It's not easy to move away from home, and it's even more difficult when home is 8 hours apart from your time zone and 14 hours away by plane. I swear that the 7/8 hours time difference (depending if it's daylight saving or not) can really be annoying.
Most of the time, when you are awake, people back home in Singapore are going to sleep. When you are asleep, that's when people are up and about, going about their daily lives.
The best skyping time window it appears, is about 12 - 4pm in the afternoon GMT (or 7/8pm - 11pm/12am), which is when I have my lunch break or when I only have morning lecture. Or if you have family who are nocturnal, you would have more time to skype with them in a day. But this is not exactly a survival tip, just a tip to make life a little easier if you manage to schedule skyping times with your family.
My sisters and I don't schedule regular skype calls so it's usually done on a whim. Like a sudden tweet or Whatsapp from them going, "hey sis, skype?"
1) Schedule regular Skype calls with your family beforehand to help cope with homesickness
Like I mentioned, it's not easy at all to move so far away from home. Many international students that I've met on the International Freshers Week all experience homesickness to varying degrees. Some miss home very badly till they are upset, some miss home slightly but are generally well.
I am lucky that I tend to be one-minded so I don't have the energy or time to think about home when I am busy trying to sort out university life and adult stuff like bank account etc.
The thing about scheduling regular Skype calls with family is that it would help you to cope with homesickness. Yes, it's not the same but you can't really have the best of both worlds. Skyping with your family give you the chance to catch up with how things are back home, complain and rant about life in general, chat with your mum and siblings, etc etc.
When my sister came over in October 2014 to visit me, we had a great day in London before I had to head back to uni and I cried for the entire 2 hours back. It would have been so much easier if we had been in regular skype calls.
It makes things easier and it will give you the strength to carry on this mad race to earn your degree.
2) Participate in Orientation Activities
This is something I cannot stress enough. As an International student, depending on the university you go to, you may have 2 orientation week.
I am currently enrolled in University of Nottingham. What they did was that all international students are invited to attend an International Freshers' Week where you would meet people from all around the world. They are in the same boat as you, though they may not be your age or be on your campus in future or be there for the same length as you are.
It's good to go along because:
1) You meet people from other courses, from other countries. They may be doing a PhD, they may be an exchange student, they may be from Australia, they may be from Pakistan, they may be from anywhere.
You meet people who may be doing occupational therapy, chemical engineering, law etc. It is where you can meet really interesting people to hang out with over the week and possibly in future, around the school as well or you might get to meet a course mate.
2) You also get to meet people from your own country. University of Nottingham is very popular for Medicine and Law, especially among the Malaysians and Singaporeans. Most of the time if you encounter a Malaysian or Singaporean on campus, if you ask them what are they studying, it's usually either of the two.
I managed to make friends with a bunch of Singaporeans and Malaysians there. I even met one of my coursemate (which was really rare) who shared the same birthdate as me ! So now, we always spend time together and the trip to our campus was filled with fun and laughter.
I also spent some part of my Christmas break with the Malaysian friends and I had a blast of a time. It's always important to have friends who are from your own country.
Yes, making friends with home students (Brits) or students from other countries is very exciting. But it is always, always nice to have people from your own country because you have common topics. You can always go lah, leh, loh, hor, meh, and other Singlish terms without having to correct or explain yourself.
It's very liberating. I promise. There are also some topics that can only ever be understood if you are a Singaporean or from your own country.
3) Orientation week is the time you learn your bearings around. It was this week where I registered for university, set up bank account, registered for NHS etc. A few points to make.
You can still do the above even if you don't go for the orientation meant for international students or orientation in general. But it just makes your life a bit more difficult than it should be. As an international, I believe you have more than enough to stress about already. Don't make life more difficult for yourself, if possible.
This is the time where the orientation leaders will bring you around the campus, point out to you the different facilities on campus and what you need to take note of etc. It would do you good to take note and ask questions about things. Eg. Where to get hopper bus timings (if your campus/uni have such things)
Another thing to remember, for Singaporeans, we are used to having food in the canteen/food halls every hour of the day. But this is not the case here. You have to take note of the timing when lunch is served (usually say about 12pm - 2pm, depending) and when dinner is served (5.30pm - 7pm, for me). Don't get too comfy, thinking that food would still be available at 3pm. But once again, timing may vary from university to university. If you are lucky, you might just have a university with a food hall that serves from morning to night.
Other things to know would probably be, take note of the location of your student service centre, international students office, book store, bank and cash points as well as libraries. These are probably the few important places to take note of other than your hall of residence and lecture halls.
We will talk more about banks later. I suppose.
4) You are only a fresher once.
Now, this applies to both activities for international students and those for all freshers. Some activities are only available for freshers. So if you don't take part in it, you are losing out. Which is unfortunately what happened for me and I regretted not being a bit more whimsical and daring.
If you made friends during international freshers week, you can then all go along for freshers activities together which is pretty awesome ! And there are a lot of activities to go to, and they are free ! So just take your pick and go along ! You might even make new friends ! Even if you are not the clubbing/party type, which happens to be usually what orientation activities are like, it's fine because I am sure that the university planned other activities for people who enjoy quiet.
3) Banks? Choices?
On University of Nottingham, for international students, they usually would conduct some bank account opening during the international freshers' week. If your university doesn't have such a thing or you missed out, no worries.
For me, things were a little simpler because on campus, there were only 2 banks - Natwest & Santander. Both banks have their pros and cons, depending on what you are looking for. Santander requires a monthly fee of £5 but, you could bank in an international cheque every month and there are a few other things, I think some Telegraphic transfer (TT) stuff as well. But I went with Natwest because I was put off by the £5 monthly thing.
I am a poor student, it's almost mandatory for me to be poor but I really don't want to be poorer than I should be for paying £5 every month. But if you use international cheque very often, the savings might be worth the monthly fee. So choose based on your situation and check what Santander can offer you. Most of what Santander could offer me wasn't of use to me since I don't TT much or use international cheque much.
Other than Natwest, Santander, there's also Barclays, Lloyds (which my senior recommend), nationwide, HSBC etc. HSBC might be a good choice for the rich ones. If you can open a HSBC premier account, I think there are some benefits that goes with it. But alas, I am not a rich kid so I didn't pay attention to what the sales person was saying when they were pushing me to open a HSBC account.
Barclays is also a very popular choice with people here, other than Lloyds. The thing is, you can always first open an account with Natwest/Santander or whatever bank it is which is not your first choice, then transfer your money or settle in first, before coming another account at the bank of your choice and then close the first account.
Try to go for a bank with good interest rate or good deals. I just cannot be bothered and just stuck with Natwest which was very easy for me to deposit and withdraw money etc.
4) TT Money/Allowance
TT money only when you have to, such as paying for your tuition fees or accommodation fees. Everytime you TT money, it's at least SGD 25 because of handling charges etc, not to mention other fees that might pay in.
For me, whenever I hit a new month, my mum would put my allowance in my Singapore POSB account and then I would draw from a local ATM here in the UK before putting my allowance into my UK bank account. Why? Because everytime I draw from the ATM, it's only SGD5 being deducted and if I draw only once a month, it's a lot lesser than TT-ing my allowance over and it's less hassle. But I usually do it at my bank's ATM, so that I could instantly deposit my money into my account without fear of being robbed etc.
5) Water
Water in UK would definitely taste different, depending on where you are living. Most areas are hard water though there are some places with soft water.
(Picture taken from: x)
This website here gives a list of the counties and what type of water they have. Unfortunately, for me, I live in an area where the water is hard. And we always get a lot of limescale in our water. Advice is to either boil your water all the time (depends, sometimes it wouldn't help if your water is permanent hard water) or even better, invest in a water filter jug.
My water filter jug is from BRITA and it's the really cheap one that I got off Amazon for like £16 I think with 3 or 4 filter cartridges. I can't remember the exact number of cartridges I got as a bundle or the exact price but it should be in the range.
The filtered water tasted really different and tasted so much nicer. I WONDER WHY THE HELL I WAITED SO LONG TO DO THIS.
Oh, and you might experience increased hairfall/hairloss when you just arrive and start drinking their hardwater. I was so afraid that I was balding wtf. I don't know if it's placebo effect or what, but my increased hairloss problem seems to be gone now.
6) Apps for the students
The most important thing ever for students: sales/discounts/deals. There's probably three apps that I would recommend.
- Unidays
- Wowcher
- FeaturePoints
For students, especially girls, all these would definitely be extremely useful. [I mean Wowcher and UniDays, but yes, the Currency exchange is also important when you want to transfer large sum of money]
UniDays is an app where you can either use instore or online. It is filled to the brim with tons of students discounts ! When you go into shops like Dorothy Perkins, sometimes you would see notice like flash your UniDays app at the counter to receive a 10% discount off your total or something like that. It is very useful for those who loves shopping.
UniDays is an app where you can either use instore or online. It is filled to the brim with tons of students discounts ! When you go into shops like Dorothy Perkins, sometimes you would see notice like flash your UniDays app at the counter to receive a 10% discount off your total or something like that. It is very useful for those who loves shopping.
And if you love online shopping, fret not !
Just filter through the offers, click online offers and there would be a list of shops !
Click the one you want, then you would have a discount code to use when you check out ! Easy peasy and saves money !
Just filter through the offers, click online offers and there would be a list of shops !
Click the one you want, then you would have a discount code to use when you check out ! Easy peasy and saves money !
Next up is wowcher. Not an important thing or a must have but it would be useful to have it. It's a little like groupon and there are many deals available on it. Some are location based and some are good for vacation because they have offers on accommodation and it's really cheap at times.
Read the fine prints though ! So you know what you are getting into. [Some are limited to one only etc]
Last but not least, FeaturePoints. Basically, you earn points by trying out new apps and with the points, you can get rewards such as cash to your Paypal, Amazon vouchers, iTunes cash, etc etc. You need quite a bit of points though ! You can't search the app through the appstore so you would have to pop down to the website and download it via there !
Btw, my code is YMR49A !
7) Discounts, Sales and everything more
Now, we always want to stretch our dollars so if it's always advantageous to apply for cards or membership or sign up for newsletters so you would always know what offers are up ! Advice is, create another email just for such things so that you won't get bombarded with all the emails on your main email account where you use it for like school work or other memberships in general.
You could always link up both email accounts on your phone (because we are a slave to our phones, so you would most likely never miss an email) and check it or if you are using chrome, you can always have 2 email accounts accessing chrome and switch between them when you need to check your email. I always have my 2 accounts open on chrome.
Currently, I am a member of Boots, Waterstones, Tasteclub (as part of NatWest's publicity thing), signed up for L'Occitane's newsletter and also NationalRail 16-25 card.
Membership/discount cards are always good if you are going to always be patronizing a store. And even if you don't, it's still good. Remember to apply for Tesco Club card if you are going to always shop at Tesco, or a Sainsbury's Nectar card. It's always wonderful to earn points and get vouchers, especially because you would definitely be using those supermarkets for the course of your study.
Being in the UK means that you are very likely to travel to other parts of UK, be it via train (national rail) or coach (national express). Before I came over, someone on my tumblr told me to use Train Line to search for cheap train tickets. And if you want to travel overseas, it's good to check out skyscanner for cheap air tickets !
If you foresee yourself travelling by rail very often, get yourself a 16-25 rail card to enjoy 1/3 of your fares off ! There's a similar card thing if you want to travel by coach !
8) Amazon Prime
This is probably a life saver. You get a 6months trial when you sign up with your university email. I can't remember the link of where I managed to get myself signed up. But if you manage to find where to do it, go for it. You get 6 months free and you can cancel after that/before that ! Awesome !
You get free one day delivery and a whole load of other stuff to go along with it ! So check it out !
9) Library is your best friend.
The library is honestly going to be your best friend and life saver. In year one, you probably would need plenty of textbooks and the kicker is that, you might not ever use them again and they cost a lot to buy. I would say that, save that money if it's textbooks for a module that you won't ever be needing again. The library would definitely have those reference books that are being used for your reading and you might need to wait a little in the beginning, but it appears that after a while, the demand decreases so you should be able to get them fairly easily.
The library is your best friend, be it as a study space, free from distractions, or as a space where you go to for books for your assignments or to print things out. Check out if you get free printing credits (UoN does) and etc. Use the school printers and scanners to your heart's content.
But if you are constantly printing out your notes, you might consider buying a fairly cheap printer and the ink should last you a while if you only print grey-scale. Leave the colour printing to the library printers (and your free printer credits).
10) Recorded lectures are going to save your ass.
I cannot emphasize this enough. My university uses Echo360 to record all the lectures and I thank God for that because it really made life so much easier when I need to go back and check out what I missed out during lecture (and also if I fell asleep).
If your lectures are not being recorded, ask your lecturers beforehand if you could record the lecture down or video it down etc for revision purposes. It would make your life easier. But the thing is, if you are going to record the lecture, sometimes there might be a lot of interference in the background so you might want to take that into consideration and either record it far away from people or take note to minimise disruptions being recorded into the recording.
11) Take part in university life.
As true as it is that you are here to earn a degree, don't forget to live life as a university student. Go and attend extra seminars/lectures held by the school, go and take part in societies and socials, go and do volunteering work etc.
All these experiences would make your university life more colourful, allow you to reach out to a wider group of people, meet new people and make new friends, enhance your CV and widen your horizon.
If you are in a society, try and get a committee position so that you could learn some soft skills, gain some leadership experience, etc. It is worth it, I promise.
And I think that's the end of the 1st part of the survival guide. Second one would probably be about living with flatmates etc.
If anyone is reading this and would like to know more, just comment I guess ?
No comments:
Post a Comment