What Sophie Said

This is part 3 of my uni life series – 5 blog posts in which I reflect back on my three years at university. I’m looking at halls , friendship , holidays, the academicside and the top ten things I’ve learnt . By far one of the oddest things about being at university is that strange limbo between being independent yet still being in education, reliant on your parents and/or loan, and returning home for university holidays. Realistically, the minimum student maintenance loan is rarely enough to cover all rent, utilities and living expenses and most students have to get jobs (term time or in holidays) or rely on extra support from their parents. In this post I’m focussing on those ‘in-between’ times, the holidays in between terms. Most of us, when it gets to Christmas, Easter and summer, pack up and return home for at least a portion of those breaks. The packing itself is hard enough; 5 weeks at home is a large amount of things to fit in a suitcase. In addition to that, there ar...

So here it is: part 2 of my uni life series. Having just completed my three-year English degree, I’m looking back at the experience and thinking about what it’s taught me. I’m looking at living in halls , friendships, holidays , the academic side , and the top ten things I’ve learnt about myself . In this post I’m thinking about friendships, both making new ones and maintaining your ones from home. I love my friends, but I also like knowing exactly where I stand with people, so the thought of being thrown into a sea of new people and new experiences, not yet knowing who I would click with and who I could trust was more than a little daunting. As I discussed in Part One , my friends were definitely not the people I ended up in halls with, so I had to open myself up to trying more new things on my own until I met more like-minded people. The first thing that I pass on now to people who are nervous about starting university is simple, but often forgotten: everyone is in the sam...