#2 Surviving Uni: Essential items you won’t realise you need till you get there!

Since I currently seem to be brimming with ideas about all things university related, I shall once again impart all the guru like wisdom that a 19 year old 1^st year student can have.  Listen up class, today’s topic shall be covering… ESSENTIAL ITEMS YOU NEED TO TAKE WITH YOU BUT NEVER THOUGHT OF.  God I’m so witty and catchy.

Lets crack on then.

1) A FAN.  

This is most definitely my number 1.  Numero uno.  Hashtaggetitnow.  I cannot stress how getting my fan back to uni altered my life completely.  Let’s paint a pretty little picture shall we?:

Satan, himself, designed my room, while sitting, all wrapped up in a duvet in the middle of the Sahara desert, hot chocolate in hand.  It is hot.  Unbearably so.  Apparently there’s something wrong with the radiator but after the fixy-uppy people came, the room still has me sweating on entry.  Seriously, I have guests over and they leave with a tan.

Therefore, the life saver that is my fan keeps everything more bearable.  You’re probably thinking to yourself ‘but Gina my sweaty friend, what if my uni is cutting costs and so I do not inherit a room/oven with prospects of third degree burns?  Won’t I then just be wasting the already very limited amount of space/box I have been cursed with for the upcoming year?’.  NO.

Let me educate you young fledglings about the ways of some adolescent, suddenly very free horny 19 year old guys and gals.  They have loud, very bed banging naughty time, right opposite your head.  What the fan does is drown out their sinful sounds with the constant droning, whizzing *insert fan noise here*.  It’s much easier to sleep to.  Trust me.

If you’re still not convinced I shall pose a last desperate point in the hope that you will realise my god-like wisdom and proceed.  Over the last two weeks, as the weathers suddenly bucked its ideas up and the sun’s popped out, my fan has been on continuously.  ‘Why not open a window’ you may ask.  ‘Are you on the bottom floor and concerned all your worldly belongings will go walkabouts?’.  Nope.  Two words. 

Fly sex.

My window seems to have become some sort of Westeros whore house over the last fortnight with up to 30 winged couples consummating the summer simultaneously.  If anyone wants to turn their room into the insect equivalent of a brothel, they merely have to open their windows and count to ten.

So, if I’ve convinced you then go buy a cheap ass fan (my friend picked one up for a fiver at a charity shop).  Ask your parents if first becuase it’s pretty likely they’ve got one hoarded away in the attic somewhere.  I promise you that after bringing mine back from home, life was 8 million times more bearable and I can’t stress it enough!

I got these socks for Christmas, be jealous!

2) SOCKS

Go to Primark and buy all the socks.  DO IT.  You may think your current drawful of socks at home is enough, but you are most mistaken.  Here’s the low down:

As a student you suddenly reach the financial status of *poor*.  Washing machines and drying machines are a luxury, normally enjoyed once a term if you play your cards right.  After reaching uni, I immediately realised that socks and knickers were what I would run out of the most quickly.  Jeans can be worn time and time again if you reframe from jumping in the puddles and spritz ‘em with spray.  You’ve probably brought a bunch of T-Shirts with you and, depending on your tendency to lean towards a sweaty betty like persona, you can get a couple of wears out of each.

What's the one thing you change every day?  Your socks and pants.  If you take 20 pairs of socks, that’s less than three week supply!  The terms 10 weeks!  Think about it and thank me later.

Bonus tip! Buy all black socks to increase pairing efficiency by 67%.  You’re a big girl now – Mummy’s not there to do it for you anymore.

Go to Primark and buy all the socks.

3) Draws

You would not believe the frustration of getting to uni and finding out your cupboard/wardrobe/draw space is beyond pitiful.  Over the Christmas break I brought back a set of old draws my mum was going to throw out and it made the world of difference.  My wardrobe has finally stopped threatening to burst and the solitary 3-draw unit no longer looks like it’s about to give way.  Hurray!

Lasty but not leastly….

4) Photocopies of passport and EHIC stored in your email

Yes the real thing may be handy too but photocopies already made and saved can set aside a world of hassle.

What with the fact you are now a crazy free individual starting up a new life in the city of London/Manchester/*insert university location here*, you need them ready at a moment’s notice.

Next week you might be off to Argentina with the canoe club or hitchhiking in France on a jail break.  YOU JUST DON’T KNOW!  Don’t miss out on opportunities and be that lame guy who gets left behind just because you’re unprepared.  I myself joined the officer cadets and underwater hockey club.  Why the Octopush team wanted my passport details, I’ll never know…

Phew long post!  Hope this has been slightly helpful to some of you.  Of course, I have not included my zombie apocalypse survival pack but that goes without saying ;)

Peace out lovelies, I’m off to revise a cheeky bit of Tort law.  Joy.

Gina xx

#1 Surviving Uni: Top Tips on being able to afford to eat

Hello strange place a la internet, how you been doing?  Long time no chat, huh?! Okay yep a torrent of verbal abuse was totally appropriate for my ‘Missing In Action’ like status for the last few months!  Woah put the shoval DOWN Mister!

Today I’m going to write about some top tips for any future university goers.  Being just about to finish my first year of law, I feel perfectly qualified in relaying the terror, hunger and stress you about to experience, and giving out some tips to combat them.  Fight back, as my old nan would say as she hurls a snail over the hedge. 

So today’s topic is going to be on budgeting and how I’m superb at it and I want to throttle those people who are not.  Ranting.  I reckon I might end up ranting.

To set the scene, imagine a magical princess, locked away in a castle that’s costing her £125 a week.  Yeah.  Magical right.  Alas, her fairy godmother (aka student finance) is feeling pretty stingy, probably went on a spending spree bender with our beloved heroin pennies, leaving her with SIGNIFICANTLY LESS than said enchanted tower rent.  That enchanted tower?  Decrease the image in your head to an 8 foot box.  Factor it into the picture.

A scaled size of my actual residence.  Mmmhhmmm cosy...

So, as you can imagine money’s pretty tight around here.  I am not afraid to say I will be that cool kid who bends down to pick up a 20 pence piece from the pavement.  Since my Aldie noodles cost 18p this is a bonified victory over the other starving students, scavenging the streets of England.  I’m not trying to show off or anything of the sorts but I HAVE and DO cook for 2 people on a meagre budget of 80 pence.  I can confirm that I physically cannot buy anything in Aldi or Iceland for over a quid and am horrified when items finally leave the special offer price bracket.

Perhaps then you can understand why when a dear sweet flatmate of mine participated in our weekly pity party – a time of splendour where our flat gathers round to discuss money saving tips – and revealed her weakly ‘pocket money’.  Interrupting the marvellous idea of liberating toilet roll from the student unions, she flat out states that mummy and daddy are sending her £75 a week!  I honestly nearly dropped my noodles.  Seventy five freaking Great British Pounds and she has the nerve to suggest it was not enough to live on.

I spend less than £40 a month on food, take you riches elsewhere please madam.  I mean, what is she even doing with it?  Using it as wallpaper?  Thus I have created some budgeting tips to help my poor dear hard done to flatmate to really stretch that three-quarters-of-a-hundred-quid as far out as it will go, since she seems to be struggling.  Do I sound bitter?  I might be bitter.

1) It is not okay to spend £40 at the Disney store and then return to moan about your impulsive nature.  Not ever.

2) Waitrose food tastes the same as Aldi food.  If you think it doesn’t (which it don’t), you can cry into your wads of saved cash.

3) Eating in is the same as eating out.  Only cheaper.  And with more noodles.

4) Your wardrobe is literally less than a foot in diameter.  Where are you storing all those extra dresses you keep coming home with?!

5) Doubles are cheaper than singles.  Flirting is cheaper than buying your own.  Water is the cheapest of them all.

6) Portion sizes.  If you are not still hungry after a meal, you have eaten too much.  The extra could have been tomorrow’s lunch!

7) Eating rice and an egg two days in a row is perfectly acceptable.  Also a third and a… sixth?

9) Asking flatmates if they intend to finish that last morsel of bacon is actually helping the environment and totally okay.  Taking it while they aren’t looking is less acceptable but I’d still encourage it.

10) Having a friend/parent/unicorn over and asking them to provide their own grub may seem rude at first but you’ll never serve them up a dish they aren’t going to like.  (If you do though, feel free to tuck in…)

I recommend chicken and curry flavour.  *Do not expect any actual chicken in either!

Also noodles.  I promise I’m not on commission but for real.  18p.  Flavoured.  Aldi.  Fly my minions, FLY.

Anyway, peace out lovelies.  I’m off to devour a cheeky bowl of pasta.  Yum.

Gina xxx