Lancaster Uni Freshers' Week Guide (From the Perspective of Someone Who Didn't Drink in Freshers' Week)

Note: This guide can also be used for other universities, but some of the more Lancaster specific points may not be completely relevant.

1. Your college is important (but only this week)

Buy the t-shirt, learn the chants (ask your reps), drink exclusively in your own bar. If you're on campus then your flatmates will be in your college; and they'll be the people you spend the most time throughout the week and your freshers' reps will help to instil a sense of family from your college.

After freshers' you'll go into normal uni life and meet people on your course and in societies, at which point the only time your college will matter is if you play inter-college sports. I am in Fylde and some of my best friends are in Lonsdale, Furness and County. The only time the college difference matters is when we beat them at pool, when a bit of casual banter is thrown around.

2. Ask questions

You'll have a tutor and two freshers' reps; they're there to help you. I didn't know which bus to get to the train station and my rep not only told me which bus and where from, but she also found me a timetable. When I had to change my minor, my personal tutor (who didn't actually know how the procedure worked herself) rang around to find out for me while I was feeling emotional and had no idea where to start.

Freshers' reps are largely there to get you drunk (ahem, I mean make sure you aren't too drunk to get home safe), but they will also answer your questions - they were once nervous freshers with millions of questions they felt stupid for having to ask, so they completely understand where you are coming from.

3. Play sports/join societies

The Freshers' Fayre will usually be Thursday/Friday of freshers' week, and you'll probably be overwhelmed by how many things people have been bothered to make societies for. Join anything you are remotely interested in or think you could be interested in. But, make sure you take account of the cost - some are free, some have joining fees, some require you to buy equipment; but if its something you are going to enjoy and make friends doing then it has to be worth it.

I didn't do this. I signed up for the writers' society and never went. I only joined the pool team by accident, but my captain is now the best friend I have met at uni, and a lot of the other girls are totally awesome!

4. Don't feel pressured to drink a lot and go out every night.

I'm disabled and when my knee started to hurt, I went home and chilled with a hot water bottle. Your freshers' reps will encourage you to get drunk and enjoy yourself, your party animal flatmates may think you're a little weird if you don't wanna go out; but it's your life, your freshers' week and your uni experience - do whatever you like.

I even left my Big Night Out (sampling a lot of the local nightlife under the watchful eyes of your reps) early, and my female rep - who had been encouraging the rest of the group to drink as much as possible without being sick - walked me to the bus station and made me promise to text her when I got back before she would let me on the bus.

5. Speaking of the Big Night Out, wear sensible shoes!

I wore flats. My two female flatmates wore heels. Guess which of the three of us wasn't moaning about her feet our third bar?

Lancaster is quite spread out. I used to go out with Wigan, where pretty much all of the clubs are along the same street. You get bored of one club, you just pop next door; it's easy and not too bad for high heels. But Lancaster isn't anything like this. With the exception of Sugarhouse, Toast and Elements all being along the same road, you don't get clubs that are all that close together. So wear flats for the sake of your feet and the ears of your flatmates.

Quickfire advice:

6. Don't take clothes you don't think you'll wear because you'll spend forever unpacking! But do weigh everything up for its fancy dress value.

7. If you can, get the top shelf of the fridge so other people's food doesn't leak and drip onto yours - particularly if you're a vegetarian or have allergies.

8. Bring a doorstop so your new flatmates can say hi while you unpack.

9. Establish football/rugby/other sport alliances and rivalries early - makes for good banter in the bar or your kitchen while watching a match/game/race.

10. Have fun, don't be scared, and just be yourself. If people hate you for it, that's their issue.

In case you haven't noticed...

I failed at BEDA.

Please don't judge me for it.

I was planning to catch up, but there is little to no chance of that happening now.

Coming soon:

Lancaster Uni (or any uni really) Freshers' Guide - From the Viewpoint of Someone Who Didn't Drink During Her Freshers' Week.

The second half of my coming out story.

A few high school stories.

Video game nostalgia.

I will also be continuing with this:

30 Day Song Challenge Day 6 - A Song By Someone You'd Like To Marry.

What a weird thing... but I went with this

Charlie McDonnell - A Song About Love

BEDA 6: Coming Out 1

So I went to Liverpool Pride with my mum today. I wore my rainbow eyelashes, we marched, we bought rainbow scarfs and got rainbow lips temporarily tattooed on our chests. We met a lovely lesbian called Rose in the march and we compared our coming out stories, as well as actual tattoos and battle scars.
For those of you who don't know, I'm bisexual.
When I think about it, I think I knew at about age 11, although I didn't really understand anything there. I had a huge crush on Emma Watson in the first Harry Potter. Now, at my current age that would be weird, but I was 9 and she was 11, so that's totally acceptable.

At 13 I told one friend. This one friend told one of her friends (who was kind of my friend,but not so much) and either this conversation was overheard, or she was just a bitch who told everyone. Either way, the entire school knew within about a day, and my life would never be the same again.
At my school, children were mean. Bullying was something they did on a daily basis, and homophobia was just another excuse to make someone else feel bad. The comments I could ignore, but the general dickheadedness of some of the people I had no choice but to put up with was appaling. The teachers did their best, as they did with all bullying cases - but when there are an awful lot of bullying students and only one victim, it's usually easier to try and remove the victim than the bullies.
I spent my breaks sat in a classroom with a couple of my friends, until the head decided to not allow students inside buildings during breaks and I was only allowed the one friend. At that point Donna became my best friend, because she hated the wind and rain we experienced in England almost daily anyway.
There were times when I wished that I could undo my telling people, make it so that nobody knew anymore, remove all memories they had of something that made me an easy target. But that would be lying to myself. Telling everyone may have made life difficult in the short term, but in the long term I am much more accepting of myself and it's so much easier to now say to people 'Yeah, I like both'.

Nowadays my friends care so little that they often forget about it until I go and try to pull women because 'I'm sick of men at the moment!'. It affects their lives so little that it doesn't concern them on a daily basis. Nobody from school was ever directly affected by the fact that I also liked women, but they chose to let it concern them on a daily basis and I feel sad for their sad lives if that is something that they make a conscious choice to do.
Also, I'm sure a lot of the girls were too busy being scared that I fancied them to realise that their boyfriends probably enjoy lesbian porn and would be happier if they were bisexual.
As is the closed minded way of life.




30 Day Song Challenge Day 5: Favourite Slow Song
Butterfly in the Breeze - Eddplant

BEDA 5: There is a moth...

and it is terrorising me.

My room has been tidied recently, and now suddenly there are moths all over the place. My mum smacked one against my arm the other day and now it seems that its big brother is going to make me pay for it for the rest of my life.

It keeps disappearing though. It'll come to fly at my head and scare me and then disappear till tomorrow; when it will gain great happiness in doing it all over again. Obviously I can't be sure that its the same one, but the curtains are closed, so it must be.

I'm usually not scared of tiny little animals like this. I take pride in being the person in the house who will remove the spider from the bath and have had countless arguments about animals that I'm not scared of. Moths aren't scary if they're out of the way and minding their own business, but if they're in my bed, casting shadows when circling my light or flying at my head - they're not welcome.

My mum has offered to get rid of it for me, and did come in with a towel when I ran out of my room (held back the screaming) yesterday because it hit me twice in the head, but it disappeared. It's just climbed up towards my light and jumped at me. I flailed my arms widely and then it disappeared again.

Once again I am paranoid that it's going to kill me in my sleep or something.

30 Day Song Challenge Day 4: Newest/Most Modern Song You Love

Give Me Everything - Pitbull

BEDA 4: The (Not So) Little Girl I've Known A Long Time

We've all had the same treatment from a distant family friend, or an old primary school teacher, who hasn't seen you in years. You've grown up as time has gone on but the last time they saw you, you were 'only as big as [my] knee!' You get the typical 'My, how you've grown' and you just look at the person with a puzzled expression, silently thinking 'Well of course I have, that's how time works!'

I'm sure its something we've all experienced from one end, the other, or both. And it's not until you do experience it from both ends that the puzzled expression fades and you empathise with how they feel.

Picture this: it's 2002, I'm 10 years old and all of the year 6's have taken a course to become 'buddies' for the reception students - although only a certain few get to do it everyday. Although you're supposed to look after a group of a few students, we all tended to take one under our wing.

My 4 year old was the cutest little girl with a blonde bob who was oh-so-quiet but knew how to run. The best part of a year was spent trying to catch her, making sure she spoke up to integrate with the other children and just generally being her friend.

Fast forward to the present day. A couple of weeks ago I saw her in her high school uniform. She's 13. It's been 9 years, but it feels like no more than 9 weeks. I saw her a couple of times and actually played Wii boxing with her on one occasion (she got stroppy because I beat her; some things don't change) but for the most part of 9 years we've just been living on the same street, not the friends we used to be. She's a young woman now, with friends she has to get a bus to see and her GCSE exams coming up in the next two years. But in my head she's still 4, and I can't believe how quickly she's grown up.

I finally understood it. And 5 days after I saw her I ran an old family friend of my mother's; who I hadn't seen for years. She couldn't believe I had already been away and done a year at uni, because to her I was only about 7... And I didn't roll my eyes, I didn't act confused, I totally got how she felt; how old I must make her feel just for having lived as long as I have.

I know that if I told my teenaged 4 year old that I still think of her as being so little from back when I was her 'buddy' and can't believe how she's grown; she'd look at me funny and just shrug it off as something adults say. But one day she'll understand; one day it'll be her.

30 Day Song Challenge Day 3: Oldest Song You Love (I really struggled with this, as I don't know what came out when! So I went with the oldest Beatles song in my iTunes)

Love Me Do - The Beatles

BEDA 3: Mini's Misleading Dream Diary

I never understand any of my dreams, and I'm certainly not analysing them in any kind of Freudian context, we all know he was a weirdo.

My dear friend Sarah was taken into hospital with some medical condition that I don't remember. Her parents couldn't get down to see her so I played the good friend and went to visit her everyday so she wouldn't be alone. The issue was that the hospital was also a school and practically a maze inside, so I got lost on the way to go see her.

She was also told that she was well enough to go a cooking class within the hospital/school, but needed a chaperone, so I went with her to that as well. We came in late and had to take the only remaining pair of seats over the other side of the room as quietly as we could (and if you've met Sarah, you'll know that's not easy ;) ).

The little girl sat next to Sarah was wearing an Esther bracelet, so I started to chat to her about Nerdfighteria for a little while and then her chaperone arrived and it was my friend Dan. I chatted to him and we interrupted the class and were almost thrown out.

Go on then, psychoanalyse my stupid dreams!

Also, it is Esther day today, have you told your family you love them?

30 Day Song Challenge Day 2: Favourite cover song

Behind Blue Eyes - Limp Bizkit

BEDA 2: Mothers and Make-Up (Forum Hatred)

I spend far too much time frequenting The Student Room (or TSR as it will be known from now on). In a thread in which some odd person asked if women would teach their daughters how to shave 'downstairs', somebody compared this to a mother teaching her daughter how to put on make-up.

I am not for mothers teaching their daughters how to shave; but I was disgusted to find that this girl thought it was so wrong to teach your daughter how to put on make up.

My mother rarely wears make-up, so I had to figure out how to apply make-up by myself and through advice from my friends. My mum would always tell me if my make-up looked stupid, but she couldn't tell me how to apply things like foundation and powder, because she had never worn it for herself. In fact, I ended up showing her how to apply bronzing powder when her friend bought her some for her birthday.

The girl on the TSR's reasoning for it being wrong for mothers to teach their daughters to apply make-up is that a mother should not influence her style like that. She should figure it out herself by making her own mistakes and learning what she likes and what looks good. I agree that she should have to learn what looks good herself, but there is nothing wrong with a mother ensuring her daughter does not look like a clown with block eyeshadow, does not have an orange face and keeps her lipstick within the lines of her lips. Just because my mother is helping me does not mean that I will do whatever she says in regards to what I was going to wear; I am perfectly capable of picking things for myself and having her show me how to apply them effectively. Like I have mentioned, I didn't have this luxury as my mother was not really a make-up wearer herself; and I didn't have a big sister either. I would have loved to have been taught how to apply make-up properly when I was younger to save me some of the style disasters that I thought were the result of proper application until a friend showed me otherwise.

Basically what I'm saying - in a rambling sort of way - is that mothers should teach their daughters to apply the make-up that their daughters have chosen to wear. However, the good people of TSR would not have accepted this as a post, especially as the topic of the thread was about shaving and not make-up.

30 Day Song Challenge (another thing I'm doing here) Day 1: Favourite song with a colour in the title.

All In White - The Vaccines

BEDA 1: Welcome to BEDA

BEDA: Blog Every Day August. Basically, after it being so long since my last post; I decided to (attempt to) post everyday in August. They'll not be as long, carefully written or structured as you're used to; but there will be an awful lot of them (31, to be exact).

Preview of what's to come:

• Mini's Misleading Dream Diary - details of weird dreams posted when I run out of ideas rather than when they happen
• Forum Hatred
• John Green #3
• Coming Out Stories (yes, plural)
• And actual real life observations made in my actual real life.

August starts here, let's see if I can hold your interest.

(And no, you can't punish me for not updating).

4. Jenson Button

I was watching Top Gear and Jeremy Clarkson turns to Jenson Button and says (and I'm paraphrasing here) "Last time you said you'd trade all the cash and the glitz and glamour for that first win, and now you've got that, is it still true for the championship?"

To which Jenson replied yes.

He won the championship in 2009 with Brawn, but like all champions (except maybe Kimi Raikkonen) the most important thing is that second, third, fourth title that 23 other men are going to do their best to take for themselves.

I always admire people who have such passion for their work. If we all had the attitude that our personal success in our jobs - or in other areas like family and friendships - would lead to more happiness than acquiring money then I think the world would be a better and more productive place.

I don't want to drive an F1 car. I want to be a clinical psychologist. The two are very different but the that I'm getting at is the same. Jenson worked his way up through the lower formulas to an F1 race seat in 2000 and then achieved that magical championship 9 years later. It was his dream realised after several hundred thousand pounds and a lifetime of hard work and competitive spirit. I've done 12 years of school, two at college and I'm about to complete the first of a three year degree which will be followed by work experience and a PhD - with stress levels rising along with the competition and my debt. I could just give up, try a field with less competition, but why should I give up on my dreams just because I could do something easier for the same end salary?

In the end, it doesn't come down to the money. I got into uni before the fee increase but I'd probably still have gone through all of this at £9000 a year rather than the £3000 I'm paying at the moment. Its not about the money. It doesn't matter if I'll be paying for this part of my life for the rest of my life, as long as I am where I want to be.

Jenson was willing to trade all of his luxuries and riches to stand on the top step and later to lift the championship trophy and that kind of passion should be an inspiration to us all.

This isn't to say that I would do a graduate job for minimum wage, and you've misunderstood if you think that's what I've said. I'd like to live on my own or with a partner in a place that's big enough for everything I need. I have to be able to afford internet, TV, phones and music. I need to be able to keep myself looking good and have some way to get myself around without resorting to spirit crushing public transport. All of these things will make me better at my job(s) which will make my dream easier to realise and continue with. We often call these things 'luxuries' and I guess in a way they are and I spent the first part of this post arguing against them but these kinds of things will be weighed against the impact that I can have if I have them all and I am the best that I can be.

Lastly, I want to be able to pay back my student loans and boost the economy, so other people in the future can realise their dreams.

For Jenson, its about being the best in the world at something and that is rarely a bad thing to aim for. I would go so far as to say that an improbably large proportion of the world has heard his name at some point. I don't care if people know my name, I'm not looking to be famous to everyone; just to be a positive force in the world with the troubled individuals I will inevitably come across in my line of work.

I can't speak for Jenson about his fame, but I would think it would be safe to assume that he doesn't care if people know his name, as long as he can say 'World Champion' afterwards.

We all have different goals, but if we all had the same attitude and passion that you see in men like Jenson Button, I feel like we'd all do better to achieve them.

Picture perfect painted smile

I never wore a lot of make-up for the first half of high school.

While the 'popular' girls discovered foundation I barely knew how to apply mascara. It was never an issue to me, I was always happy with the way I looked.

I guess I didn't care what I looked like, there was never any reason for me to look my best because there was never anybody I was interested in looking good for.

When the hormones kicked in age 13 and I also started dying my hair dark as I was going through a 'goth phase' which I didn't really grow out of, despite now having blonde hair and currently wearing a floral top. I started wearing heavy eyeliner and resenting being told to take it off. I was convinced there was a double standard; the orange girls were never told to take their layers of the wrong shade foundation off - probably because they would quit the sports teams if the sports staff had a go at them. I was probably right about the double standard but I was young and didn't know how to deal with it.

At college I changed to just mascara and lip gloss, I still didn't see the appeal in foundation, I'd never been taught how to choose the proper shade or how to put it on and I found women at cosmetic counters in department stores a little intimidating.

But one day sat in the back corner of our college library (as we always did) my good friend Beth told me to stop moaning about the state of the skin on my nose and smoothed some of her foundation over it. She then thought it made a good fit and applied a little along my jawline to check it was as good a match as it looks. She didn't know it then, but she had created a monster.

I lasted about 6 months only applying foundation to my nose - covering up the slight difference in colour by the skin being dragged by a bump in the middle - before progressing to applying it to my T-Zone to cover spots for a night out. Now, I wear foundation all over my face, everyday. I was taught to apply it by the girls at college and I've never looked back.

You always hear about girls calling other girls 'fake' because of their application of make-up in this way; and in some sense I agree with this because the skin tone you see on my face is not the skintone that I actually have. My eyes aren't as big as the eyeliner tricks your eyes into thinking they are and my lips are not that dark. My eyelashes are not as long as my quest for the best mascara is gradually making them look; but that is what you see when you look at me. And it isn't a case of what you see is what you get like a lot of people think it is, it is far from that. What you see is what I want you to see, and I don't see any problem with this.

I don't wear make-up to be more attractive to other people. Whether that is or isn't a side effect is up to you to decide and not me; but it isn't the reasoning behind why I do it. If anything, I wear make-up to make me more attractive to me. Sometimes I look in the mirror and can't believe how ugly I look. I hate my spots and my bumpy nose and the fact that one of my eyes is bigger than the other and it does restrict how I think about myself; no matter how much I try to convince myself that it doesn't. An application of foundation and mascara can make me confident enough in myself to face the day if my self-confidence is hit - even if it's only because I don't want to have wasted the effort.

So if I look in the mirror after applying full make-up following a few days slap free and feel like I look fake, it's probably a good sign and not me insulting myself. And I'm certainly not comparing myself to the girls in high school - it's not natural, but it's not orange.