Good advice
Here are a few steps you can take to ease yourself gently into University life, as recommended by students who have gone through the experience:

Arrive in good time
It's a good idea to arrive early on the first day and spend some time settling into your room. The first few days are chaotic, so you probably won't get the chance again until the end of freshers' week. Unpacking with your door propped open means you get to at least smile at your neighbours as they go through the same process as you.

Be prepared
Make sure you know beforehand where you have to be and at what time. Don't be afraid to ask if you aren't sure where you should be going!

Don't panic!
This is really important. It always looks like everyone else is more in control than you are, but everyone is in the same boat and probably feeling just as confused as you are!

Anyone for tea?
Take the initiative and take the opportunity to make yourself known. Go for lunch with people, buy tea bags and offer whoever's about cups of tea. You will find that these first, often awkward conversations result in some of the most lasting friendships.

Don't miss out
Never feel excluded. If you hear rumours that something is going on, don't wait for someone to invite you - just turn up, or tag along. Freshers' week is not the time to be shy. It is a general free for all, and there will be plenty of other stuff to do.

Ask for help
Don't ever stop to think about asking for help if you need it.

Get involved
Leave yourself enough time for the Freshers Fair, and sign up to absolutely everything that appeals to you. The result of this afternoon of madness will be several useless free gifts and an inbox full of annoying e-mails from the Trinity Foot-beagling Association.

However, at least some of the activities you signed up for will reveal talents you never even knew you wanted, let alone had.

'When I flew over from America I remember being very nervous an feeling kind of out of place until a group of second year students invited me to 'tea' (a novel experience for an American) in one of their rooms. We sat for hours chatting and I found out all the gossip!'- Ginny Bonovia, Archaeology and Anthropology.

My school didn't have a history of sending people to Oxbridge; most of my friends thought I was crazy to want to go at all. I remember saying that I would hate it 'because everyone there will be scarily posh and I'll get there, a bit of a hippie, and there will be nobody at all who I can talk to."

So I packed up my stuff, right at the last moment as a sort of gesture of defiance. I think that arriving earlier in the day would have been a better idea, so that I could get my room to something like a state of homeliness.

I then had to buy a gown. I felt so lost, so alone, so ignorant as the porters explained how to wear it that I almost burst into tears. Everyone else seemed so self-assured and there was I, trying to get to grips with this insane place that looked like a stately home, being served tea on the lawn, and I couldn't talk because I was afraid of spilling my tea. I thought: 'I will never fit in here.'

It wasn't until the evening, when we all put our normal clothes back on, that I realized my mistake. These people had been as scared of me as I had been of them. It turned out later that they were the friendliest, most good-humored group of people I have ever met. I met most of my closest friends that afternoon.

From that evening on I was happy, and at home. We were adopted as a group by the second and third year and all drank far more than we should. It was the atmosphere, an atmosphere that I now recognize as being one specifically Corpus; it is a kind of general feeling of good will and a determination to enjoy ourselves that runs through everything that happens here.- Jessie Greengrass, Philsophy

'In my first term, I met lots of friendly people, especially in Corpus itself, as it is so small that you can get to know most of the people in college. The older years were also really welcoming and helped make us feel at home as a year really quickly.'- Andy Pearson, Mathematics