Freshers Week Survival Guide

Students tempted to party hard as they start university life should not neglect their sleep. And milky night time drinks really do help bring on the Zzzs. According to the Independent, over 1 in 5 students are completely teetotal, with the demand for alcohol-free university events growing in popularity amongst freshers this September. While it would be a complete lie to try and tell you that freshers' week has nothing to do with alcohol, it's also not the be all and end all of organised activities.

Unlike school, your university tutors aren't going to be checking up on you to make sure you're getting the essay done, so you'll have to use self-discipline to get started early. Fresher's week is all about making friends and it turns out it's pretty easy if you greet your new flatmates with homemade brownies or even just custard creams - students aren't picky.

Not to put a downer on things but remember that you are at university to study too so you will eventually have to get real and knuckle down. From practical tips on how to get by without mum and dad to how to make sure you make friends, we've drawn upon our experiences (and mistakes!) from freshers weeks' gone by, to give you our ten top tips to get through it all.

My Freshers' Week started with the Freshers' Committee (ie the rugby team) herding all of the male freshers into what resembled some sort of rudimentary bomb shelter, whereupon a group of brave and ill-advised volunteers (not including me, thankfully) were then coerced into a competition whereby they had to down supermarket own-brand lager until they were sick.

If you feel you need it, make sure you carve out some ‘me' time to allow yourself to recover and adjust to your new lifestyle. Students can access a week of club events, comedy nights, boozy bingo and laser quest during the week commencing September 19. Today, new students are not treated as adults, embarking on a new and exciting chapter in their academic and personal lives - they're treated as children in need of constant coddling.

Over the course of three years at uni, friends will come and go, so make sure you diversify your student social life as much as possible. Your mum's getting on at you about packing, ARU has sent you a reading list, but all you want to do is sack those off for Cambridge uni what's important: Freshers' Week.