Transitioning from a fresher to a not-so-fresh-er

After a summer of fun, travel and ignoring my reading list, it was time to return to Cardiff. The arrival of the moving day generated emotions and questions from all sides of the spectrum. The joy at returning to one of my favourite cities, the sorrow of leaving my family and boyfriend and the anxiety of whether my friendships remained as strong as when I left. Would we all still get on? Would it be different this year? Would the change in dynamic destroy us? And most importantly of all, do I still like my course? I had enjoyed summer so much and even though moving into first year had been a much bigger change, for some reason, I wasn’t quite ready for second year. The idea of living in our own house, paying our own bills and remembering to take out the bins felt so much MORE than moving into halls (that just felt like an extended school trip). Similarly, it was dawning on me how much harder I would have to work this year… 40% of my entire degree was at stake and there were no second chances (August resits are not an option). If I wanted to do well and feel satisfied with myself, hard work was a neccesity. Of course, as soon as I had moved in, waved goodbye to my mum and got down to the pub with my friends, I felt settled. Even though we all hadn’t seen eachother in a very long time, it felt like no time at all, nothing had changed. We had a whole week to enjoy freshers and catch-up before timetabled lectures started. However, I couldn’t enjoy this guiltlessly… I had signed up to do the Cardiff half marathon on the 6th October to raise money for Alzhiemers society(!) I had told myself all summer that my training would continue smoothly throughout freshers and I would successfully refrain from drinking. I was so wrong. But, I succesfully completed the half in 02.02 hours and raised £630 for Alzhiemers society, so all was well. Since lectures began, my motivation has been increasing and will hopefully continue to do so until firsts come easy… My housemates all get along just as well as we did the year before and the dynamic within the house is perfect. The moral is, don’t stress too much about things that don’t deseve it. Most things will work out how you want it to, as long as you put in the ground work and time.