It’s two weeks into the new term, and already the landmarks are flying
in fast!
Aside from the looming prospect of getting into the real meat of a
challenging Third Year Project, which I discussed in my last post, there’s also
groups to be formed for term-long projects, schedules to be organised for
meetings with supervisors and course committees, and assignments (or more
intimidatingly their deadlines!) being thrown at us left, right and centre.
Although we were, to an extent at least, protected from all of this by the way
the course was structured in our first and second years, in third year there is
no such alleviation – it’s very much sink or swim, with appropriate time
management an absolute expectation of us (quite fairly at this point I guess!).
Add to that an extra-curricular activity which is almost
single-handedly eating up any spare time I ever manage to get hold of, being a
co-director of an ambitious production of Peter Shaffer’s classic play Equus (two weeks until opening night –
ahhhhh!), and the occasional summons to events such as birthday parties, sound
staging training sessions, committee meetings, academic talks and, rather
inevitably, auditions for next term (I’ve managed to get into a musical somehow,
and am now panicking that people are going to hear me outside of a shower!),
and there’s ever aplenty to be getting on with each day!
But it’s one of those senses that, when I’m at my Northern home or any
other break from life at Southampton, I miss at times; that feeling that
there’s something important to do, somewhere vital to be, something significant
you’ve forgotten to do (always the case with me – I find it worrying if I’m not
worried about something!), that means that, no matter however fatigued or
otherwise you may be, every day is full of purpose, goals and a good sense of
achievement – in theory!
On the flip side, I wouldn’t say no to a more regular sleeping pattern
from time to time!
The way I see it, however, is that I’ll probably never get too clear an
opportunity to do much of this again after I’ve graduated in a couple of years (an
occasion which seems far too close for comfort at this point!) because the
focus will be on making my way up the ladder of employment, so while I can, why
not?
And I reckon that it’s keeping myself so busy, immersing myself in all
the fruitful opportunities that Southampton has to offer and, in turn, engaging
with a broad variety of interesting and fun people wherever I go, that makes
the city such a homely place for me. It’s been that way ever since Freshers’
week two years ago, when I attended five or six societies’ welcome meetings (a
number which has since whittled down to one or two!), and I’ve just kept going
along to things ever since, meeting more and more people and settling into the
ranks of passionate folk that make up the Students’ Union, SUSU.
The people you meet can define your University experience –
so try to get
out there and meet them!
I can recall my first few weeks being full of unsure moments and
frequent doubts; as one of my friends phrased it, moving away from home
initially felt like an extended school trip, with the sense that we’d all be
back in a classroom the following Monday. But being a relatively old hat at
starting academic years now, and with a settled set of friends, contacts and
societies (although it seems to ever be expanding, such is the fluid social
nature of the Students’ Union!) to rely on, it’s sometimes easy to take for
granted the most important factor in helping me adapt to independent life and
study in the first place: my flatmates (and current housemates)!
Because (and I sincerely hope they’re not reading this) when you’re
surrounded by such a welcoming, zany and hilarious bunch as I was in my
Montefiore halls of residence, it begins to feel like a second family. After
only three or four weeks of living with one another, we already had in-jokes
aplenty (just ask them why they gave me the nickname “Mufasa” because I don’t
know!), great rapport, loads of stories and, in a nice way, firm groundings and
roles within the group; we knew who to go to for a moan when the chips were
down, and who’d select the best film for picking ourselves back up again, or be
aware of the cheapest place to go out that night for a celebration (although
now we dispute this fervently!). I can’t thank them enough for the times
they’ve supported me, and I can only hope I’ve returned the favour, or will do.
There’s nobody better to have a laugh with after a tricky day than your
housemates.
And you’ll soon find there’s nothing better for getting to know somebody
than living with them!
And it’s this curious feeling of place, of belonging, which I loved
having amidst the adaptations I underwent during freshers’; my flatmates and I
were ultimately a hugely diverse bunch with a range of personalities, hailing
from vastly different backgrounds and areas of the country, but it just worked
in halls, and it still does in our privately rented student house, as we enter
a third year living together. This point was rammed home when we recently had a
nostalgic viewing of all our first year photographs and videos, which started
by reinforcing just how lucky we were to be put together in the first place,
and ended in, typically, a house fight using foam dart guns and a bottle of
somebody’s skin cream...
Unfortunately, it doesn’t always turn out quite as conveniently for
everybody, and if you find that, after trying to make it work with your current
flat/housemates, things aren’t working as well as you’d hoped they might (sometimes
they just don’t click, and it’s nobody’s fault), I’d recommend getting out
there, joining plenty of societies and using them as a medium through which to
meet people with more similar interests. They all tend to be incredibly
welcoming, and it’s a great way to go into conversations with complete
strangers knowing you’ve got at least one interest in common to talk about!
It doesn’t really matter where you find them because, for me at least, be
they computer scientists, Performing Arts members or my housemates, it’s the
people that I encounter in Southampton who make it my home from home.
Robin
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