TOP 10 TIPS FOR STARTING UNIVERSITY

Asalamualaykum Warahmatullah,

Starting university or anything after secondary school can be a daunting or exciting experience depending on how you embrace it. 

When I started university I was not in a good place mentally but had to force myself to get on with it.

However, as time passed I began to enjoy university to a certain extent.

 Looking back now on my first and second year, I can definitely say that second year was probably the best year for me in terms of feeling like I belonged. 

Here are my top 10 tips for starting university:

1. Sentimental Items: If you are living out, make sure to take a few items that will make you feel at home and also bring a familiar feel to the place. 

2. Cooking: Make sure you have a few recipes under your belt, the worst thing to do is spend money you don't have every day to have a meal. Although its tempting to eat out, it saves A LOT of money to eat in once in a while. 

3. Organise your time: This depends on who you are, if you prioritise socialising before your work, then you need to be more careful. Have fun but at the same time rule out a few hours a week to make sure that you have caught up on the work required. If you leave everything until the last few weeks of your exam, that becomes unnecessary pressure. However, if all you do is work, then once in a while you need to make time for yourself to go out, to get fresh air, to do something completely different in order to take your mind off. Theres nothing better than having a good day out and coming back ready to face work again.

4. Budget: Not all of us are lucky enough to have a big sum of money come in and to have enough leftovers for massive outings. My advice would be to budget to a certain extent, where you know you wont be left stranded, but at the same time, give yourself leeway so that if an opportunity does arise then you can afford to rule out some money to put towards that. 

5. Attend your lectures: We all eventually get lazy and feel like once we have missed one lecture, the joy is so sweet that we want to miss all of them. All i'm saying is sometimes things will be said in that lecture theatre that is only going to be said once, and you wont find it in any of your readings. 

6. Keep in contact with your family: One of my main fears was that my family will move on and do things without me, but in fact you have to realise that not much may change on their side. Keeping in contact may also spur you on to enjoy your time at university more.

7. Make friends: they always say that if you leave university with at least 3 friends then you are very lucky. The only way you will make friends is to make enough of an effort. You also have to realise that university holds a diverse amount of people, if you don't want to go out to party, you will always find someone else who is not interested in that aspect too. Don't conform to what you see in front of you, rather know that who you are in university is who you are going to be for the rest of your life. 

8. Join a society: For me, this is a questionable piece of advice. Only because, although I had initially joined a lot of societies, I only really stuck by one. If you enjoy certain activities then I would recommend joining them as they a good way to get out and do different things. But from my own experience, I would rather join societies that are actually worth my time, without investing unnecessary amounts of money on random societies.

9. Don't buy every book mentioned: This is one for all the first years. In my first year I bought every book that I thought was needed, instead of renewing a book borrowed from the library. It wasn't that bad of a move because I knew it was my book, however I bought it new from the internet for £60 a piece. I didn't even try other avenues where they were selling the same books for much cheaper. I just straight up bought the books for their originally prices. As long as the book is the one that is recommended you don't need the newest ones out there. Eventually when you want to get rid of them, they're going to sell for less than half the original price anyway.   

10. Social Media: Keep in contact with your classmates, be it via whatsapp groups or other online websites. This will help you to be aware on what is going on, what is new, the events that are happening, people may even share what was told by them via private email. All of it is necessary to make your life that bit easier. 

These are my tips for university. Obviously we all have different experiences, but essentially they are all the same. Just enjoy it. There is no point in complaining about having a bad time, when you want to stay to do the education. Just wait it out for the first few weeks, if you continue to have a bad time then you need to do something about it, however, most of the time you need to wait until the newness has subsided to feel like you can handle anything that comes towards you. Eventually it will become normal.