First Thoughts about University of Southampton

#1 – First Thoughts

Wow. I’m actually here. I don’t really know when it hit me; it seems to have been kind of gradual. But I’m actually at Southampton University, learning again, after a year out in the Real World. It’s quite a surreal experience, but to tell the truth I absolutely love it. The place, the people, the course, I don’t know if it’s something in the water but everything here just seems incredible. Far better than I ever imagined, and also rather different to how it was when I came for an open day two years ago.

I’ve been here three and a half weeks now, and after the introduction to the uni in the form of JumpStart, things have totally settled down and I’m getting into the routine. In fact, it feels like I’ve been here ages, which is probably a good thing =)

Highlights so far (and I’m not exactly far!) include: Being given core textbooks free(!), programming in Java (three hours of labs on a Tuesday sounds long, but 1pm comes around very fast when coding) and the people in my block, Richard Newitt Court E, who are helping to make the whole experience more real.

Writing this, I’m sat in Zepler labs, on one of the Vista machines (yes, I actually *like* Vista) surrounded by what seems like loads of second and third years. It still feels a bit odd. I expect I’ll get used to it in the coming months, as I always seem to end up here when I have nothing else to do and I’m on campus…