Coming to university, one of the biggest challenges for me was always going to be making friends. At the same time, I was very excited!
Making friends: the best part of my uni experience
I love my friends at home dearly but I have been so lucky to meet such a wide variety of people since starting here at York. Making new friends was the thing I was most stressed about before arriving. However, it’s become one of my favourite parts of the university experience!
The first people I met and befriended were my flatmates. We have got along so well that we still have dinners together every night. Next, I began meeting my course mates. Even though everyone was super nice, I struggled to make friends in my course. Coming from a different school system and having not done many of the same A Levels as the majority of my course mates made me quite insecure. Many conversations centred around their previous study so I felt like I couldn’t really join in.
Making friends through volleyball
I knew that I still wanted to keep trying to meet new people. So, at Freshers’ Fair, I signed up to try a lot of different societies in the hopes of meeting more people who like the same things as me. The society that helped me best achieve this is the volleyball team. Right from try-outs, I was talking to loads of different girls from different courses, years, and colleges. Those two hours were so much fun! I ended up making the women’s second team and that’s where the fun really began.
Our team is made up of nine very different women all brought together by our love of volleyball. There are two other Freshers on my team, one of whom is in my college. We have breakfast and dinner together whenever we have matches or training. There’s also an international exchange student from Italy who we’ve had a lot of fun teaching them local British culture. There’s someone studying Medicine, a Natural Sciences student, and a third year who’s on my course. That has been super helpful as she’s given me all the best tips! There are two other 3rd years as well, one who studies Psychology and another who studies Economics.
Volleyball, socials and karoake: winning!
In just one term, we’ve become very close as a team. As well as weekly socials, we’ve had a couple weekend dinners together out in town. We go to matches almost every week and I ended up being asked to drive the minivan to away matches. Nine girls in a minivan on the way to a volleyball match produces the perfect mixture of loud karaoke, fascinating discussions, hair plaiting, and advice on course related issues. Those drives have become some of my highlights of every week alongside, of course, the games where we play hard, work together, and put our all into winning together.
I have loved every minute of volleyball so far, on and off the court. I can’t wait for next term!
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