How to survive your placement year

Placement can be pretty tough. You have to live away from your housemates and pretend to be an adult full-time.

Your squad’s Whatsapp chat is blowing up after a hectic night at Fuzzies while you’re on the bus to work, wondering why life is so cruel. You might be lucky enough to live at uni whilst on placement, but hearing your friends complain about their 1pm lectures can get tiring pretty fast.

Get used to the 6am sunrises

Go hard at weekends

Do I even have to say this? So you miss a few mid-week benders, but living for the weekend is a life you’ll have to get used to. Your housemate drunk a whole litre of vodka and did a line of ket on a Tuesday night? Well drink two litres and snort two lines. Just because you work full-time doesn’t mean you’re not fun. People will forget about you if you don’t go out on your weekends off, and alcohol withdrawal is real. You have a lot of drinking to make up for.

Food, and lots of it

Don’t do what I did and faint the first time you meet your supervisor because you only had cookies for breakfast. It doesn’t go down too well and everyone thinks you’re a pussy. Keep an unlimited supply of biscuits on you at any point – this prepares you for a day of fun-filled learning. A sugar high is the only kind of high you’re gonna get for now so might as well embrace it. Other recommended foods may include nuggets, haribo’s and other energy rich snacks.

Skype

An obvious one, but something I didn’t consider until my second placement. It also comes in real handy for cam-sex with your long-distance bae. Constant phone-calls can get boring and the phone bill can also get pretty shocking. Putting Skype on and seeing all your housemates cooking in the kitchen can make you feel at home, yet also homesick at the same time.

Binge

On anything. Alcohol is okay – don’t get drunk every weeknight but knowing you have a bottle of wine in the fridge at the ready always eases the pain. Do what you need to do to get through it, whether that includes eating a whole pack of cocktail sausages a night or watching back to back episodes of Come Dine with Me. I even started to learn all the answers to Pointless, and I’m not afraid to admit it. A Netflix binge is also advised. 

I’ll take 12 pls

Moving out

Where to live? Somewhere with pets, preferably. Moving closer to your placement is a big deal, but moving closer to your placement and still having an hour and a half commute every morning is just not okay.

Homeless again

You gotta weigh up the pros and cons – are you ready to fledge the nest of your halls and leave your flatmates behind? Probably not.