If you are heading to university at any point in the near future, you’ll no doubt have some trepidation about how to prepare for student life. After all, for the majority of students moving away, it will be the first time that they will have ever lived away from their parents.
There are a lot of changes that you will face. You’ll have to adapt to living on your own, cooking for yourself, learning to budget your finances, all this on top of meeting new people, and actually studying.
In this post, we’ll take a look at a few things that you can do to make your uni experience that little bit easier.
Book Your Accommodation Early
As soon as you have been accepted into your chosen university, you will need to start thinking about where to live. You should get in touch with your university and find out some details for local accommodation. Check out sites online like this accomodation at the University of Suffolk.
Budget, Budget, Budget!
One of the most important lessons you can learn when you are at uni is how to manage your budget. Often, when a student gets their first student loan installment, it will be the largest sum of money that they will have ever had. The temptation is to go out and spend this as quickly as possible. It is essential to remember that this will need to last for several months and should be used to pay for food and rent too.
Create a budget and stick to it. Give yourself spending money each week so that you can enjoy yourself, but make sure that you are strict with yourself over how much you spend.
Learn To Cook
Takeaways are neither good for your health nor your finances. You need to be able to cook for yourself. Often, when students move away, they have never had to cook for themselves very much at all. Take some time before you move away to uni to learn how to cook. But a cookbook or get someone to teach you a few recipes.
Start Reading Early
Generally, most uni courses will require some reading as part of your studies, You should get sent your reading list ahead of starting on the course. This is a chance for you to go out and buy second-hand copies of any major textbooks you’ll need and to actually start to read them before the course starts. The more you can read ahead of the course, the easier your life will be when the course starts.
Connect With Other Students Via Social Media
Before you join your course, you may be able to meet your fellow coursemates online. Many courses will have Facebook groups set up where new students can mingle and meet their peers.
Not only that, but you may also be able to join groups so that you can make friends from your halls of residence or even from societies that you may be thinking about joining.
We hope these 5 tips on how to prepare for student life can help make your life all a bit simpler!
