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I don't think anything is really going to prepare you for how full on it is. I wish
I could make more of it, that's the thing, everyone says, "It goes past so quickly."
You really have to make the most of it. From day one, you've just got to go into it. Just
jump in. Yeah, such a short time but it is the best time of your life.
Definitely. I don't know, I feel like I've spent a lot of these three years just sleeping,
and I should have been doing more things. The things you hear about it aren't all true
generally the stereotypes are only a minority of the kind of people here and actually there
are normal people that have normal things to do. If you're just yourself, you just gravitate
towards people that you get on with and even some people who you wouldn't think you can
get on with you do.
There's all the essentials like learning to cook, and learning to actually pay the bills
and all that. Get in early with accommodation in your second year, don't wait until February,
March, April. You don't have to eat awfully as a student, although noodles for 50p can
be quite helpful. Perhaps the one thing I would have liked to know more about is student
finance, because it does seem like a very confusing and daunting world at first.
For me personally, another big thing was the subject. I didn't realize how much the subject
varied university to university. You would have thought that studying English would be
the same wherever you go, English is English, books are books. But it makes a huge difference.
I am doing a completely different degree to my friends who are studying English in Newcastle
or Leeds, and I am also doing quite a different degree to the people that are doing English
in Oxford but at different colleges.
And also when you're applying, I think it's important to go and visit the universities
because I hadn't come here until interviews. It was lovely of course but you could be unpleasantly
surprised. Do speak to people at the different unis and get their perspective on what is
like because even though you will have fun and the time of your life and make great friends
and you will do work as much as you want wherever you go like it will make a difference where
you go obviously. You can't really know a city until you've been and you can't know
what university's like until you've seen it. Yeah, just get organized. I didn't get any
sort of folders or anything beforehand. And I think, it would have been good for me if
I've had a longer term view before I came here.
I didn't really know what career I wanted to go into. I didn't really know what I wanted
to do with my future. I think the sooner you start thinking about things in that kind of
way, the better because then you can really make the most of your university experience.
I think I would have perhaps benefited from knowing just to throw myself into everything
and just start early.
Bring a pen! Yeah, bring a pen. You're not going to get a first in all the essays that
you hand in, I mean no-one can learn all the information in the course. I mean, one of
the things my teacher said early on in the year was that we picked you for a reason,
you got in for a reason. So you can do the work.
So just don't get stressed out about it because there's just no need to really.