HOW TO FEEL INCLUDED

Freshers events: they may not be your thing, but if there's a bingo event that your course is invited to, even turning up to see some new faces can be helpful with meeting people. Worst case scenario you don't stay for the whole thing. At least then you'll recognise some people when you start your lectures. Otherwise you'll meet and interact with people who may become some of your closest friends throughout university.

Facebook pages/WhatsApp chats: on every course and class there is at least one thing you can join to help stay in the loop e.g. for my Creative Writing course, we have a Facebook page where the lecturers are able to share links to competitions and opportunities to encourage their students to branch out and get their writing in the world.

SAVING, SAVING, SAVING!

Railcards: view them as an investment. For my first year I commuted on the train everyday so having a railcard was a massive benefit! I bought the 16-25 card which was £30 for a year, but i made that money back within the first month. This card basically worked as a discount card so my train fares were only £7.15 instead of £11.50, before the prices rose to £7.50, saving me over £4 with each journey I made to uni.

The railcard also added discounts to other tickets I bought, meaning I could do several small trips throughout the year on a budget e.g. I bought return tickets to both Edinburgh and London from Worcester for £25-£30 a person!!

MAKE THE MOST OF YOUR JOURNEY

My commute was a 40 minute train ride both ways, so I was able to sit down and read, write or just listen to music. Honestly, I would use that time for any reading I needed to do for class (especially when our focus was on short stories). For me this was useful as I wouldn't even spend half the journey readings, I could annotate straight away on my iPad and it would be fresh in my mind before the lecture! This won't work for all courses, but if you have a few pages you need to go over or just some notes to revise, the commute is a designated moment of peace to do so.

The commute can also be your moment to relax. If it's been a long day, if its busy or even if you're just a bit tired, having the journey to sit back and do nothing can feel like a blessing. The main perk of having the journey is having the guaranteed time everyday to do what you'd like to without disruption.

On the other hand, if you'd rather download a film and watch it across the journey there and back, do it! Watching Ghostbusters on the train definitely hyped me up ready for Halloween! The journey was also a perfect length for anything that had 40 minute episodes, so if there's a podcast you've been putting off, this would be the moment you get to test it out.