Avoid the cliches
Once you have left the familiar suburban streets and company that you have kept since childhood, it is easy to fall into cliches to fulfil some sense of belonging and regain a gauge of who you are now. Your personality has been slowly formed by your routine from home: weekly dinner at your grandparents’; your Saturday job at Sports Direct; it’s all gone and now you’re just a student – whatever that means.
The term ‘student’ shouldn’t define you. This isn’t an episode of Fresh Meat or a feature in the Lad Bible and the stereotypical student is essentially a myth, like the Loch Ness monster or Nick Clegg’s testes (you’ll love jokes like that when you start uni). It is important to find your own identity when you move into your halls. Don’t Blu-Tack a Che Guevara poster to your wall if you voted for the Tories and yeah, Kerouac is great, but the last thing you read was the back of the Deuce Bigalow – European Gigalo DVD case.
Expanding your horizons will come naturally when you move away and discover new things, but squeezing into the template of a stereotype shouldn’t define you. You aren’t going to become a drug taker, law breaker and serial fornicator the second that you’ve unpacked and it is important to maintain your sense of identity. You are the same person after all, just without the Sports Direct polo hanging on the door.