Hey everyone, I’m Uwa and I’m going to be going into my second year studying Medicine
here at the University of Nottingham.
If you’d like to find out a bit more about me, I’ll leave my social media here on the screen.
In this video, I’m going to be giving you some advice about living off campus.
So in my first year of university I stayed in an off-campus, self-catered accommodation
with an en-suite. This was St Peter's Court. It was about a forty-minute walk to the university
campus and then about half an hour walk to the med school and ten-minute walk to Jubilee Campus.
Here are some things that I wish I knew and also things that I learnt based on my experience.
First of all, join Facebook group chats for your accommodation. Here you’ll possibly find your
flatmates or people living in your block and if not at least you’ll know people who are in
your accommodation and get talking to them. This helps you to keep in the loop with things going
on in and around your accommodation and also just getting to know people. University is an
extremely social experience and I advise that you take any opportunity you can to make more friends.
There is also an official UoN Facebook group chat where you can ask questions and just get
some advice and give other people advice as well. So, I advise that you join that. Again,
just to stay in the loop and to learn more about life at the University of Nottingham.
I highly recommend that you find out any relevant information that you can
about your accommodation. So this is going to be a lot more relevant when you’ve moved in. But, its
still useful to have an idea of how these things work before you actually move in and it also eases
any stress or any worries you may have. So these are things such as where you can do your washing,
how you deal with maintenance complaints. Also things like where do you pick up your deliveries?
Like I said, I stayed at St Peter's Court. This was a Unite Students’ accommodation
and we had a Unite Students app where we could report any maintenance claims,
we’d get told about our deliveries and then we
also got notifications on the app when we put our laundry in using circuit laundry.
Its worth finding out if your specific accommodation provider
also has a similar app to the Unite Students one, especially as on the app,
I got put in a chat with all my flatmates so I was able to talk to them before I actually met them.
You also want to find out about the area. You’re going to be living there for about 10 months,
so it is going to be useful to have a bit of an idea of what you’re getting yourself into.
Of course as you’re living there you’re going to learn more about it,
but it's just nice to know what shops are in the area and what facilities there are.
It's also important to consider things like transport. If you’re going to be on campus a lot,
or you need to get into the med school, it's nice to know what the journey there is going
to be like. The med school is about half an hour walk from St Peter's Court and they also offered
a free bus that ran from St Peter's Court all the way to University Park Campus. You can also
look at how close the accommodation is to tram stops and whether you can get an Uber into town.
My next piece of advice is really, really important and that is to learn how to budget.
Unfortunately when you’re living off campus, you don’t get given a meal card like people who
live on campus in catered accommodation do. So this means you’re going to need
to learn how to manage your money. So yes, you’re going to want to have some money to
go out and to have a good time. But you also need to have enough money to make
sure you’re buying a sufficient amount of food that you can cook with and you’re eating well.
All the off-campus accommodations that the University of Nottingham offer are
self-catered so this means that you need to learn how to cook. I left home and moved out
to uni not knowing how to cook, but just from like trying things out and through trial and error, I
eventually got better. And also, I started meal prepping. This saved me a lot of time and money.
With that said, it's important that you bring with you your own kitchen
stuff. You can’t rely on flatmates to borrow theirs. So, make sure you’re bringing pots,
pans, chopping boards. Any cutlery that you need, plates, cups. And also, I’d recommend
that you bring like double of everything, in case you ever lose something, or you break something.
Also remember to bring washing up liquid and a sponge, a dish towel,
things like that. Unless you’re at some boujee accommodation you’re not going to have
a dishwasher and you’re going to have to get used to washing up your dishes by hand.
Next thing, if you have an en-suite like I did in first year, you’re going to want to make sure
you’re bringing bathroom stuff. So, a shower caddy to put your stuff in,
I recommend you get one that suctions to the wall. Also bring a bathmat if you’ve got a
proper walk-in shower as opposed to a wet room. I recommend that you bring some cleaning stuff
and you leave these in your bathroom. These are things like flash liquid or flash wipes,
some floor cleaner, some bleach. Because now you’re living away from home, you’re
going to have to take some responsibility and learn how to clean up after yourself.
So, you want to make your room as cosy as possible and the best way to do this is by
bringing things to decorate it with and things that bring the feeling of home with you to uni,
to help you settle in with that transition and with moving out. And, just to make your room a
place you look forward to going to. Some things are photos of friends and family,
some comfy bedding, some mood lighting, those are just some basic ideas.
Also, I advise that you bring some board games or some drinking games.
This especially will be useful in the first few weeks when you’re getting to
know your flat. Board games and drinking games especially, act as some great ice breakers.
This is something that I didn’t know about until later on in first year but make use of the
residential tutors at your accommodation. These are students in older years who live within those
university halls and they’re there to answer your queries and to help you out when the reception
staff aren’t available. These residential tutors would work from 8pm till about 12am.
Thank you guys for watching. That’s all the advice I have to give to for living off campus.
Hope you found this video useful. If you’d like to see more from students like me,
giving you our experience of life at the University of Nottingham, remember to leave
this video a like and subscribe to University of Nottingham’s channel. I’ll see you guys soon!