Freshers’ five: five essential healthy habits to keep through university

By Charlotte Brown

There’s no shortage of advice for Freshers’ everywhere you look, from your email inbox to The Tab articles to Instagram motivational posts. Different things work for different people, and a lot of your first year at university will consist of trial and error, but we’ve pared the advice down to some simple healthy habits that we feel are most important to help maintain your mental health. As any older students will tell you, it’s easy to forget about this stuff when you’re in the midst of your new hectic student lifestyle. Read the tips below for our quick summary of healthy habits that we think are worth hanging onto through university.

1. Maintain a sleep schedule

This is at the top of the list for a reason! With all the new nightlife around, a lot of Freshers seem to swear off sleep almost entirely. This dodgy sleep pattern can continue well into Term 1 as lectures are at irregular times, you might have society meetings late at night, and most of us have pulled at least one all-nighter to finish an essay last minute. The temptation to take naps at all hours of the day and sleep whenever you get the chance can really throw off your routine and make it hard to feel well rested. Even though it might be difficult, trying to keep a somewhat consistent and healthy sleep schedule can help with concentration, memory and mood to say the least. As a result, we think sleeping well should be a big priority when maintaining mental health.

2. Eating healthily

You’ll need lots of energy to manage your social and academic workload, and one suggestion is to try and get some healthy meals in when you have time during the week. Cooking group meals with flatmates or freezing portions of a bigger meal to eat through the week are time efficient and money saving ways to make sure you’re getting the nutrition you need. We know this might not be possible all the time, depending on your schedule - however, even eating well for a few days a week can make a big difference to how you’re feeling physically and mentally. Tomorrow we’ll be sharing our easy recipe for banana oat cookies if you’re looking for a place to start!

3. Give yourself more time than you need to do anything

It can be tricky to gauge how much time you really need to balance societies, studying, self care and more, especially at the beginning. By giving yourself more time than you think you need to get things done - this includes working to deadlines - you can mitigate some of the stress that might come with always trying to get things done at the last minute (something which can happen more than you expect it to). Even if you end up finishing your work way earlier than necessary, you can use that time to prioritise yourself and get some rest.

4. Write things down

Writing things down is a secret weapon when trying to keep all your tasks in check. Properly planning what you have to do can make overwhelming and stressful tasks seem much more manageable, and it takes the pressure off you trying to remember everything. Some students go for the bullet journal method (see this link for more information). Bullet journals can be as complex or as minimalist as you want them to be, and the flexibility to make them what you need is a big benefit of them. In fact, our facilitator Emily will be writing about her bullet journal later on in the term if you want to learn more! If this doesn’t sound good for you, even something as simple as a Google Tasks checklist or Word document helps to get what’s stressing you out down on paper to be tackled accordingly.

5. Reframe your mindset

You might have heard of having a ‘growth mindset’ when you were doing A Levels, but it’s more than just some buzzwords. Having a growth mindset means that you view your character and intelligence as changeable, rather than innately determined. By viewing things with a more flexible attitude, it’s easier to feel driven to work hard, stretch your abilities and learn from failure. This is especially useful in your first year of university as the work style and environment are inevitably quite different from college or school. Many students may experience setbacks with lower grades than they expected, or by struggling with the workload or content. With a growth mindset, it’s a little easier to see these setbacks as opportunities to grow as a student. It’s definitely difficult, and requires a lot of mental effort to adapt to a more growth mindset if it doesn’t come naturally to you, but it might be worth it to maintain your mental health.

We hope these tips helped! These are just suggestions and if they don’t work for you, that’s alright! Feel free to explore what works best for you and your individual mental health needs. Thanks for reading and have a great Freshers’ Week 💙