What will help me survive at Uni?

General ideas of things you would need to make your uni life more comfortable, easy and productive (And frugal by the by!). This is assuming you have your accomodation sorted for the year...

1. Good telephone contract (Virgin and other have great deals for £10 a month or so. Perfect for students).

2. Transport. Some Uni's offer discounted transport for their students within the reaches of their campuses. Its best to take advantage of this sooner rather than later.

3. A wallet or planner to keep your student ID cards, transport, Library, gym and any other membership cards together in a safe place.

4. 2 sets of bed linen & towels, so that when one is in the wash, you can use the other

5. Collapsable clothes horse (save money and the environment by not using a tumble-dryer)

6. Portable Laundry Basket or bag (some supermarket 'environmental' woven bags are cheap, look lovely and hold about a machine's wash of clothes at one time)

7. Young Person's Coachcard (£10 http://www.nationalexpress.com/coach/Offers/index.cfm); 16-25 Railcard (£30 http://www.railcard.co.uk/) and any other discount transportation is essential for visiting friends, family or going away for a weekend or easter break.

8. Lots of Passport sized photos (its amazing how many of these you get through in a year)

9. A Facebook account is helpful, not just for keeping track of new friends, but also for administration of groupwork, and finding out about events and societies within the Uni.

10. A wok (cooks everything!) a medium sized saucepan, a sieve, a sharp knife, Cutlery, Crockery, teatowels, tupperwares, baking tray

11. A Laptop with a webcam (macbook macbook macbook!) to Skype overseas friends and family.

12. A bike, if your home is far from your campus, its a great way to keep fit, as well as protect the environment (obviously a bike lock and insurance as well)

13. lots of copies of you CV, Passport and/or student Visa for work and residence purposes

14. An alarm clock (for those lovely 0800am lectures. Preferably one other than your cellphone, anything to nobble our dependency on phones!)

15. I will add more as I think of them. Suggestions WELCOME!

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What will I need to study at Uni?

OK, so this post is more a channel for me to express my undying love for stationary. Apologies as it is also quite UK-Centric, but I guess it would generally apply to any country really. As a student aiming for a first-class degree, I found the following items either essential or very helpful for studying throughout the year. As a language student, some of them are quite languages-specific, but I've added a list of general bits and pieces I know friend's in other disciplines have found helpful.

General

1. Diary or Daily Planner(with 1 day to a page, or 2 to pencil in lectures, seminars, classes, meetings, and see how much time is left over for other things)

2. Pencils, erasers, sharpeners (to pencil things into the diary :P) *

3. Pens (Black, Blue, Green and Red for staple Uni work)*

4. Coloured felt-tips, pencils, crayons, pens ( Most people work and remember better when using colour, in notes, mind maps, diary etc)

5. Highlighters (Invaluable for presentations, seminar readings and notes)

6.Staplers, paper clips, plastic folders (to hold the bits and pieces of paper you will invariably be given in bulk for each course)

7. File-Folders (One big one with lots of dividers so everything is in one place, or one per subject/course so that your load is lighter to carry)

8. Clear pencil case to keep it all in (clear because most uni's stipulate a clear pencil case during exams, so it saves buying another one. You can also clearly see what's there and what's missing)

9. Index Cards/Revision note flashcards (handy for presentations, flashcard learning, and small and handy to carry around)

10. Post-its (to keep pages in books, and to clearly mark things. Different colours also help organisation, perhaps colour-coded according to subject)

11. Audio-recorder thingy (to record lectures to listen to at a later date, or upload on your mp3 to revise whilst doing something else)

12. File, Box File or attractive Box (to store returned assignments and last year's material in case you need it again) or you could RECYCLE !!!

13. Lined & Plain Paper, or Exercise notebooks (again could be colour-coded according to subject, but trust me, you can never have enough of these!)

14. An Address book, to note specialist vocab, or new spellings (any book with A-Z somewhere, or you could make your own)

15. A comfy book-bag, over the shoulder or backpack to carry it all in (emphasis on Comfy!)

*it's best to buy a whole pack of these at the beginning of the year, not only will it work out cheaper, but you won't have to worry about running out of supplies during exam or assignment period

A few subject specific supplies:

1. Dictionaries, thesaurus' (thesauri?) Phrasebooks for languages*

2. Grammar exercise workbooks for languages*

3. Audio recorders (Essential)

4. Calculators (University's usually recommend which are required for specific courses)

5. Geometry sets

6. Laptop**

7. Graph paper/note books

*Before buying instore, often second hand or even first hand editions can be bought for a fraction of the selling price online (ebay/amazon etc) or from students who did the same course the year before. I bought 6 coursebooks (priced between £7-£12 each) for around £1-3 each online and from ex-students.

**If you plan your time and work right, you should be able to rely on the Uni's own computer workstations. although a laptop does make working more flexible, most good uni's should have more than enough computers for their students.

Acknowlegdements to Stella Cottrell's Study Skills Handbook for inspiration http://www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?is=1403911355 HIGHLY recommended for anyone embarking on ANY course of Study.