February 16, 2015, by Sunita Tailor

How to pick housemates

This blog post was written by second year English student, Katie Randall from the School of English.

Introductions are something I’ve never been very good at, but here goes. Readers my name is Katie Randall and I’m a second year English student from London. I’m a total coffee addict, travel freak and secret folk music enthusiast (shh). This semester, one of the modules I’ve chosen to take is Literature and Popular Culture – the fact that I get to watch Sherlock as part of my degree surely proves that English really is the best course out there! Student living poses many trials and tribulations and hopefully my monthly blogs will address some of those issues. This post: second year housing.

Whether you chose to be catered or self-catered for your first year, in second year most of you will abandon hall life and move into an actual house in one of the three student areas surrounding the university; Beeston, Dunkirk or the popular, albeit more expensive, Lenton. For those of you who live in Broadgate or Raleigh Park, the experience of sharing a living space with people that aren’t your family will be nothing new, however I am told on good authority that if you stayed in catered halls, moving into a real shared house brings many an unexpected challenge.

Obviously there are universal problems unique to student living- trying not to kill the person who has used the last of your milk, discovered only once you’ve put your crunchy nut in the bowl, and enlisting help to start a witch-hunt to find the housemate who used your Cath Kidson tea towel to clean his football boots. As catered halls only provides a taste of this independence, do not be surprised at the seemingly large capacity of your freezer to store ready-meal lasagne, or if your housemates from Cripps or Willoughby marvel at the speed loo roll diminishes when they have to pay for it.

Although the majority of you will have already signed for a house or flat by now, having decided who you’re going to live with, inevitably there will be some people who are panicking because they haven’t already decided who they’re going to live with. Honestly, it doesn’t really matter where you live. If I were to give any advice about picking your second year home, it would be to try and find housemates you actually like. This might seem like a given, but if you have any concerns it’s better to raise them sooner than later or risk facing awkward kitchen encounters for the rest of the year. Oh and if you can sort it, bills included is deffo the way forward- Nottingham gets really, really cold in January.

Happy house hunting everyone!

 

• Share on Facebook
• Share on Twitter
• Share on Google+
• Share on LinkedIn