I know first hand that university can be a very daunting experience, even for the most prepared individual. Meeting new people and living away from home can be utterly terrifying and overwhelming, especially if you have never lived on your own before.

Though, fear not, as I can guarantee that 99% of students at university have felt this way. Much like everything else at university, it is a learning curve, and people adapt to life there in their own way, at their own pace.

Personally, I found the first two weeks the hardest, as I am an only child. The thought of living away from my parents for such a long time made me want to hide under a rock forever. But, I believe that it is a necessary experience for anybody going to university, as it gives you the independence that you otherwise wouldn’t have had.

It’s no lie when they say that the first year is the hardest. The first year of anything is always the hardest. It takes a lot of adjusting and, for most people, change can be very difficult.

The years you spend at university will be filled with pivotal moments, such as meeting your flatmates living for the first time and making new friends. You’ll get to experience Freshers week, and Christmas at university is always a fun experience, even if you’re not planning on staying there over the festive period. You’ll celebrate your first birthdays with a new group of friends, and may even witness the birth of a relationship between housemates or good friends. On the other hand, you may also be with them through something catastrophic such as the diagnosis of an illness, or the death of a family member or friend. These years are the most defining years of your life as you try and navigate the path between who you are and who you want to be.

And sometimes, it can feel a little bit overwhelming. Which is okay.

But, here are my five little nuggets of advice and lessons I have learnt about ‘surviving’ your first year at university.

1. Don’t try to be friends with absolutely everybody you meet.

The universal truth is: you will not be friends with every single person that you encounter. Just like everywhere else, there are going to be people that annoy you, that you really can’t stand, and would never choose to be friends with if you were outside of the university campus.

Often, you may not even meet your “true” group of friends until your second year, and may not even be really close with them until your final year of university comes around.

There is no time limit on making friends. I know you’re probably worried that you may never make any friends at university. I felt like that too.

Of the twelve people I lived with in my first year, I ended up only being friends with four of them. The rest of my friends I made on my courses, when I didn’t even realise that I was making friends. Then, suddenly, you’re making study groups together, spending your evenings watching Grey’s Anatomy, and having celebratory dinner/drinks in Wetherspoons on your very last day of university.

Five years have gone by, and I wish I could say that I keep in touch with my close university friends and see them often. But I don’t. We have each other on Facebook and Instagram, but I have maybe seen one of them once or twice in the five years since we graduated. We don’t message each other very often. And the friends I made at university that I do message often are ones whom I am still surprised by – friends who I never hung out with outside of classes, or even spoke to a lot… but have somehow grown deep and meaningful connections through conversations on social media.

I would be lying if I said it didn’t make me sad that I don’t speak to the people I was close with at university, but I realise that it is simply a fact of life that not every single friend you make with whom you are close will accompany you through the rest of your life. Some friendships are ephemeral, only ever meant to exist within the environment in which they were created. Like Nanny McPhee says: ‘When you need me, but do not want me, then I must stay. When you want me, but no longer need me, then I have to go.’

My friendships from university came at different times, and whether I speak to those friends still or not, I know that the experiences in which we shared during our time together will forever bind us, even if just in memory.

2. First impressions are not always correct.

I’m not going to lie. The first time I met one of my friends, I thought she was going to be a complete bitch. (She’s hard this story before, so I hope she doesn’t mind me telling it!)

She had an air about her that made me really uncomfortable. I had encountered a similar feeling back in secondary school with the girl who bullied me, so as you can imagine, I assumed that the two were alike.

But, as I said. first impressions are not always true.

As it turns out, she is one of the sweetest human beings alive, and I’m proud to call her my friend. We bonded over out love of literature and creative writing, and we even went to see the musical Waitress in London together!

Moral of the story: don’t always trust your first impressions of people until you’ve really gotten to know them. Because, like me, you may find out that you’re far more similar than you think.

3. Don’t try to take everything with you.

One of the biggest mistakes that I see people making (which I too have also made) is trying to take absolutely everything they own with them. This is entirely absurd, and I hate to say it, but it will never work.

My biggest piece of advice probably comes now, with: think practically about what you’re going to need, and only take the things that you’re going to use, otherwise you’re just taking up space which could be better utilised in other ways.

During my first year of university, I took SO much stuff with me. I’m not even kidding. My whole room was full of things that I thought I would need, but I didn’t. To be perfectly honest, I probably only used a third of everything I took with me.

I took DVD’s I never even watched, books I didn’t have time to read, stationery I never used, and clothes I never wore (mostly because you end up wearing the same pair of jeans for a week!)

That’s why, for my second year I only took a few items of clothing with me. A tiny suitcase full of clothes that I knew I was definitely going to wear. And them, at Christmas, should I want to swap my wardrobe around, I would take the clothes I no longer wanted to wear back home and switch them out for other ones.

I also ditched the DVDs at home and invested in a Netflix and Amazon Prime subscription. (Fun fact: Student’s get 50% off Prime membership every year. Details at the end of this post.) Not only did I not have to pack the DVDs at the end of the year, but there was also a far bigger range of movies and TV shows for me to watch!

Ultimately, if in doubt, pack lightly. You can always get what you don’t need later.

And remember: the more things you take with you, the more things you have to bring back home when you move out of your accommodation.

4. Be honest with the people you’re living with.

As you can probably expect, being thrown into halls with a group of anywhere between four and twelve people can be quite stressful, particularly when you all have such different personalities and interests. But, you also get to see the honest side of people’s behaviour, and after living with them 24/7 for several months, it’s more than likely that you might not understand why they act a certain way.

In my case, I am an only child and had never lived with other people the same age as myself before. This of course meant that at home, I would spend a lot of time by myself – getting on with my own things in the comfort of my own room, because that is what I was familiar and comfortable with. I am fiercely independent, very much an introvert, and enjoy my own company a lot of the time. I like being able to do the things I want to do, when I want to do them, without having to answer to anybody else or feeling like I have to explain my actions to others.

As a result, in my first year, I spent a lot of time in my room by myself and didn’t socialise in the communal space as much as other people. It’s not that I didn’t want to be friends with them, because I did, but I found it very difficult to suddenly by thrown into an environment where I felt like I had to spend a lot of time with other people when I was so used to be on my own. I felt like I was being forced to be less independent as a human being (slightly ironic, considering I was properly ‘adulting’ for the first time.) and it was a very hard adjustment to make.

I also didn’t go to many of the events in my first year, which, retrospectively, I wish I had. Once again, being an introvert has its downsides, as I much preferred to be my myself and the whole idea of nightclubs and crowds sounded like absolute torture. (Not to mention that I’m the worlds most awkward dancer.) Though, I eventually braved it, and it turns out that they’re not nearly as bad as I was imagining. I still don’t like crowds and I’m still the worlds most awkward dancer… but the nights out were fun, and to tell the truth, I actually miss them.

The point that I’m trying to make here, is that if I had only been honest with my flatmates about my introverted personality from the beginning, they would have had a better understanding of me, and I probably would have had more nights our, or nights in, to enjoy.

Being honest with those that you are living with is also important, not only for them to understand you better, but also save many an argument. You may find that after living with the same people for several months that there are things that others do which completely annoy you. It may be anything from someone not pulling their weight when it comes to cleaning and chores, or people leaving their dirty dishes on the side for weeks as their old food grows mould because they have always had other people clean up after them. Whatever it is, it might drive you nuts. And it could lead to some disastrous consequences.

So, if there is something that is bothering you, be honest. You may even find that it’s bothering other people too.

Fun fact: My housemates and I had a think called ‘Tidy Up and Time To Talk Tuesday’. Every week, we would each take on a different chore in the kitchen/flat – one person washing dishes, one person cleaning sides, one person vacuuming etc. Once we had finished cleaning the communal kitchen together, we would sit around and discuss the things that were bothering us all that week – whether it be personally in our life, or in relation to living at uni etc. We found this to be the most effective way to deal with situations, as everybody got a turn to talk and we could resolve the issues there and then. (I highly recommend implementing something similar because we found it extremely beneficial, and almost like a tiny support group. It’s also a great way to voice your concerns with someone, as you have other people there who can offer intervention should it be needed!)

5. Don’t put too much pressure on yourself. Enjoy the experience.

I know that for many people it can feel like there is so much riding on the first year of university, and while that technically isn’t wrong, it’s also important to remember that here in the UK, your first year doesn’t count towards your final degree.

Now, I’m not saying slack off or do jack all for the first year, as you still need good grades and good attendance to be able to pass it it. But, if you make mistakes, if you don’t get the top grades, or if you don’t understand things, it’s perfectly okay.

I have said it before, and I will say it again: it is a learning curve.

There is so much to learn, and just like every new adventure you embark upon, you are not expected to know it all overnight. You’re not expected to remember every single detail of information that you have ever been taught. You don’t have to squeeze as much information into your brain as you possibly can the night before an exam, or remember giant passages and clocks of text.

There was a plethora of information that I didn’t know in my first year – things I had never heard of, things I had never been taught before, and concepts which were completely alien to me.

But that is the point of having a first year – to make sure that everybody is on a level playing field, as it were. Essentially, the first year is a foundation course to the rest of your degree. Everybody learns all the preliminary information that they are going to need to know and use over the duration of the course.

But, as I said before, it doesn’t count towards your degree… so if you’re feeling like it is the be all or end all if you only get a 48 in an essay (I had a few of those in my first year), it isn’t. If you cite something entirely wrong, it’s okay. And, if you forget to cite an entire paragraph of text because you were up until 3am in the morning writing your essay, and submitted the copy as your final draft, meaning you failed as you achieved a grade of 32 and had to retake it at the end of the academic year… that’s okay too.

The point is, you’re going to make mistakes. You’re going to screw up. You’re going to feel like you have no idea what you’re doing. You’re going to wonder if you’ve made a mistake going to university, and wonder if it’s actually or you. You are going to wonder if it will ever get any easier. That is what the first year is all about. And trust me, it’s better that you make your big mistakes in the first year, rather than completely screwing up your second year and putting your degree in jeopardy.

Don’t spend your first year worrying about every little thing, or about every grade and assignment. You have two more years to worry about all of those things – and to worry about them when they actually matter.

Just enjoy the experience while you can, because before you know it, three years will have passed you by and you’ll be wishing that you could relive it all over again, one last time.

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Sign up for Prime Student here for only £40 a year once the six month trial ends. All you have to do is enter your university email address and confirm the link, and bada-bing, bada-boom! [Note: I think this link might be outdated, but bare with me as I’m doing my best to find one that’s recent!]