University Essentials

In about a weeks time, I’ll be starting my second year of university. Last year I hadn’t really fully known what to expect from uni, especially when it came to what I should be taking with me to lectures / classes. This year I want to try and be more prepared (I say “try” because I feel that no matter what, I’ll probably still end up forgetting something or realising something that I need but don’t have😄). But I thought I’d make a blog post anyway about what I consider to be essential for uni. 

1. A good bag - having a good bag to carry all your things in is really helpful, especially if you’re like me and have to travel into uni everyday. I opted for less fashionable, more sturdy when it came to buying a bag. I really didn’t care what it looked like, so long as it had enough room for all that I needed to carry and that it was waterproof because I knew I’d need to treck through the rain to get to all the different campus buildings every day. 

2. An iPad or laptop - During my first semester of uni, I had been carrying around a different notebook for each of my classes and had tried to write down every single thing on all the lecture slides. I eventually realised that this was fairly pointless, not to mention it meant that my bag was heavy with all the different notebooks I was carrying. For me, copying down the lecture slides was actually a waste of my time as the PowerPoints are all online and I probably missed a lot of extra information that the lecturer actually said that wasn’t on the slides. I found that it was a lot easier just to carry one notebook and an iPad. This way I could load up the PowerPoints onto the iPad and then take down any extra notes. As well as having it for this purpose, I also found having the iPad useful to take to the library whenever I had time between lectures to work on any tasks. It was just an overall handy thing to have. A laptop would do the same job, if not possibly better (my laptop is just too big to carry around all day). 

3. Notebook - I prefer to actually write out notes rather than just type them up because I feel I actually take in more when I write stuff out. So in lectures I could take rough notes down into my notebook. And since I’m not always the best when it comes to technology, having a notebook means that all my notes are kept together in a way that I’ll be able to find them easily. (When I type stuff out, I sometimes forget what I saved it as or where I saved it, so having written notes is really just easier for me). 

4. Pencil case + pens + highlighters  - If you’re like me and like taking down notes or making notes look all pretty, you’ll definitely need pens and highlighters with a pencil case to put it all in. 

5. Food (and water of course) - This is really probably my number one essential item for uni 😄 stay hydrated!

6. Phone - Taking a phone is probably fairly obvious. I also take an iPod with me because it has all my music on it and listening to music is what helps me get through the early morning train journeys. 

7. Diary + to do list - I feel these are two things which will help me to stay at least a little organised (although I know that I’ll probably start the year by writing in a diary and then give up by the fourth week). But I still think they’re handy things to have to try and keep track of all deadlines and things to do. 

These are the things I consider to be important when heading off to uni. There’s probably other things too that I’m forgetting, but that’s all I can think of at the moment. If anyone thinks of anything else that I should be taking, please let me know😄

Bye for now, xo