Dear auntie Rachel…

Dear Auntie Rachel, what if I make a fool of myself in freshers’ week?

Dear Freshers,

Freshers’ week is legendary for many reasons. It’s full of firsts – the first time you see your halls, the first time you meet your housemates, the first time you experience university nightlife… For some people it’s even the first time you’ve been properly, head-meltingly drunk.

When you’re meeting so many people for the first time you are constantly making first impressions. The combination of alcohol, nerves and a room full of strangers can be heady at best, particularly when the STYCs (second and third year students assigned to look after freshers) are casting their welfare training aside and banging on the ceiling, shrieking “down it fresher!”

Of course, there’s no compulsion to get drunk and in a way it’s maybe best not to get too carried away in the first few days. It can be scary to be off your face with a bunch of strangers in a foreign city. I didn’t really let my hair down until the end of freshers’ week (and then it took a good six months for my housemates to stop taking the piss out of my ‘sexy’ drunken dance moves).

The trick is to get the balance right. You want to be friendly and fun (and for some people alcohol is essential to sculpting this illusion). But you don’t want to be remembered as the person who spent the first week of freshers’ vomiting on their own legs and grinding with locals. Plus, you definitely don’t want to be that person who heavily hit on/pulled one of their housemates on the first night of freshers’ and then spent the rest of the year hiding in their room out of embarrassment.

It’s a cliché, but the best thing to do is try and be yourself. That is obviously pretty flaccid advice; there’s nothing harder than walking into a kitchen full of complete strangers and impressing them with the sheer strength of your personality. But if you relax and just go with it then you’ll have a better time than if you’re consciously trying to be a funnier/cooler/sexier version of yourself.

Ignore the freshers’ week hype: it might be the best week of your life so far, or it might be a disorientating and slightly awkward experience. Either way is fine. Freshers’ is by no means a make or break situation. If you do something stupid then laugh it off. Freshers’ gossip tends to linger, but it’s better to come across as fun and approachable than uptight and unfriendly. Relax and have a drink if you want to but try not to get too carried away, after all you want to remember all the embarrassing things your flatmates did…