Second Post

What was/is your student house like? We all hear the stories of places that are kept like rubbish dumps ;)

Mine was fairly clean for a student house, there was of course the odd time where the dishes piled up to the ceiling, but it never got so bad that it was unbearable! And one of my housemate's parents owned the house and let us do what we wanted with our rooms. Do you have any student housing experiences to share?

Well it depends which year you are talking about.  I found that actually the houses themselves were not awful, but dependent on landlord, the speed at which problems were fixed varied.  The best ever was Kexgill in my second year.  The girl there used to fancy me, so when we broke a light fitting on a high roof when trying to change the lightbulb, she gave me her number to call whenever we needed to light bulb changes and she would send the handyman around within the hour to change it.  Needless to say that she is now my fiance and mother of my three children (triplets - lovely but oh such a handful) and so it might have been a biased service, but who am I to complain?

Dont live in a shared house... alwasy go with halls, even if they are more expensive.. its not worth the hassle... i decided to live in one in my last year... why oh why did i not listen to my parents.... and i got the small room... it was a size of a shoe box... literally

I would say you were probably just unlucky or picked the wrong people to live with.  I got into  university through clearing and there was not a room for me in the halls, so from day 1 I was in a house.  I would say it was the best thing that happened to me, in the first year I was not automatically grouped with people who would be forced to be friends with me, i had to make friends of my own merit.  After that i selected who would be good to live with and had no isses.

I saw my brother's uni house for the first time at the weekend, it was awful! It was a nice house, but there was mess all over the place and the washing up was piled up so high I could barely see the top ;) I am a bit of a neat-freak so it was difficult to cope with!!

I think you just have to very careful who you choose to live with. Some people are naturally messy, others not. Some people want typical student digs, other want something far more homely. Find the right people and look throughly for the right property and you will be fine. Don't rush in.

The situation in our student house was a little awkward. We had five people living in the house but there were two distinct groups - myself and my friend, and the other three. It became a little bit hostile between these two groups especially in shared living areas, as our interests and personalities tended to clash. I moved with my friend in the third year and I'm glad I did.

It can be difficult to get it right as you don't know what somebody is like until you have lived with them - especially if they are on your course and not in your hall...

I got the small room in my student house as well, don't think it was quite as small as yours from the sound of it but it was still much smaller than my room at home.

I didn't like living in halls as to me it felt like a prison. The rooms were tiny, it was really regimented and pretty depressing... I much preferred living in a student house as it felt much more homely. Although I am not the most sociable of people, and the people I moved in with I wasn't amazingly close to, so it wasn't a great social experience. But I felt like I had a lot more freedom.

I loved my student house! 15 people, all reasonable sized rooms 2 kitchens - soooo many laughs I chuckle just thinking about some of the things we got up to! And most importantly - no fire drills at 7am!! I loved the independance and freedom from my house that the security of halls takes away! Can understand it's not for everyone though and your housemates definitely make or break the experience!