'll have to fork out a small fortune. If you work for a couple years or study at college or anything else, you will have more time to figure out what career you actually want to do. I think it also helps to gain some experience in the working world so then if you do go to university you have some kind of work experience on your cv to give you a head start once you graduate. I remember one of my teachers once said to me it is very sad that you don't know what you want to do in life... bitch please, I'm 14! You have your whole life to decide! 

Pick a degree that you're actually interested in

If you've read any of my other posts about uni, you'll know that the majority of the time I absolutely hated my degree. Lucky for me I now have a law degree which is considered to be a good one to have, so secretly I'm glad I chose to study law, but seriously the degree will be so much easier if you are enjoying what you're studying! During the third year I enjoyed my modules so much more because I had picked them and knew they were subjects I was more interested in. 

Have fun!

So, this is the section I think I failed at most. My degree was extremely demanding and I spent pretty much all of my time doing my seminar work, research, lecture reading, seminar reading, listening to lectures, reading more, writing essays, reading even more... I now seriously regret not making more time for having fun. I don't feel like I had the time to have fun and do well but I wish I had done, especially in first year. As we all know it doesn't reaaally count all that much so I wish I had gone out more, spent more time with friends and just have more fun in general. I feel like I wasted the fun side of my uni experience which is supposed to be one of the greatest times of your life. So, have more times when you start your 3,000 word essay at 9pm the day before it's due and finish at 4.30am and when you have a presentation to prepare for the next morning but instead you stay up chatting with your flatmates until 2am and then start the prep so you're ready for your 9.30 seminar - go on I dare you! 

Move far far away and don't come back

Typing that sounds a little depressing but it's not! It leads on from my previous point of having more fun while at uni. I only went to a uni which is about a 2 hours drive from where I live, which seemed a good idea as I had a boyfriend at home. I ended up living at home the second and third year and commuting in.  If I were to do it again I would go to somewhere a lot further away and stay at uni for the whole terms and only come home for christmas and easter break. I would definitely live there during the whole of university too, to really gain the whole uni life experience. In my first year I wasn't making the most of uni and spent most of my time wishing I was home so I would go home every other weekend. If you stay at uni and make more effort with doing more with your friends, you wont need to go home. 

You don't need to have a boyfriend/girlfriend

I still have the same boyfriend that I did during school, sixth form and uni, but it hasn't been easy. My boyfriend stayed at home and got an apprenticeship, so worked all week. At the beginning of uni it was the hardest because we were literally living opposite lives; he was getting up just as I was getting in from the nights out - and I'm not even a crazy partier! I'm glad we have made it through everything and I do not know what I would have done without his support throughout the three years. My main reasoning for not having a partner when you go is so you can just do your own thing without having to worry about anyone else. I think you need the time to figure yourself out and what you want and need in life and it's a lot easier to do it on your own, without always considering someone else. If you do have a boyfriend/girlfriend, don't worry, it can work out if you both put in the effort. My main point here is I know as a 18 year old girl it seems important to have a boyfriend but you're all that is important and you have time for boyfriends later. My boyfriend and I both say now that we wish we would have met in a few years time, we're happy together but if we could chose we actually still wouldn't have met. 

The morning I left for uni above and my graduation below, with my boyfriend

Stressing will not get you anywhere 

Definitely easier said than done, I know! This only really hit me during exam period in my final year. I think I had spent my last oh I don't know, lifetime worrying and stressing about school work, sixth form work and then uni work that I had out worried myself and physically did not have it in me to stress any more. I realised that you just have to get on with it, work hard but understand you're not perfect. When I started to realise this I just got on with revision and essays, it wasn't easy but I did it by believing that I could do it and just not thinking the worst all of the time. During my second year I stressed and panicked so much about the exams that I couldn't sleep and when I did sleep I had crazy nightmares which I never normally had, I suffered from a small amount of hair loss and just general anxiety and sickness feelings all of the time, which obviously is never going to help. A slight proof of this may be that I did a lot better in my final exams than the second year ones. 

Everything you can possibly know about the law
Yeah... that would have been a helpful thing to know before uni. 

Overall, uni is definitely what you make it. As you can see my main regret is not having enough fun and enjoying myself while I was at uni. The majority of my friends who weren't on my course did a lot less demanding degrees and therefore had a lot more spare time and I don't think they ever understood my work load and always thought I was just being useless with them. If you're going to uni next month, my advice is to enjoy it! Take all the opportunities offered to you, make as many good friends as you can, try new things (sports, hobbies... not anything bad)! Obviously be safe, do your work, call your parents but just remember that this time is all about you and it can be the best time of your life. 

You can read my guide to what to pack, how to deal with homesickness and making friends and fresher's week 'here.'