Top Tips: For Staying at Uni

Now I just want to emphasise the title here… top tips for staying at Uni, not going to.

To be honest, I found going to Uni the easy part, stopping myself from dropping out was the hard part (homesickness is a bitch).

My first term of Uni I LOVED.

Literally I thought Uni was the best thing ever, too cool for school, that kinda thing. Then right towards the end of first term, heading home for Christmas I remember being super excited to go home  and not having to be in halls. The big big issue came when I had to return after Xmas… hell no did I want to go back. I love home, I’ve mentioned on my blog before how much of a homebird I still am, so first year of Uni you can imagine how bad I was! I just remember crying a lot, and it absolutely pissing down on our drive along the M4 back to Bristol…. in many ways I felt the weather was reflecting my mood. I unpacked all my stuff, said bye to Mum and just sat in my room in silence. It wasn’t until my flat mate came back from her weekend away that I realised what the time was… she made me dinner because I just couldn’t / wouldn’t do anything!

This feeling slightly spiralled after this and I kept going home roughly every other weekend…potentially the worst thing I could have done… 1. in terms of money & 2. because just giving in and going home wasn’t helping. What also didn’t help was the fact that I only had about 8 hours worth of lectures/seminars a week, so I wasn’t exactly ‘tied down’ to a hard schedule that I needed to be around for, which made going home even easier.

Second year, was pretty much the same as first year, potentially even worse because I wasn’t in halls anymore. Aka I wasn’t with all my uni friends, only a few, and I was in the smallest and just awful house you could imagine… i hated it. However, I did go home a lot less and I tried to make the most of seeing my other pals after or before Uni.

Third year ironically was definitely my best year. I had a friend who would go out with me constantly, she also lived with her parents so she had a super nice house to stay in! She definitely made my last year of Uni the best. We went to the xfactor tour, james arthur tour, little mix tour, multiply nights out and just had the best time. All in all, third year I worked the hardest but also partied the hardest!!

If you’re feeling homesick, my top tips are:

1. Don’t go home too often. Honestly I can not express how going home a lot made it worse, because whenever you go home you always have to leave again to come back to Uni & its more & more heartbreaking each time – so just don’t cause yourself that pain.
2. Freshers Fair. Make the most of this, not only is it the best time to get loads of freebies (winning) but you also get to scope out the Uni & see if there is anything you are interested in joining.
3. Join clubs, sports teams etc. I didn’t do this & it will always be one of my biggest regrets about Uni. Although it is super scary to think about going by yourself to a new club, during Freshers and the first term there will be so many newbies that you can make friends with & try out clubs with. Even at the freshers fair most clubs and sports teams have people down there so you can meet them etc. I can not emphasise enough – don’t be scared, just do it.
4. Have soooooo much fun & don’t regret anything – uni is the only chance in life you’re going to get to go out every night, drink too much, not have to worry about money too much, not necessarily have to worry about a job. Of course, do your Uni work – you want a good result in the end, but just have fun.

Thanks for reading!

Fran, X

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