Living Essex

Whether you've chosen to stay at home and go to a local uni, or to move away, life is never going to be the same for you again.

When you go to uni, especially if you move away from home to do so, it's not just about studying and gaining an academic qualification like it was at school or college. You also gain a whole lot of independence (whether you want it or not!). Gone are the days when you were being looked after by your Mum and Dad. You now have to live the whole experience of looking after yourself; you shop, you cook, you clean and you find your own transport (no more free lifts from your parents). On top of all of this, you have to learn to do all these things well enough that you stay healthy. This means trying to cook things that won’t give you food poisoning and that contain some vitamins and nutrients (and yes that does mean not living off of Pot Noodles and baked beans). You'll also have to clean regularly enough that the bacteria and germs don’t invade your immune system and make you ill so that you have to miss out on all of the fun things going on.

If you choose to live at home, then your life will still change. Now that you’re an ‘adult’, your parents may even expect you to be doing more things round the house. With all your extra free time, they may get on at you to get a job, and to ‘stop treating their house like a hotel’. However, if you’re one of the lucky ones, your parents will let you continue to live in a responsibility-free student swirl which gives you the chance to milk being looked after for even longer. Be careful though, this may just be luring you into a false sense of security – you never know when they might change their minds!

This section is deigned to let you know what it is really like having to do all of these things, and will give you some tips which may help to make the change all a bit easier!