Moving away to study at university can be a nerve-wracking time. There’s so much to adjust to at once: living alone in a new town, separated not just from your family but the network of friends you’ve built up as well. Separated from your usual support networks, you have to learn new ways of working and studying, make new friends and make sure you’re budgeting effectively or you’ll run into disaster before your first term is over.

Today we’re taking a look at those first days in the hope that we can help you relax and enjoy your first year, whether you’re settling into halls of residence in Edinburgh, rooms in Oxford or University of Huddersfield Accommodation.

Separation

Depending on your relationship with your family and even the friends you’re leaving behind, University could be a blissful escape! If you’re not looking to escape a suffocating parental relationship or friendships that are holding you back, it’s daunting to go into a new stage of your life without the people who’ve been there to support you for the last one.

The key here is to strike a healthy balance: it’s easier than ever to stay in touch with family and friends across the country, but if you do that to the exclusion of getting involved in the opportunities around you you’re setting up the circumstances for your own disappointment. 

Try to set times to call home (outside of extraordinary events and tragedies of course) and the rest of the time embrace your new life to the full. Even if you really are feeling homesick, the way to overcome it in the long term is to build a new home around you, not cling to the one you’ve left. Hard as it may be, try to keep calls home, Skype and Whatsapp to specific days, and make sure you’ve done something you can talk about when Facetime comes!

Finding Friends

One of the best ways to make sure you’re having fun and enjoying your university career is to find a network of friends. This doesn’t happen overnight of course but you can give yourself a head start and find a pool of people with similar interests and values that make making friends easy.

Universities support a huge ecosystem of clubs and societies, from sports teams and drama clubs to investment societies, chapters of charities and film clubs. Whether you want to find people who share a deep seated interest of yours, or to nurture something you’ve always wanted to try, you’ll find a big group you can fit into and this is where you’ll find the friends that will be your support network and comrades in arms throughout the next three years and beyond!