My name is Jessica Foster and I am just about to go into my final year of studying multimedia journalism, in my first year I lived in Lyme Regis House.

I chose Lyme Regis House as my accommodation block as it is one of the cheaper halls and it had the reputation of being lively, which was important to me as I wanted to make a lot of friends. I also liked that it is above a Tesco Express and that it is made up of five-bed cluster flats, which I thought was a reasonable number of housemates.

Living in Lyme Regis was great and the location was extremely convenient. The university buses come every 10 minutes and everything is within walking distance – the beach, ASDA, the nightclubs and the town centre. Opposite the halls is the Old Fire Station, Bournemouth University’s student night club and event venue. This made any university event or student night like Lollipop (on a Friday night) easy to attend. Most importantly I felt safe walking to and from the club on my own. Another great thing about living in Lyme is having an en-suite. and the common room is fantastic to socialise and study in. There are a number of comfy sofas, two large seating booths, three table-mounted iPad’s, a bookable meeting room, a TV corner and even a bookable kitchen for larger groups of students to cook together!

Moving away from home where I was wrapped up in cotton wall was daunting. I had never done my own washing, ironing or cleaning and I only knew how to cook a few basic meals. But don’t worry – everyone is in the same boat and you all help each other out. In just a couple of weeks I was ironing my own shirts, cleaning up after myself and I had mastered how to use a washing machine and a dryer. Doing all of these basic domestic tasks on my own has set me up better for later life and I felt so proud of myself in the first couple of weeks once I had tackled them! Another worry I had when first moving to university was how safe I would be in my new accommodation block. Let me assure you, living in Lyme Regis is extremely safe. You have your own key fob to enter the building, there is someone at reception 24 hours a day, as well as on-site security and the whole building is monitored by CCTV.

My favourite part about living in Lyme Regis was living so close to my friends and other students that I could easily go visit and hang out with them. It really did make moving away from home much easier as I never felt lonely because there was always a friend I could go and see in the same building.

What would I do if I was a fresher again? I would have gone out partying more and definitely joined more societies such as RAG. It would have been great to have had some experience volunteering and had done something completely wild and different, whilst fundraising for a worthwhile cause.

Originally published on Nerve Media.

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