Dept: School of Business
Course: Economics
Year (18/19): 2nd
Holly Jones
I live less than 2 hours away from Leicester, however it was still a shock for me moving from the countryside into a city. You meet so many different people from such diverse backgrounds. I felt and still feel embarrassed about the fact I only speak English and have never really experienced any others different cultures. However now is the time to learn.
For me, my biggest regret about first year was not joining any societies, I had a lot of free time to sit and do nothing which was just boring and not productive. Consequently, I got very homesick as I had a lot of time to miss people, I missed my family, but I also missed my friends from home a lot as I could see them making new friends – something which I was struggling to do. The sadder I felt, the less effort I made to make friends and this spiral continued. Knowing now I literally had so many solutions for me such as speaking to the wellbeing officer, joining a society, making an effort with my flatmates (chances are that they felt the same), attending accommodation events… I feel stupid that I just didn’t help myself, but nothing can change that now.
University has the potential to be a great period of your life however you can’t expect to go to University and suddenly have loads of friends and have the best time your life without making the effort. If I can give any advice, it is to talk to every person you meet, try hard to organise stuff to just socialise and do study hard – resitting your exams is a lot more effort than you think it will be.