Arrival at Essex

Date: 30/09/2003

New city, new room, new friends - new everything really

Today was my first day at Essex. I spent the morning doing some last minute packing, and set off with my mum around 10.00AM. Before we left, I went to the local Natwest branch to pay in the cheque that my parents had given me towards my accommodation, I also went to the supermarket to pick up the bare essentials for the first day or so. I picked up bread, butter, cheese and milk at my mums request, so that I would have something to eat for the first day or so.

When we got there the first thing I had to do was pick up the keys to my accommodation, then go and visit it. I met the first of my four flat mates, Yoko, and spent some time with my mum looking around the room unpacking things. Soon after, my second flatmate, mark, arrived. My last flatmate, Donna, didn't arrive until much later.

In the afternoon there were a couple of fresher events taking place. On was for freshers and their parents, where you could go along for information about Essex, talks and tours of the campus. This took place pretty early when I was still unpacking and meeting my flatmates so I decided not to go along to it.

The second freshers event I went to along with my flatmate mark, the idea of this one was that you could meet more people studying your course. Each person was given a sticky label for the subject they studied, so I was given an economics and a maths sticker, and mark was given a psychology sticker. We wondered round a bit looking for students doing our subjects. I couldn't see anyone doing maths, and only a couple of people doing economics so I went over to get to know them.

In the evening, me and my three flatmates went out for a meal at one of the universities restaurants and got to know each other better. After that we all went to the fresher event which happened at one of the clubs at the university. The idea was we were supposed to meet new fresher. But it didn't work to well, firstly because it was open to second and third years, so we couldn't tell who was a fresher and who wasn't. Secondly because the music was way too loud to really talk to anyone else, so I didn't end up making many new friends there.