Luis reports on his first month at Middlesex University
Moving to a new place has its challenges: you need to find a new place to call home, new people to call friends, you need to learn how to cook, how to pay your bills, how to find a job, (even how to use the washing machine)… all of this while taking care of settling in at university.
I was lucky to come with two friends from Portugal that quickly became my family, we went through this journey together of looking for a good and cheap house, entering the quad for the first time and feeling amazed by how big it was, but the best thing was to walk in the university park near the grove building and seeing the cute little squirrels running everywhere.
The university Welcome month was really useful to understand how to settle in the UK. The Students’ Union events included speed meets, games, quiz nights and parties, where it was amazing to meet new people from all over the world that I can now call my friends. When I went to the first speed meet I was a little nervous thinking “ I will probably not meet a lot of people here; we will talk for like 5 minutes but never again…”, I was so wrong because that day I made so many cool friends that we started to go to the all the parties and events together. One of the best parties was the Thames boat party where we literally stopped the traffic as Tower Bridge opened to let us sail through.
After just three weeks I already felt that I was a part of a community. I was away from home, away from my country but I was not lonely, had new friends to go out and to study with and in just three weeks so much had already happened. I had grown so much as a person. If I had stayed in my country, and within my comfort zone, I would not have experienced all of this.
The last thing I was missing was to find a job so I wrote my CV and went to MDX Works to ask for help, they told me to sign up at Unitemps which I did and saw this advert for Student Engagement Intern. I applied to it and was lucky to get the job so I’m now studying and working at Middlesex University - doing two things that I love.
So far my experience at Middlesex has been amazing and I hope it continues that way!
