This blog post reveals how I felt about moving to university and advice i’d give to those going to university in the coming years…

With a 1 year delay, I am off to university.

With my American adventure still firmly in the front of my mind and not wanting to let summer 2017 go just yet, I had to slowly move it to the side of my brain as it was time to move to university for my last major stage of 2017.

Although I had been away from friends and family for 3 months, moving out and to university seemed more daunting than I thought it would be. Although it is only 40 miles it seemed like 4,000 in a weird way.

It’s all a bit mind baffling really – mix of various emotions, finding friends, getting on with all your flat mates, finding all the buildings your lectures are in and so many more things imaginable.

1 thing I would love to say and be proud of is that is okay to be lonely – you have to embrace it because everyone goes through it. You might only be in the next town over or 300 miles away – its normal to randomly feel alone or sad. I go through waves from day to day and tend to hide away or go to the gym – there are so many different methods of coping with loneliness which I haven’t even discovered yet but it’s 100% okay to feel sad, alone or overwhelmed with emotion.

University is so much more than just studying – but don’t flunk it! It’s all about gaining so many different life skills that you don’t even realise you are picking up. It builds people skills, communication skills, provides future working opportunities, builds social skills and it can help build you as a person without you knowing – people will just say ‘wow look at you’, ‘you’re so confident’ ‘you’re doing so well’ and the majority of the time you’ll just look and them and think ‘really, I was crying on the bathroom floor earlier but thanks’.

With being back from America for 10 days and having to pack up my life and move to university I started looking at everything like ‘do i need this, what do I need and what do I want’.

So if you have no idea what to take to university or even if you’re just moving out here is a vague outline of what i took to my new home:

Kitchen stuff included:

• 2 saucepans – little and large
• 2 frying pans – little and large
• cutlery
• general utensils: tongs, wooden spoon, spatula, 2 sharp cooking knives, chopping board or 2, baking trays – little and large and a few tea towels.
• crockery
• drinking glasses

Bedroom stuff

• bedding – 2 of everything – duvet covers, sheets, pillow cases
• photos – make it feel like a home away from home
• coat hangers (and clothes obviously)
• clothes horse (to dry my laundry)
• fairy lights (just like every girl on the planet)

And loads of other bits and bobs to make it feel as homely as possible.

So that sums up my uni experience so far and hope this helps in some way.