Is Freshers’ Week notoriously good or bad? I think the tide has turned and it’s now acknowledged to be a tricky time, so at least you won’t be going into it expecting too much. It won’t be the best week in your life: the next best week in your life so far will probably be the last week of this term, and then replacements will come along quick and fast. But this first week will be a time of weirdness and will be for everyone, so don’t worry that all your year-mates are off their faces on fun while you are feeling intensely awkward.
The best thing you can do is arrive on the first day prepared to try everything (except drugs) and meet everyone. Go on as many official outings as you have strength for, talk to as many of the other freshers as possible and not just those doing your subject, and just be yourself. The last point is important, because how will you find your ideal friends if they can’t tell that you are their ideal friend?
On the other hand, if there parts of your school self that you want to get rid of, now is the time to do it. If you’ve never liked being the quiet one or the joker, uni is a good environment in which to reinvent yourself, and you’ll find that a lot of people do. Just don’t reinvent yourself as a twat.
Don’t exhaust yourself by going out too much or staying up beyond 4 o’clock every night, and don’t feel pressurised into doing anything you feel uncomfortable with, but do challenge your ideas of what you can do and what you enjoy doing (but not if this means drugs).
