Editorials

First Year Problems #1

28 September 2018

By Lauren E. White

Hello there!

Welcome to b**p‘s latest weekly column, First Year Problems. With a swanky new graphic and a brand new layout, I’m hoping that this re-vamped and re-vitalised column will be just as successful – if not more – as my old friends Year 10-13 Problems.

Oh, in case you didn’t realise, it’s me (Lauren) again! You might’ve thought that since school is officially over, so are my weekly columns banging on about anything from annoying people to mental health issues and politics. Well, (un)fortunately, they aren’t. And things are about to get a whole lot more intense with the latest adventure in life. I’ll be here every Friday writing about what it’s like to be a First Year student.

Seeing as there has been no weekly column by me since around June, I’ll give you a bit of background on all things university. After all, that ol’ thing will be making up about 90% of this year’s columns.

Interrailing: Outside the Schonbrunn Palace, Vienna

I completed my A Levels in June, went travelling around Europe for a month with a bunch of lunatics I call my best friends and came back just in time for A-Level results day. On that day, everything university-wise went to plan and I got my first choice uni: Durham. So, on Sunday I’ll be moving out of my humble abode in Gateshead and moving to the cobbled streets of Durham, where I’ll be studying Philosophy and Politics (though I bet you could’ve guessed that one).

Right now, I’m feeling slightly apprehensive about beginning this new chapter, but that is to be expected. I don’t feel sick with nerves and I’m not shaking like a leaf (yet), so things at the moment are going pretty smooth. By next week’s First Year Problems, however, things could have changed. But we’ll have to wait and see, right?

For those of you reading who have completed freshers’ week and made it out alive, congratulations. You’ll be reliving it all when I write up how it went for me next week, so don’t think you can blank out all of the chaos of the first week in uni forever. Some of us have had an all-too-long summer.

Anyway, I now have a suitcase half full of clothes and clothes hanging up in my room that probably won’t fit inside, a whole load of boxes and bags filled with enough blankets to keep the Arctic warm and enough books to make a library. Who knows if I’ll even get to uni at this rate!

Enjoy your Friday everyone.

And here’s my song of the week (a new feature to First Year Problems that has totally nothing to do with uni, but is just a song I really like)…

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