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 everyone, my name is Zoe, I am a second
year modern languages student at the University of Leicester and I study French, Spanish and Italian.
So apart from my studies I do these things called societies, which are student groups,
activities, clubs, so everything from sports to religious societies. We have a Quidditch Society,
so really anything you want, so I do a few of those. I hang out with my friends, go out to eat,
go to bars, that type of thing, go to movies and I travel a lot. I was very lucky, obviously pre-
pandemic, to be able to do lots of traveling on the weekends. I spend a lot of time with my
housemates, especially this year obviously so I'm living with them and I can't really
see anyone else. But, yeah, we go on lovely walks everywhere and I spend a lot of time
just relaxing, reading, watching a few series and a lot of time is consumed by socialising and doing
your degree so there's not really much time during the week to do whatever you want,
but yeah, there's always time for Mario Kart or like a film or a nice meal with your housemates.
Last year I did a lot of going out to like cute little coffee shops and getting like
cookie dough or just going out to town for a little bit have a little look around.
I'm part of a few different societies, so this year I am the President of the Jewish Society,
so I get to organise events for the Jewish students on campus and work with the other
Jewish societies around the country to plan events and do fun things which is always really exciting.
I also do sexpression, which is where we go into schools and teach sex ed, which is always lots
of fun. Societies, so I'm in two societies, I'm on the committee for the Modern Languages Society and
I'm their wellbeing officer and that society puts on loads of socials at the moment, obviously all
Zoom socials, but I really enjoy them it's really nice to say hi to everyone, see everyone's faces,
especially after a break or just now because you can't really see anyone in class, so it's just
always nice to see other people. And then I'm also on the Navigator Society, I'm their treasurer and
wellbeing officer and and I got involved with them because they gave me the opportunity to volunteer,
like tutoring to like people that first language isn't English, so for me that really helps with
my career goals because one of my career goals is to teach English as a foreign language to people
in England that don't speak it very well. So, yeah, that's why I do societies, there's a lot of
opportunities. There's so many societies on campus so there's obviously something for everyone -
sometimes there's more than one thing for everyone so I would definitely recommend checking that out.
On the weekends it's kind of the same as like my evenings - I
like going on walks, I like looking around. I just like spending my time outside, I like being
outside. I'm very like from the country so going for a walk every day is something I definitely do.
I've been exploring like Leicester and reading loads I've read so many books,
watched so many films - I would never had that chance to watch really, but on the weekends before
we used to like go on days out, like we went to Nottingham. We've been playing to
go to Market Harborough for ages and we still haven't gone, so that's definitely one to do.
There's always something to do on the weekends, I've never been bored in Leicester.
The nightlife in Leicester is really, really fun. Even if you're not interested in bars and pubs
there's still lots of other stuff to do. We have a ton of like really, really great restaurants and
there's students called residential advisors and if you're living in the
university accommodation they run lots of events in the evening, so stuff from like
pamper nights where you can paint your nails and do face masks, to movie nights and yoga
and that kind of stuff, so I try and fill my evenings with things like that.
In terms of how I started making friends, I joined group chats before university,
so I met people who were on my course and living in my accommodation,
so there were already a few familiar faces when I got to uni. Then on the first day when I moved in
I heard like a party or something going on in the house that I was living in,
so I walked down the hall to see what was going on and one of my roommates was having like a big get
together with loads of people and pretty much every single one of my best friends at uni to
this day was at that party that night. Other than that I've met people through societies, groups,
classes, you have your big lecture classes and then smaller tutorial groups and so those
smaller tutorial groups are a great way to meet people that are on your course and I also highly
recommend the group chats and stuff in terms of meeting people because having those familiar faces
when you get to campus makes the transition a lot easier. In terms of making friends, so for me it
was quite easy because in modern languages you get to meet everyone and everyone's super friendly
because everyone's talking to people - that's why they're doing languages. So you get to meet
with loads of people now you probably get on with to be honest and there's always common interests,
you know, make friends with your housemates then make friends with their mates like
it's quite easy, you just have to put the effort in to really like maintain your friendship
with your housemates or with your course mates as long as you're willing to like put in the effort,
you should have absolutely no problem. A top tip for making friends is always smile at everyone.