A confession of every tragic reality of living in a second year house

Securing a student house can be overwhelming for many people, however, this may help to demonstrate that if us second year students can do it, you can too.

Once the formality of the hunt is complete, you will soon digress back into those typical student habits that are better kept behind closed doors.

Student living is a bizarre experience (especially in Portswood) and there are some things you can rely on: the classic types of housemate you will encounter, the feelings you may experience during the first few months of moving in and the lifestyle change from cosy halls to mould-filled houses.

This is the reality of student living (the great, the odd and the very ugly) that second and third years can joyfully relate to, and first years can look forward to.

You learn how quirky your friends really are

Having moved in with people who I didn't live with in first year, I had the weird and wonderful experience of witnessing and learning all the abnormal behaviours of my housemates. One chews their drinks, hot or cold, you name it – my housemate literally chews their tea to an audible degree. Another that always manages to pull a fresher on every night out, and the other who has more fast-food than home-cooked meals. To stay sane, I had to quickly adapt but of course, they have to put up with me so it is difficult to say who is better off.

See – weird and wonderful

Some housemates will motivate you, others will defo be a distraction

You will usually always have two or more housemates with different views on student priorities. One of my housemates will be the first to offer help with writing essays, whilst the other will discourage me from doing uni work. So instead, we sit on the sofas together for four hours straight and stress about how behind we are with said uni work. This is also where we reflect on the advantages of our house, and we no longer have to sit on garish plastic chairs in hall kitchens.

One will invite you for a full day library date, and will motivate you when you're clearly looking for a distraction, whilst the other will demand you to skip a seminar because their ASOS delivery should arrive in that same time slot. We need support for spending too much money online shopping (for study materials, obviously), therefore we can't fault this housemate's level of devotion.

Sofa: the place for study and the place for sleep

Money problems are still a big issue

Despite the benefits of living in your first student house as a second year, you realise how much you took for granted in first year accommodation. With bills being included in your halls fees, you don't realise how expensive gas, electric and water is. The halls radiator which smells like burning five seconds after being switched on and the bathroom light you leave on out of fearing the dark are no more.

The laundry washes (let us shed a tear for tumble dryers). Trying to dry clothes on an airer in your already-damp bedroom in five degrees celsius makes you miss the comfort of halls. On the bright side, when paying rent monthly, you feel richer for longer when you receive that well-awaited student loan. This money, of course, is spent on Deliveroo before you can count it.

It's so worth it tho x

The constant mess of the place

Living in a house, you forget your fear of the student-hating cleaner who crashed around the kitchen in halls on a weekly basis. Dishes will be left for days on end, until hallelujah, one of your housemate's parents are coming to visit, which insists on the house finally being cleaned.

Note: if the place isn't untidy and dirty, something will be broken. I have lived in my house for under three months, and already we have suffered a broken freezer, shower that always ran cold water and a sparky microwave that eventually gave up. We also had the fence blown down and the previous tenants stealing the shelves in the second fridge.

Zero per cent of this is mine just saying

Nevertheless, you quickly settle in and begin to fear moving out again

Regardless of the state of your abode, or the obscure habits you didn't realise people could even have, you discover that living with people you care about makes university deadlines that little bit easier to bare. Despite your differences in background, aspirations and personalities, you will make friends for life that will shape the rest of your university journey for the better.