Six things you’ll only know if you lived in Portland Green

The dreaded walk

If there is one thing, I’ve heard Portland Green residents complain about the most it is the trek they have to take every day to uni. Although I personally preferred being further from the city centre, I still must admit that completing a 20-minute walk for my 9am lectures was annoying, especially if I was running late.

The calm

With that said, one of the luxuries of being further away from the centre is the relative “peace and quiet” you get to enjoy.

Although Portland Green is still a uni accommodation and you could always hear someone screaming at 3am, it is still better than being in the middle of town life.

The accommodation is also conveniently close to Jesmond Dene, Heaton and Armstrong Park, for when the city gets too much.

The food shop

Food shopping is probably one of the most mundane yet necessary tasks for a university student, which is why I was grateful enough to have so many nearby.

With Tesco being just downstairs in one of the accommodation’s buildings and Sainsbury’s and Morrisons being a short walk away, you can choose where to shop.

I preferred to take a bus for just £1 single ticket to Aldi as it turns out cheaper than any of the supermarkets nearby.

The inconsistency

One thing that boggled my mind was my friends from Newton having a dishwasher and a TV, while I was stuck in Rosedale trying to get a missing microwave in the flat (talking from experience). I quickly found out that all five buildings have different appliances, wall colours and interior designs. So, beware of the neon green wall colour in some of them.

The fire alarm

If you were thinking one fire alarm test would be the only time you would hear that horrifying sound, you were wrong.

As a Portland Green veteran, the fire alarms tend to go off quite often, sometimes in the most inconvenient hours, like in the middle of the night.

So, I’d get out of bed, throw on some clothes and stand outside for 10 minutes, just to be let back in because it was in fact a false alarm. Many wasted minutes of my life I can’t get back.

The staff

The maintenance takes a while to fix things. This is understandable since they are handling five buildings, yet it is still annoying if your fridge is acting like a freezer.

And even though the staff is always friendly and full of smiles, they don’t often handle requests from their residents in the best way.

Alas, I might just have been unlucky and disoriented myself, in the end, what uni student isn’t?

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