Transition to University

Starting university is a new and exciting time of life! But, there may be new challenges and experiences you will encounter for the first time, particularly in the first few weeks, which may make you feel nervous or unsure – this is completely natural! The transition from school to university can pose challenges such as adapting to different ways of learning, managing your time independently, or becoming part of a new community of friends and colleagues. It can take time to adapt to this new environment, and everyone will adapt at different rates – everyone’s journey is unique.

You are not alone along this journey! Everyone in the Chemunity (the chemistry community!) is here to support you. In Welcome Week and beyond you will have plenty of interactions with your peers, with academic staff, and students from other years, who are all willing to share their experiences, offer advice, and answer your questions.

To help you get settled in more quickly, students in upper years have created resources to help ‘demystify’ the initial university experience. Whilst there are plenty of resources made about the transition to university learning in ‘general’, these resources have been created to be specific to our chemistry department. Students have drawn from their first-hand experiences and reflected on when they first started university, and have created resources based on what they wished they had known in those early days.

All the content has been created by other students for you, and feature various videos such as student roundtable discussions, student/staff chats about wellbeing and academic issues, as well as an interactive map to help you find your way around the building.

We hope you find these useful ahead of you joining us on campus at the start of term!

Things to help you get started…

These resources have been created by students in the department for students joining the department.

Other resources

There are plenty of resources available for helping you with the transition to university. Some of these links have been collected below that you may find helpful.