Hi, my name is Shayna, I'm from Toronto, Canada, and I'm a third year law student
at the University of Leicester. My favourite thing about university so far is definitely
all the lifelong friendships that I've made. Hi, so I'm Lenny and I'm from Durham,
and I'm studying medicine here at the Uni of Leicester and my favourite thing about
it is probably that everyone is just so lovely. Everyone's so nice and welcoming so
it's really easy to make new friends and meet new people, value learning and have fun too.
So the best bit about halls is easily all the friends that I made.
I made pretty much all of my friends within the first couple days of uni and my biggest
tip for that is definitely to just spend as much time as you can in the common areas
because it's really easy to just like scroll through your phone in your room do your homework
in your room and all that but when you spend time in the common areas you run into people,
find things in common and you can make really good friends. My flatmates from first year were mostly
exchange students and I've travelled across the world twice now to have get-togethers with them
and I still have weekly Zoom calls with them which is really nice - to this day they're still some of
my best friends and so that was definitely for me the best bit about halls. So I would definitely
say the best bit about halls is getting to meet so many new people and you're just in with loads of
different people, see them all the time get the opportunity to spend time with them and
it's all so close together so even if you know people from other halls you can still go and see
them and there's always a lot of activities organised for you as well which is great.
I was catered, as opposed to self-catered, so self-catered is when you cook for yourself and
catered is when you're on the meal plan so you eat all of your meals in a cafeteria and
there's meal times so for breakfast, lunch and dinner you can just go in and grab food.
There's always several different options and you can use your meal plan on campus or in the
accommodation so you can even get Starbucks and stuff on your meal plan which is really
exciting. I'm now in my second and third year, I'm self-catered and living in private accommodation,
so I've gotten really into meal planning lately so I have a list of all the meals that I like to eat
and every time I like make something new I add it to the list and then every couple weeks I go
through the list and decide what I want to eat and then I make a list of the things that I want to
eat that week and then I make a grocery list above that of all the ingredients that I need to make
everything like super simple and organised, so that I'm not buying like unnecessary ingredients
and I'm not spending more money than I need to. So I was in non-catered halls
and I really enjoyed that because I like to sort of cook my own food because also I do netball,
so sometimes I come in late from training and then I can just cook whatever whenever I want
and I quite like the independence of making what I want, so I really enjoyed it, but I also do know
friends who were in catered and who thought that was easier and they love the food too.
I tend to prepare lots of different meals because I quite like variety,
but basically I just like eating healthy because it puts you in a good mood and I play a lot of
sports so it's good to stay healthy as well, but if you just think do I fancy pasta, rice,
potatoes, what veg do I fancy and you can just cook something up so easily. Also bring recipe
books to uni and that really helps and everyone loves it you if you cook for them as well.
I've really enjoyed the independence of cooking and doing laundry for myself. My mom
always makes dinner at six o'clock every night and while that routine is definitely really nice,
having the independence of being able to cook when I'm hungry and
do maybe half a load of laundry, which my mom would have killed me for doing, has definitely
been really nice and the whole like learning how to be a real adult thing I've thoroughly enjoyed.
My room is really nice, I really enjoy it. I have a wash basin in here which is super convenient
because it means that I can brush my teeth and all that in my room. I have lots of space to
put up photos and artwork and all that, I have a dresser and a wardrobe and shelves so lots of
storage space and a desk, a chair and obviously a super comfortable bed. So my room is, I really
like it actually, so you get to personalise it yourself, there's normally a big pin board up
where you can put photos on so I've got photos in there just to remind myself of everyone from
home and all the good times that I've had. You just bring everything you like and just
decorate it how you want so it's nice to have that freedom just to come and design your own room.
So I pay for uni through a student loan, so student finance is basically with the government
and all you have to do to apply is go online, which you will get told more about,
and fill in some forms. You have to give details and you get basically what's called a student loan
which is money off the government to pay for your tuition fees for uni, so that's just what you have
to pay to attend uni, to go on a course, and you also get a maintenance loan, so that's money to
spend on, say, your accommodation and your food and everything you need to basically live with.
So you get this money through student finance and then basically when you're older and earning
money it slowly comes out of your salary, so, apparently you'll hardly even notice it,
so it should never be money that's an issue for going to uni because the student loan is
great and you just need to be able to manage your money a little bit and it really, really helps.
Moving away from home was definitely challenging. It's nerve-wracking studying far away from
home - I can tell you that better than anyone, my home is thousands of kilometres away from here,
but honestly once you get into the swing of things it's not as hard as I expected it would be.
My biggest tip for someone that's nervous about moving away from home would be to stay busy
if you're busy and having fun and enjoying what you're doing it's a lot easier to forget about
the things that you're missing at home. So since I'm from Durham and I go to uni in Leicester
it's about a three hour drive, so it was a quite big move. I always wanted to move away for uni,
but it was a bit harder than I thought at first, so I did miss my family and everything,
but since there's such a good support network of people at Leicester it was absolutely fine
because I made friends so quickly to have fun with and your family is a phone call away and
that's all, so, I would definitely say if you're thinking of moving away then do it
and go enjoy, explore a new city - it's nice to meet new people, explore a new place and have
some independence as well by moving away from home so I'd definitely encourage it.