After your first year at university, you’ve made your new friends – some you already live with and some you share your course with. If you’re lucky, you will have already made plans to live with some of them in your second year.
Your first year of uni can almost be like a ‘honeymoon’ year. Although important, your grades don’t count towards your final degree and you’re trying to discover yourself more. So with this in mind, you can almost have ‘first-year goggles’ on when deciding who to live with. Those who seem to be an ideal housemate can end up being the exact opposite.
True friends
You can usually decipher who is going to be a true friend and great housemate just through their attitude towards the house hunt. Looking for your new home – and for some people, this will be the first house they’ll live in other than their parents’ – can be a stressful process. And don’t get me started on working out who gets the biggest room – diplomacy goes straight out the window.
Friends who do nothing to help with finding a house, but then insist on having the biggest room, are not to be trusted!
Once you move in with new people, especially away from a halls setting, you really get to know yourself and those around you.
Uni really brings out the crazy side of people…
My housemate lost a pack of potatos and took the damn toaster and microwave in her room to make the “potato bandit” come forth. Smh.
— SLMKMR. (@slmkmr) March 28, 2018
Cleaning rota
Thought the shared spaces would be kept clean? Wrong! Thought you wouldn’t need a cleaning rota? Wrong! Thought you would stay in touch with everyone after graduation? Most likely wrong!
I’ve lived with four other girls for the last two years, and I can safely say it has been difficult at times. I love most of them, but that’s not to say we haven’t had our disagreements. Arguing over how clean the house is, mixed with uni stress and regular bouts of needless girl drama, can make for a seriously unpleasant living situation.
Having your own space can make you feel really grown up, but petty arguments really pull you back down to size. All that can really be done in these situations is an attempt to resolve things and, whatever the outcome, accept it and move on.
In all honesty, the best you can do is find a group of good people and hope everything works out for the best! University is an experience and even the most negative moments will help shape your time away from home exactly how it needs to be.
