With independence comes a responsibility to look after yourself. Living on a diet of takeaways and pot noodles, although it might initially seem convenient, is bad for both your physical and financial health. There are 3 areas of your health to consider: your food, your fitness and your mental health. All of them are important but here’s some ideas for how to manage them at university.

1. Buy frozen fruit and vegetables. Often the hardest part of only buying food for yourself is making sure it is all eaten before it goes off. Frozen veg can come pre-cut or even in mixed bags to give you come variety and frozen fruit is excellent for making smoothies.

2. Experiment with your home cooking. Buying a recipe book and trying new dishes can be a fun way to eat healthier and become a much more successful cook.

3. Join a sports club, society or the uni gym. There are plenty of ways to keep active at uni through societies like dance or martial arts or by joining a sports team. Alternatively, you can just join the university gym which often has different deals for the level of activity you want to partake in.

4. Moderate your alcohol. Drinking culture is big at uni and there’s nothing wrong with partying occasionally. But drinking to the point of endangering your health is not worth the short or the long-term impacts. Don’t be that person who made their friends call an ambulance because they’d passed out. Remember: if you’ve ended up in an ambulance or hospital because you drank too much, you’ve potentially taken that time and care away from someone else who didn’t self-inflict their illness or pain.

5. Manage your stress levels and be aware of your mental health. University can be a very high pressure situation for some people and being aware of your stress levels and mental health is very important. Taking time out for meditation, talking to counsellors or just sharing strategies with your friends are all ways of approaching stress and mental health but the most important thing is to be honest with yourself and other people if you are finding things hard. You can even go as far as to take a break from university for a year part way through your course if you need it is always worth exploring your options.

6. Register with a GP and Dentist. If you have travelled far to attend university then registering with a new GP is important to ensure you can be seen if there are any health issues. The dentist is less vital as waiting lists can often be years long and the infrequency of appointments can mean you can arrange them for when you go home. But if you are an international student then registering with a dentist is probably still worth it.

Studying – it’s the main reason you come to university (or so you tell everyone)

But university study can be daunting. There’s new names for things like ‘Lectures, labs, tutorials and seminars’, the reading lists seem endless and the library is a mine of resources that make you feel like you’re wading through clay. So here are a few tips for adjusting to university level study.

1. Breathe. Everyone is in the same position and all of your lecturers and tutors were in that position once –they understand! Don’t put pressure on yourself to get everything right first time and ask for help if you need it.

2. Seek advice from those who know what they’re doing. Asking your friends about something you’re both unsure about can sometimes result in the blind leading the blind. You can talk to your lecturers, your academic tutor or a learning developer (contact learningdevelopmentfhm@lancaster.ac.uk) about any study related challenges instead and be confident of the right advice.

3. Alternatively, there will be workshops available throughout the year that cover things like ‘using the library’ or ‘referencing’ which can help you if you just don’t know where to start.

4. Look online! There are numerous study tips and advice online including our own student study blog.

5. Manage your time. Put time aside to do your reading, revise for your tests and write your reports. Writing a brief plan or draft can help you identify the gaps in your knowledge early enough for you to fill them and not be panicking the night before.

6. Be persistent! Independent study at university can be a lot to get used to but it gets easier with practice. By the time you reach your final year you’ll look back on your first year work and be amazed at the difference in quality.

Some people like to claim that freshers’ flu doesn’t exist. But as you will most likely find out – it does. Some get it worse than others but in the post freshers’ exhaustion, just as you are trying to knuckle down ready for work, the illness will strike. You’ll spend the first few lectures of university trying to hear your lecturer over the sound of 300 students intermittently coughing. It’s not the best thing about first year, but it’s a rite of passage. So here’s how to manage freshers flu.

1. Medicine and water. Like any illness you treat it in the same way. Sip your Lemsip, take paracetamol, rest and drink plenty of water.

2. Look after yourself. Sleep and eat as well as you can. It can be hard to find the motivation to cook when you’re feeling ill so making sure you have easy to cook things in the cupboard and plenty of fruit.

3. Call home if you need to. Sometimes hearing a family member’s voice can cheer you up and they’ll have some helpful advice if you need it.

4. Try to attend your lectures and seminars. Everyone is feeling rough but getting behind right at the start of the year could make the rest of the year more stressful than it has to be. Drag yourself up for an hour and you can go right back to bed once it’s over.

5. Take cough sweets, tissues and water to those lectures. There’ll be plenty of other people coughing but nothing makes you feel self-conscious like having a coughing fit in the middle of a lecture of 100 people.

6. Check up on your flatmates. Sometimes if people are feeling ill they might shut themselves away. It’s always worth knocking on their door occasionally to see how they are and ask if they need anything and hopefully they’ll do the same for you when you are feeling under the weather.

7. Go to the doctors. For most people fresher’s flu will clear up without much fuss. But if after a couple of weeks you’re still feeling ill then get yourself down to the doctors to get checked out.

8. Don’t let it dampen your enjoyment of uni. After the hype of freshers’ week and the buzz of going to your first lectures, freshers’ flu can give you the time to wallow and miss being looked after. It’s easy to decide that you’re not ready for independence or that uni is too much for you. So tackle that first illness and you’ll feel confident that you can handle the rest of university life when you’re well!

Packing for university is equal parts exciting, nerve-wracking and stressful. You will inevitably forget something and will probably still have a few items by the end of first year that you’ve never used. You will definitely end first year with about a quarter of the cutlery you began with and you’ll somehow acquire another person’s equipment and lose a frying pan. So here’s somethings I’d recommend that you bring with you.

1. Personal touches. They should be the first thing you put up in your room and the last thing you take down. It’s things like posters, photographs and cheesy decorations that will make your university room your own.

2. Storage boxes. Normally university rooms have a lot of storage crammed into them but you’ll always find there isn’t quite enough. Bring additional boxes or pop up shelves with you that can sit in the bottom of a wardrobe or under a desk.

3. Kitchen nicnacs. Don’t forget about things like a cheese grater, a tin opener or plastic Tupperware boxes. But even if you do forget, it’s likely that someone else in your accommodation will have them.

4. A door stop. Having your door open is a useful way of encouraging interaction in your flat.

5. Flipflops. Sharing a shower with an entire flat of people can make some people feel a bit uncomfortable so having flipflops to wear whilst you’re in there can make life a bit easier.

6. Hangers. Lots of hangers.

7. Fancy dress costumes. There will be many opportunities for dressing up that go way beyond freshers’ week and Halloween. Bringing a few props or accessories with you can put you in good stead for whatever themed socials you might encounter.

8. A mini sewing and first aid kit. Be ready for those sudden wardrobe malfunctions and the onset of freshers’ flu!

Ultimately whatever you forget to bring you will be able to buy or borrow from other people but it’s always good to be prepared!

After saying goodbye to your parents/supporters on that first day you can feel extremely overwhelmed. Suddenly you have to wake yourself up in a morning, cook, do your own washing, motivate yourself to attend lectures and create a new social life for yourself. For some people, this independence is something they thrive on. For others it can be a difficult adjustment. So here’s some advice to help you get through that first term of living like an almost-adult.

1. Distract yourself from homesickness but don’t ignore it. You will probably be homesick at some point. Even if you’re fine most of the time, there will come a point when you’re curled up in bed with freshers’ flu and wishing someone from home could come and look after you. Being busy can help to distract you from missing home too much but make sure you talk to your family or friends from home too. Give them a call, talk to them about your worries and then go back to being busy and after time the homesickness with fade.

2. Make to-do lists! It can feel like suddenly there’s a lot more jobs to remember to do but making to do lists can help you keep on top of things and it’s immensely satisfying to tick them off.

3. Don’t worry about getting everything perfect. You might accidentally turn all your white things pink in the wash or melt a chopping board on a hob. But you won’t be the first! At the time it might be embarrassing but by graduation it will be one of your fondest memories of first year. (Just don’t turn your toaster on its side to make a toastie and set your kitchen on fire. Yes it has been done.)

4. Learn from people around you and work together. Some of your flatmates will be great cooks, others will barely be able to microwave a pot noodle. Sharing responsibilities like cooking and cleaning can not only make the jobs easier but can bring community into your independence.

5. Budget. Perhaps the hardest part of independence but also one that can determine your whole university life. Learning early on how to manage your money can save additional stress later down the line. You don’t have to have to stick rigidly to a budget plan but regularly checking your bank account and accounting for potentially large expenses can allow you much more flexibility to do more enjoyable things.

6. Learn how to motivate yourself. Without anyone else around to remind you to do your essays you need to learn what makes you work. Sometimes that setting out a certain time in the day for work, sometimes it’s promising yourself rewards when you finish a chapter. Find what works for you.

7. Get a support network around you. University is a great place to make friends for life. Join societies, go to socials and make an effort with people around you. Talk to people who’ve already made that jump to independence like your freshers’ reps.

8. Enjoy it. Making your own decisions and planning your own time can be extremely fun but it is important to balance it with being sensible. Nothing dampens fun like being ill, missing essay deadlines or accumulating debt. The surest sign that you are fully independent is not only that you can make your own decisions but that you can make them wisely.

Today is International Friendship Day! In celebration, here are some tips for making friends when you start university!

1. Remember you’re all in the same boat! Everyone wants to make friends and find some reassurance during freshers week and first term. But don’t put pressure on yourself to be best friends with the first person you meet. You might not gel with your flatmates but there are plenty of other places to find friends.

2. Leave your door physically and metaphorically open. During freshers week be open to meeting many, many new people. Talk to anyone and everyone, attend the events – whether that’s the nights out or the day time events and try not to shut yourself away. Inside your flats try and keep your door open to encourage conversation with your flatmates!

3. Societies. Not only are they great for trying new activities but they are a fantastic place to meet people with similar interests and personalities to you.

4. Your course. Lectures can be vast rooms full of people but your seminar groups can be much smaller and a good opportunity to get to know people on the same course as you. It can be very reassuring to have someone to get stressed with about essays and to ask about reading.

5. If you have friends from school or college, try not to rely on them. University is a chance to grow as an individual. You are likely to change from the person you were at college and sometimes the people that you were friends with at 16 years old are not the people you would choose to be friends with at 20 years old. This doesn’t mean you are a bad person, it just means you’ve grown up and grown apart.

6. Part time work. It might not be the first place to go for friends but getting student jobs can be a fantastic place to mix with people that you wouldn’t normally meet. Jobs like student ambassador often have socials that come with them too!

So you have decided that you might want to go through clearing! Whether it’s because you’ve changed your mind about your first choice university, suddenly decided you quite fancy going or haven’t got the grades you needed, clearing gives you the option to apply for universities and courses you many never have even considered before. So here’s some tips to make clearing a bit less daunting.

1. Universities often put the courses that will be on clearing on their websites the night before results day. If you’re having doubts about your course or university it might be worth having a browse of what is available whilst you wait for your results.

2. Don’t be afraid of ringing! Remember that those on the phone want to give you an offer. If you meet the requirements they ask then there is no reason why you won’t get one.

3. Get as many offers as you want! When you first apply to uni you get 5 options. That’s not the case with clearing – you can get as many offers from as many universities as you want, even for different courses at the same university if you’re unsure at the time. You normally have a few days to confirm but in those days you can do more research and take your time making the decision.

4. You can still look round the university. In the days following clearing many universities run campus tours so you can still get a feel for the university with the comfort of knowing that you hold an offer already.

5. You don’t need to have already applied to university to go through clearing. Even if you’ve just decided on results day that you’d quite like to go, you can still apply. No personal statement, no UCAS form, just a phone call!

6. Grades are often lower on clearing, so options you hadn’t considered before may now be open to you. If you have the grades for them you can still be given an offer.

7. You can still use clearing to change courses if you already hold a place at a university. As long as you have the grades for the course you’d like to switch to, just ring up and ask!

8. If you’ve met and exceeded the grades that your firm choice university were asking for then you might want to consider other universities or courses through adjustment rather than clearing.

The night before results day is scary. Even if you came out super confident after your exams, those little seeds of doubt sprout into full blown terror when faced with impending grades. It can feel like these grades are going to determine the rest of your life, like one wrong letter on the page could doom you forever. Of course it won’t. But it definitely feels like it at the time.

So here’s a few approaches to help to manage those pre results day nerves.

The distract yourself approach: Find something to occupy your mind and your time on the day before. This could be spending time with your friends, binge watching an entire Netflix series or cuddling your pet. Anything that can make the day go quicker is helpful.

The look beyond approach: Plan something for immediately after getting your results that you can look forward to. Something to ground you and that will happen regardless of whether you are happy or sad with your results. If you are happy with your results, it is a chance to celebrate. If you are unhappy then it is a way to keep busy and try to focus on something beyond results – like food!

The plan for every eventuality approach: Decide what you are going to do if you don’t get the results you want. Are you going to take a year out or are you going to go through clearing? If you’re going to go through clearing, which universities are you going to ring? Can you find the numbers and what courses are available? (they are often on the clearing websites the night before). What if you do better than you expect? Are you going to go through adjustment? Answering these questions and having a contingency plan in place can help reassure you that no matter what happens on results day, life will go on. Check out my Guide to Clearing for help on how it works.

The perspective approach: This is one of the approaches that everyone should try to take whenever you are nervous about something. Remember that no matter what happens, your life will go on and this result does not define you. At the time it can seem extremely daunting when things don’t go to plan but there’s no minimum age to go to university and ultimately wherever whenever you go, you will enjoy it.

Good luck with your results!

The terms ‘UCAS’ and ‘Personal Statement’ are terms that often fill year 12s and their tutors with dread but they’re really not as daunting as they first seem. Yes, the UCAS form is long and boring and your personal statement will probably be the most cringe-worthy thing you’ve ever written but it will be worth it when you start getting those offers rolling in.

1. Remember your deadlines. Some courses, like medicine or universities – like Oxbridge, have different deadlines for UCAS. But even if you’re not applying earlier, it is worth getting your application in sooner rather than later so you can focus on your studies.

2. Avoid using quotes in your personal statements. You have a very limited word count so it’s better that they are your words and not someone else’s.

3. Your statement should be split approx. 40/40/20. 40% about why you are interested in the course, your knowledge and passion for it and relevant study or experience. The second 40% is about your suitability for university life and study. Skills like independent study, team work and time management are all relevant here. Finally, your last 20% should show you are well rounded as a person so you can add any other hobbies or skills you might have. For example – playing the flute might not be entirely relevant for studying chemistry but it fits into this section.

4. Think about areas where you might be lacking. If you haven’t studied the subject before, why don’t you read a book or journal article you could talk about? Do you need work experience in the area? Make sure you read the requirements and descriptions of your course to ensure have everything you need.

5. Don’t be afraid to big yourself up! It doesn’t always feel natural to write your talents and skills on paper but you need to remember that the person reading that statement has never met you and has no-one else to ask. If you don’t highlight your best qualities then who will?

6. Try to avoid clichés or sweeping statements. Universities receive 100s of CVs full of people using the phrases ‘I have always….’ Or ‘I am passionate’. If you can be interesting and individual then you will not only stand out, but your statement will read better.

7. Proof read. Read it then redraft it. Then redraft again. Then read it out loud. Then get your friend to read it. Then redraft again. You don’t want an otherwise perfect personal statement to be overshadowed by a silly spelling mistake or grammatical error. Although it probably won’t stop you from getting into university, it will definitely make you kick yourself when you eventually notice it!

8. Don’t worry if other people get offers before you. Some universities will start handing out offers very early whilst others will wait until a certain date and send them all at once. Just because one university hasn’t got back you straight away doesn’t mean you don’t have an offer.