Right now, you might be holding your results in one slightly sweaty hand and refreshing UCAS Track with the other. Maybe you’ve secured your dream uni, maybe you’re navigating clearing, or maybe you’ve just realised you still don’t know how to boil pasta without supervision.
Either way, welcome to the pre-Freshers’ chaos. Here’s the real talk no one gives you at results day celebrations (or condolences).
The perfect uni doesn’t exist
You might have picked your uni for the course ranking, the nightlife, or the fact that the library looks nice in brochure photos. Spoiler: every uni has mouldy halls, boring lectures, and student societies (and courses) that are cults. You will compare your university to the ones your home friends went to, but what makes it work isn’t perfection, it’s whether you find your place in it.
The perfect uni might not exist but Edi does have its charm
Week One energy doesn’t last
Freshers’ Week is all neon paint, free pizza, and aggressively friendly strangers. By mid-October, you’ll be shuffling to lectures in the same hoodie you slept in, wondering if you should just start ordering toothpaste on Amazon because the outside world feels like too much effort. You will drink tea out of pint glasses. You will hand-wash socks in the sink. Welcome to your new reality.
Your home friends might change
Some will text every day. Some will disappear into their new lives. Some will reappear at Christmas like migrating birds, and some won’t go to uni at all. Don’t take it personally; everyone’s adjusting at their own pace. Sometimes, moving on is part of growing up.
The societies you join in Week One probably won’t stick
Freshers’ Fair will convince you that you’re about to become a salsa-dancing, opera-singing, water polo prodigy with a side hustle in the baking society. By November, you’ll be going to exactly one thing… maybe? But that’s fine! The point isn’t to be good at everything, it’s to try stuff, laugh about it, and keep the one thing you enjoy.
Your student loan is not free money
Yes, it’s tempting to blow the first instalment on clothes, concert tickets, and a suspiciously expensive blender for your health kick that will last approximately two days.
Then January will come. The heating in your flat will mysteriously stop working. You’ll be wearing three jumpers and regretting the £300 you blew on post-lecture pints in October instead of a proper duvet.
Did my student loan pay for this holiday? Yes. Do I regret it? Slightly…
On that note:
Freshers’ flu is not a myth
You will get ill. You will cough through lectures. You will forget what your normal voice sounds like. Pack paracetamol, Lemsip, and a real duvet. The thin blanket from home will not cut it.
You will probably cry at least once in the first month
Could be homesickness. Could be a broken washing machine or missing laundry. Could be because of the fire alarm going off 3 times in one night. Crying isn’t proof you’re failing, but proof you’re adapting. University is about moving forward, even when it’s uncomfortable. Let yourself let go of what’s not working.
No one knows what they’re doing
Even the loud, confident people who seem like they were born to be at uni are making it up as they go along. And so will you.
Results Day feels like the finish line, but really, it’s the starting gun. You’re about to begin a few years that will be messy, ridiculous, and sometimes stressful, but they’ll also give you stories you’ll still be telling in ten years.
She may look put together…but it’s 4 pm and she has missed two out of three of her lectures
Final thoughts
Two articles in and there’s still so much I could tell you, but honestly, what’s the fun in that?
If you know exactly what to expect, you’ll walk in with a script instead of letting your own story unfold. And everyone’s story is chaotically, gloriously different, and that’s the best part.
This is the beginning of the rest of your life. Embrace it, mess it up a little, and enjoy it while you can.
