I believe I speak for many when I say that arriving at Sussex was a surreal and daunting experience. I’d been here before for an open day, but I still couldn’t believe how some people looked so quintessentially like students. Since then my time at Uni has been based around participation in an enormous communal ritual, that same set of questions you know so well by now. “What’s your name?”, “What are you studying?” and “Where are you staying?”. It’s a shame those questions are such massive University clichés, they pop up at the start of every conversation. As a matter of fact I usually ask for names twice.
Freshers’ week is, if nothing else, about mingling. Getting to know your flatmates, saying hi to the neighbours, and finding people on the same course. A trick I came up with was to bring a packet of biscuits with me and offer them to people in the block; but I learnt quickly that the entire Sussex populous thought the same thing, and had all brought better biscuits than me.
After all the greetings and unpacking, Saturday concluded itself with an evening of leisure at the East Slope bar; which consists almost entirely of a Queue. A fair portion of the night was spent discussing what Vodka & “Splash” was – the truth turned out to be a lot less interesting than our speculative fictions. That night, I also found out that ordering a round of drinks and apologizing for the complexity of the order makes you a “legend”.
Other than “keep meeting new people” and “try new things”, My advice to all Freshers is this: talk to your flatmates! At the time of writing my flat contains no less than three loaves of bread, and very little other food. Sorting out a system for shopping, cooking and cleaning will save you from a year of domestic headache. Another important tip: wake up in the afternoon. You’ll find there isn’t much to do in the morning and you’ll end up tired and yawning while the night is still young.
