From move in to move out...

Welcome to LSE Halls!

Congratulations, you've made a great decision to live in halls. This year, you'll have the opportunity to make friends with fellow students, lean on your hall's pastoral team for support, and carve out your own little corner of London. But... where to start?

Here's a few tips to help you transform your hall into more than just where you rest your head each night. 

Trial and error

Let's frame your first few months of living in halls as a trial and error period. The first coffee shop you try might be super overpriced, and the friend you made on night one might ghost you in a week (rejection is redirection, always). Your ambitious plan to walk to campus every day might falter in the face of a 9AM lecture landing on your timetable. Even though the trial and error period is full of anxiety and uncertainty, I promise you will survive it. It just takes time.

Getting the hang of things 

The key to staying positive throughout all the missteps is having faith that you will eventually get the hang of things. Experiment with alternative bus routes if the number one option on CityMapper isn't working for you. Go to as many halls events as you can. They're often free and a great way to relax and meet people in your building. If your flatmate groupchat is drier than you'd like to admit, invite a few friendly people from your course over for a dinner party. Attempt to overcome your fear of cooking (and I mean actually cooking... something that's not pasta) and try out a new recipe with a friend. Life in halls doesn't look the same for everyone, so get creative!

Life in halls is your oyster! Or something like that...

It didn't happen overnight, but eventually returning to London from New York felt like homecoming. The things that made Butler's Wharf home weren't what I had initially expected. While I had imagined my flatmates and I cooking weekly dinners together, our friendships looked more like hurried hellos and five-minute life updates. By term two, I had memorized the bus routes to Lilian Knowles House and Robeson House, where my two best friends lived, and learned my way around those halls like they were my own.

Before I knew it, every Sunday consisted of a 15 minute walk to the church down the road, followed by completing meticulous readings alongside a pastry and a matcha in my favorite café (shoutout Comptoir Bakery Southwark Cathedral, life changing). The Saturday nights I expected to spend clubbing turned into Heated Rivalry watch parties in the Robeson Cinema, and Wednesday night disco at Schloss became a weekly ritual. The local shop owners I had once been afraid to bother turned into friendly neighbors who I could count on for a quick chat. 

The point is: let London do its thing. Will everything go according to plan? Definitely not, but learning to rebound from the setbacks, I think, will teach you more than your LSE degree ever could. Move in with an open heart, and you'll move out with a home you'll never forget. 

Signing off, 

Marie