Preparing for University

Hi there!

It has been quite a long time since I posted a proper blog on here, so here goes nothing...

In just under 4 weeks time, I will be embarking on the biggest journey in my life to date. I will be moving to the city of Cambridge and I will become a undergraduate student at Girton College, Cambridge University.

And oh boy, am I scared.

Yup. Really scared.

I am currently in a very strange position. Since the beginning of the year, I have known that I had a guaranteed place at the university I have been dreaming about since I was a little girl. I was about 7 or 8 when I first decided I wanted to go to university and when I first decided that that university had to be Cambridge. I wanted so badly to go there, that I took a year out simply to reapply for Cambridge, based on a night of insomnia. For a long time, I felt very excited about leaving for university, because it was so far away that it didn't really feel like it was going to happen.

Well now..now, I know it's really. Because I have to do all the boring, horrible things to prepare for it, which makes me cry in the middle of the night.

Things I've Done to Prepare:

1. Try out so many budget apps you would not believe. My loan does not cover my accommodation and therefore I've had to make decisions about where to get a student account, how to pay my rent, how much money to accept from my parents, how many hours to work a week and how I'm going to keep track of all this. I've been puzzling about this for weeks and tried so many apps that seemed to make the muddle in my brain much more confusing than it had been before I entered the information into the app. Finally today, a friend put me onto an app that I think my tiny brain can deal with. 
2. Teach myself basic Arabic. So, Cambridge put on their AMES a worksheet for you to work through before you arrive. I started working through this by copying out the Arabic alphabet as best I could, before I was fortunate enough to be offered a language swap with a Palestinian. In return for teaching him French, he would help me with my Arabic. When I proudly showed him my work up until that point, he chortled for 5 minutes straight...but despite that, we got on very well for several weeks and now I can introduce myself, write my name and count to 10! 
3. Buy all my course books. I spent a ridiculous amount of time and money on my course books. The Arabic textbook has DVDs that are essential for the course. I was super chuffed when I found a copy for a tenner instead of the usual £30!! However, the thing they failed to tell me was that this copy came without the essential DVDs...I then bought what I thought were the DVDs and was promised I could return them for a full refund if incorrect. They were not what I needed, but yet there is no sign of my refund yet....finally, one of my books for French was so difficult to get hold of, I had to wait until the 2nd years were selling theirs.
4. Spend time with my family. I've dedicated the weekends to seeing my family. My time is divided between seeing my parents, brother and niece (who all live together) and seeing my boyfriend's mum. This weekend however, my sister and her husband came up to wish me luck for Cambridge and we had a lovely weekend relaxing and eating and picking blackberries. 
5. COOKING. Before this year, I had no interest in cooking and very little interest in baking. Now I can't get enough! Because I will be in catered halls for the entirety of my course (what a blessing!), I am frantically squeezing in as much cooking/baking as I can! In the last week alone I have made a huge quantity of yellow plum and vanilla jam, 4 earl grey jellies and jam and cream macarons. I have plans to make scones and a blackberry cake this week, to use up the leftover buttercream icing and jam. 

So all in all, these things aren't making me feel any better about going away. I keep worrying about having to try new things, meet new people and get back into studying. I'm sure I'll get back in the swing of it. However, any tips would be gratefully received ;-)