Quick guide to choosing student housing

On housemates, houses and landlords

Housing Awareness Week at the University of Surrey has just passed around the corner, so I hope a good number of you made use of the information on offer. However for those of you who weren't listening, or are simply a little bit behind on what’s happening on campus these days (this is usually me), here are my tips from experience.
On finding a house:

• Find out what is important to you in terms of location to university and shops, ease of access to transport, the price and the amount of space. Be prepared to make compromises with your housemates. Then you can start looking for a house that will suit everyone. 
• Try to not get distracted by the current tenants’ belongings – look out for evidence of mould or damp, whether the house has adequate locks for security, is it easy to keep warm? 
• Ask what furniture and appliances will stay with the house when you move in and what you might want to supply yourself. 
• Check whether any bills are included in the rent. Water bills usually are. 

On housemates:

By second or third year, I bet you feel you have a pretty good idea who your true friends are. Even better if you have friends that you feel share the same values as you in terms of cleaning, sharing and your place on the sliding scale of money vs. comfort. Well done! But once living together, you might find you’re not so similar after all. People have different ideas of what is clean or how often cleaning should be done, so that bitching session you had together about a previous housemate isn't necessarily a good indicator of your friend’s perspectives.

If problems do arise, try to solve them face to face rather than leaving notes. If you don’t think you’ll be comfortable being honest with the friend in question, then question whether you are going to be compatible as housemates. You don’t have to ruin a friendship this way!

On landlords:
If you have trouble communicating or negotiating with a landlord, university Student Advice centres are really helpful for sorting out queries and giving you a clear idea of the usual procedures. They might also know a bit about the landlord to inform you what they are like.



Meanwhile, it’s been fun browsing through the estate agent brochures that come through the door, imagining what I might do with that £3m+ house in Godalming or Haslemere.

I wish you the best of luck on your housing adventure, and leave you with some pictures of some utterly cool and crazy houses from around the world:

Upside-down house (Getorff, Germany)

The Nautilus house (Mexico)

Cubic houses (Rotterdam, Netherlands)

The UFO house, (Sanjhih, Taiwan)

The smallest house in Great Britain (Conwy, Wales)

Cut straight into the rock: stone house (Romania)

Real-life Hobbit-like house (Wales)

Another upside-down house

The Crooked House (Sopot, Poland)

Read the rest of The Stag Issue 56

How to (re)start on the right foot and stay motivated at university

This is an article I had fun co-writing with fellow Psychology final year Megan Cherry (see her LinkedIn profile!)  It was great to share ideas and find out that feeling demotivated is far from being a rare thing after the lack of a proper Christmas break owing to the long hard slog of January exams.

Exams are finally over, HOORAY! I don’t know about you but we’re happy to see the back of the library. However, for many of you (including us two) the work doesn't end when exams do.  It would be nice to have a few weeks off and if you’re a fresher you can probably afford to do this but as final years, there isn't much room to slow down. 

We have now reached a period of post-exam calm where everything feels like it might turn out OK and you may even be looking forward to starting new modules.

Image source: Everest

But just because a fresh start is presented, you can’t expect to tackle the work in the same way as before and expect not to be laden with as much stress and pressure as what we just went through. 

Now is the perfect time to think about what you have learnt from the experience, look at what worked for you and what didn't  and actually implement changes to help you cope better, be more efficient and therefore enjoy more well-earned free time for all the other things you love to do.

From a pair of final years who've been through the mill, here are our tips for starting the next semester on the right foot:

• Break tasks down. For a big assignment like a final year project, dissertation or ones that just feel colossal, it is better to divide them into smaller parts – you will feel good about yourself when you complete each part and it will help you stay committed

• Set targets! Be specific when you want to complete each part and reward yourself when you do by going out with friends or just taking some time out to do what you enjoy. Rather than setting yourself the whole day to work on an assignment, it is better to split the day up with an allotted time for working and time spent on socializing and activities. Otherwise, you could set yourself the whole day to work and end up procrastinating until late afternoon.

• Finding it difficult to start? If you are finding an assignment particularly difficult, work on the easier tasks first to build confidence.

• Get into the style you will be examined in. Do you get a lot of essays for coursework and exams? When doing lecture reading, don’t just copy down the material – try to write about it as if you are explaining it, think about what it links to and jot down any ‘critical thinking’ that might have popped into your head! This will speed up the process when it actually comes to planning the essay.

We know that everyone studies differently but we have found these tips to be useful in the past and hope they will be helpful for you too!

Image created by Bryan

You might also like:

TED Talk: Nature, Beauty,
Gratitude by Louie Schwartzberg

Read the rest of The Stag Issue 55