Going to university is one of the biggest changes and challenges you’re going to go through in your life. For most people it’s going to be the first time they’ve had this much responsibility for how to run their lives. At university, you don’t have someone standing over you all day making sure you get the work done: outside of lectures and seminars, you’re not supervised and you have to decide how you’re going to achieve everything you need to.
You’re also going to be responsible for your own budget, your diet and cleaning. Some people can fail to step up to the challenge, so today we’re going to reveal some of the secrets of the first year at university, and how you can swim instead of sink whether you’re moving into halls at Oxford, a house in Edinburgh, or the student accommodation Bolton offers.
Routine
It’s important to set a routine for ordinary jobs as soon as possible. If you set a particular day for your cleaning, laundry and shopping right away, it’ll make it easier to stick to and become a habit rather than a chore you have to force yourself to do.
If you don’t, you’ll soon find yourself running out of clean clothes, while the floor of your room is lost beneath dirty laundry and you can’t find the books you need to finish an essay with a looming deadline.
Pick Somewhere to Work
There have never been more sources of distraction for a student trying to get some work done. It’s almost unfair that the same machine you’re using for your essays is also a portal to a world of social media and on demand video that could keep you distracted for the rest of your life.
One way to combat this is to designate one place to work and associate that strongly with doing essays rather than anything else. Working in the library automatically cuts down on distractions from phones, and makes it easier to focus. If you choose to make your room your work space, beware! You might find it difficult to relax there when you need to.
Enjoying Yourself
Finally, when you’ve got a routine set up and a workspace where you can tune out the world and focus on the work that needs doing, don’t forget you have the freedom to abandon it all whenever you want to. You’re not taking advantage of the freedom of being a student unless you sack of lectures and work at least once – whether it’s for a road trip to the sea or simply an afternoon in the pub!