Freshers Week – Why it’s not always ‘the best week of your life’

Before I went to uni, soo many people told me that Freshers Week would be the ‘best week of my life’. So when I finally arrived, super excited for this amazing, life-changing, crazy Fresher experience, you’ll forgive me for being a little bit disappointed.

Firstly, a quick disclaimer: I was extremely homesick in my first week of Uni. I cried, lots and didn’t really tell anyone (who wants to tell people you’ve known for two hours that you want to leave already, particularly when the girl in the room next door has travelled for 21 hours and half way round the world rather than the 2 hours down the M25 you travelled to be there!?). This is probably a factor in why I wasn’t a massive Freshers fan. I’d also just like to add that the Freshers week of my second year was probably one of, if the not THE, best week of my life, so please read on to find out what on earth I’m talking about.

There are probably a few of you who don’t like to drink or clubbing. Keeping it real, a LOT of Freshers week is made up of this. Unis definitely try to promote non-alcoholic, non-club types of events but the reality is that the biggest events of Freshers week are the club nights or college social events. Now, I like going out and I like to have a drink, so this wasn’t my main issue with Freshers. What I didn’t like was going out with people I had known for literally 3 hours. You’re stuck in an extremely awkward situation where you don’t really know what to say to each other beyond, ‘What’s your name?’ and ‘Where do you come from?’ and the trust between you is about zero. This leaves you torn between wanting to get really drunk to drown your homesick sorrows but also not wanting to drink at all because if you do get wasted what will everyone think of you and more to the point, how will you get back to the flat you now live in which you can barely remember where it is, even stone cold sober?

It’s an exhausting week too. You meet a ridiculous amount of people. You potentially go out for 8 nights in a row and you may also have things to do during the days. Going out with friends can seriously be the most fun thing ever. Some of the best nights of my life have been at uni and trust me, if you had asked me that two years ago, I would NEVER have believed you. You may have to wait a while at uni before you start to have a really good time. However, you may extremely lucky and be loving uni life straight away and to you I say enjoy it (and also I’m pretty damn envious you settled in right away!)

Learning a Language

Something neither beauty nor fashion related today but more lifestyle - a topic I’ve been wanting to write about for a while, so I hope this post is useful. I may or may not have said before that I study French (with English) at Uni. People often approach me to ask what it’s like to learn a language and how it feels to be able to speak it at a reasonable level. Today I’ll talk about the pros and cons of learning a language and for those in education, what learning a language is like at various stages in the UK education system.

I’m clearly biased, but I think learning a language is really great. Here are my five top reasons as to why I think you should consider giving it a try:

·      It’s interesting. You don’t just learn another language, but you learn about the culture of the country or countries in which the language is spoken, including everything from history to fashion to art to food.

·     You can learn a lot about your own language. This is particularly helpful for me as I also study English Language, but nonetheless it is particularly informative and helps with some of those more obscure Trivial Pursuit questions.

·    Employability. Employers love people who can speak more than one language and with the current job market as competitive as it is any little extra skills you can bring to the table are a bonus.

·   Confidence and communication. Learning a language brings you multiple other skills,  particularly communication skills and in turn those skills contribute towards making you  a more confident person.

·   Impressing your friends. And your parents. And men...I always get asked to ‘say  something in French, it’s really ...’ ;)