So university is a huge step for most people, and in all honestly I am still shocked I even got a place at my university. Having now completed my first week at medical university studying Physiotherapy, I thought I’d share what I learnt this first week.

1. You don’t want to be that person who makes a tit of themselves at freshers. Every year has that one person who always gets completely obliterated and has to be carried back to halls by other students and safely tucked away after throwing up. I honestly thought there was nothing wrong with doing this to an extent, we’re freshers, getting drunk is the key thing, however I learnt from a second year, this isn’t the case.
2. The teachers are expecting you to get obliterated during freshers. I can’t say this for every university, but at mine our lecturers encourage us to go drink (probably in the hopes we get sick of it and stop it for the rest of the term). We’re based in a hospital with the Student Union bar based in the hospital as well (its locked off in the university part don’t worry) however we are often reminded that we may be walking past future employers when drunk and trying to get home, so to try and be subtle. My uni also has plenty of mesures in place to keep us safe, namely The Drunk Club which is room of benches and bins, people in pink shirts who are there to keep up safe and pick us up off the floor, and also to ring the student watch over at halls who are tasked to get those who are totally smashed, safely into bed.
3. Everybody is as nervous as you. When I went to my first freshers meet and greet at halls, I knew no one. But with in a few minutes I had met two other physio students who then introduced me to another physio student. My friend Ellie also managed to help up make friends with other students by literally walking up to them and asking if we can join (ballsy I know, I wouldn’t have done it!!). It worked and we made some friends we hung out with that night and still see around uni and chat to.
4. You wont remember everybody’s names. I’m a week in and still asking people their names. You will learn them all but it takes time, their not going to be offended if you ask them what their name is again. Chances are they’ve probably forgotten yours as well!!
5. Go to the freshers events. Not all of them, but most. I haven’t been to all the freshers events due to either not being interested in one or two of them or because I was so tired I had to have a nap. However it is worth going to a few because they are good social settings to meet people and I have met a lot of people through fresher events.
6. You wont get pressured into drinking. There is this big thing that its uncool to not drink when out with mates. Nobody cares. If you don’t want a shot its not the end of the world. I went on half a pub crawl and had one bottle of WKD, no one honestly cared. I didn’t have to explain about my medical or anything they just said, are you sure? And that was that.

Considering its only been a week, I haven’t learnt a lot, but I thought I’d list a few that most people tend to worry about a lot. Hope you enjoyed it and please leave me comments on other blog post ideas you’d like me to do!

Hazel