First Night

   Luckily enough last night definitely did make me feel a lot more comfortable and now I definitely feel ready to settle into university life. Despite the fact I woke up with a killer hangover I remember everything that happened and all the names and faces that I met. Thankfully my parents were taking me out for lunch today, so that cleared up my head in no time!
   Nearly everyone I met was a first year, although some were 19 as they had either taken a gap year or attended a different university last year before deciding on a change in course. Everyone is from all over the country as well, which makes it all a lot more interesting, and it gives us all an opportunity to laugh at each other's accents! Everyone seems really friendly and down to earth, which is a relief when you bear in mind how petrified I was at the initial thought of having to go upstairs and introduce myself to a group of strangers when I'm so used to having a very tight knit group of friends back home. Thankfully, I can see some of my home friends traits in quite a few of them, which I believe will make it easier for me to bond with them. Quite a few of us hit it off really well last night, so I think I'll already have a close group of around 8 over the next week or so.
   One of the first people I met was Abi, who'd actually added me on Facebook over the summer! She was too scared to come and introduce herself at first as she didn't want to admit to having added me on Facebook, but we both recognised each other straight away and when we eventually got round to talking to one another we realised we have a lot of similarities and we both know we're definitely going to be close friends!
   Last night proved to me that it's all well and good being scared of meeting new people, but sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and take the opportunity of going to meet them. If Matt and Will hadn't come down to my flat last night to tell me about the party I don't think I would have gone, as I wouldn't have felt welcome. In hindsight, this would have prevented me from the initial bonding I had with everyone last night, and would have made the situation worse, as I'd be having to start fresh with a group that already knew one another. Therefore, my advice to any first years is to take all the opportunities you get to go and meet your new flatmates or the people in the surrounding flats to you. A few of us even ventured into other flats last night to meet the people living there! The last thing you want when you've already had so much thrown at you is to feel left out because everyone else is already bonding and beginning to make friends, purely because you were too scared to take the same opportunity that everyone else did. So bite the bullet and go for it, because trust me, I'm so grateful that I did.