Making your student house feel like ‘home’

LIFESTYLE MAKING YOUR UNI HOUSE FEEL LIKE ‘HOME’

Student houses and halls are usually very bland and unhomely when you first move in. Therefore, making them feel cosier and snug is an absolute must to really help you settle in. Adding some home comforts can even provide support if you’re feeling homesick or overwhelmed. A bedroom that reflects your personal style can make a world of difference.

Fairy lights are always a cheap and simple way to make your room feel cosy. There’s nothing nicer than wrapping up in bed with a hot drink while watching a movie. Fairy lights provide the perfect mellow ambience, even if they are a bit of a décor cliché. They can brighten up a room which doesn’t have much natural light. Certainly much more preferable to the usual harsh main bedroom light. <

You can also buy these lights in lots of different styles. Single string lights are sold in most homeware shops and supermarkets. Waterfall lights can look dazzling against a high flat wall behind your bed. Alternatively, LED lights are accessible and can make your room stand out with a pop of colour.

Decorating your uni house to fit your personality can also help to make it feel more like a home. During Welcome Week and throughout the year, the university often hosts poster sales. These are great to put up on the walls in communal spaces like living rooms or kitchens. Perhaps a poster of an artist you and your housemates all like, or a cocktail themed print would spice up pres. Posters are also readily available from a host of online sites, such as Desenio or Junique. However, they can get a bit pricey so keep an eye out for any deals. Another alternative is ordering pictures from Free Prints which you can stick on your bedroom walls to make the walls pop. You could create a pinboard of pictures from Pinterest that fit your aesthetic and see if the collection will look good together before purchasing.

Upcycling items you already have is a great alternative to buying new products. For example, if you have an empty wine bottle and a spare candlestick, light the top and allow the wax to flow onto the wine bottle. Not only does it look aesthetically pleasing, but it’s also making use of items you may have otherwise thrown away.

Plants can make your room feel homely. While a fake plant doesn’t require constant watering and attention, caring for a real plant can be a rewarding hobby. Placing them in colourful pots can give your room that extra bit of colour. Maybe even take a trip to Pot N Kettle in Beeston and paint your own plant pot.

An empty house can seem cold and intimidating when you first move in, yet a few subtle additions can transform it into a home. As the saying goes, ‘home is where the heart is’- as well as some fairy lights, posters and plants…

By Evie Seal

Illustration by Catrin Dimond

Making the most of my year abroad

The year is 2020, the world is at a standstill. People are locked inside for their own safety, planes grounded, borders closed, and to top it all off, Brexit is closing in. I’ll be honest; it wasn’t the best start to a year abroad. I was studying a four year degree with my 3rd year abroad. My plan was to spend five months working in Spain, five months working in France, and then finish it off with two months volunteering in South America. I could not have been more excited!

So you can imagine the chaos that ensued when we went into lockdown. All my carefully laid plans for “the best year of my life” were thrown into uncertainty. Not only was I basically banned from travelling, if I even managed to get on a plane, I faced the very real possibility of being turned away at the border because I held a British passport. Really, I should have given up, unpacked my suitcase, and resigned myself to remaining stuck in the cold, grey and rainy UK. When I found myself saying farewell to my family at East Midlands Airport - boarding pass in hand, destination Valencia - I was so overwhelmed by everything I’d overcome and in complete disbelief that my year abroad was actually happening, that I had a minor breakdown. Actually, I was a mess. A snotty, sobbing mess. All that fuss just to get out of the UK, but how was the year abroad itself? Where did I go? What did I do? How did I adjust? I was always n certain that I wanted to live with native speakers, and that I did not want to study. I was also determined to find an internship so I could gain some work experience. One bonus of working was that it would provide me more opportunities to speak Spanish and French. In Spain, I shared a flat in Valencia with two Spanish girls called Maria and Lilian, who I’m still in regular contact with today. I also secured a job for six months as a junior technical translator at AIMPLAS: Plastics Technology Centre. In France I was hired as a Sales and Tourism Assistant at Domaine Gayda, which is a winery in Brugairolles, a small rural village in Southern France. I lived in the shared house they provided for their interns, who were all French! Two completely different environments, yet each with equally enriching opportunities.

At AIMPLAS, I was responsible for translating Spanish blog posts and articles into English and proofreading pre-translated documents. My days were mostly full of mundane desk work, but it gave me structure and I spoke Spanish the entire time. Whilst I was up before dawn to catch the 40 minute bus out of the city centre to the industrial