Everybody at the university will understand that you are new to the UK, new to the university and new to postgraduate study, and you can be confident that there will be many ways in which the university will try to help you ‘settle in’ as quickly as possible.
You should receive information before you leave home about your programme of ‘induction’ or ‘welcome’, but you will also receive this information when you first arrive. You should expect that there will be a number of parts to your induction/welcome:
• Programme and department activities. Your programme or department will have arranged a number of events, which will include the chance to meet academic staff (particularly the programme leader and your personal tutor), support staff and other students, and the chance to familiarise yourself with the department’s facilities. This may well include some social events in the first week or so to help you to get to know staff and students.
• University activities. The university will also have a welcome and induction programme. This will partly be to help you find out about the services of the university – how to use the library, the computer system etc.
• Student Union activities. The Student Union organises and manages the student social facilities in the university, and they will organise a range of events to welcome you. Some will be specifically for international students, others will be for all students. This will give you a chance to make friends and socialise. At the start of the academic year, too, there will be a ‘Freshers Fair’ organised by the Student Union, where you will have chance to find out about all the clubs, societies and organisations within the university that may interest you – the football club, the drama society, the Chinese society, etc. You will find there is an organisation or society to cater for a very wide range of interests.
• Registration. This is the formal process of registering you at the university, and includes registering on your course, registering for library membership and e-mail and arranging payment of your fees. Many universities now ask you to register ‘online’ rather than in person, and it is often possible to do this before you leave your own country. The university will provide you with details of how to do this.
So your first few days at the university are going to be busy. You should think of this time as time for ‘discovery’ – finding your way around the university, around your department, around the library and around the student social facilities.
This is a time when you should talk to other students – those on your programme, those on other programmes, new students like yourself and those who have been at the university for some time. Also, get to know the university town or city; you could arrange a visit to the town/city centre, and even visit some of the ‘tourist’ sites in the town. Think of these first few days almost as a working vacation, and do not worry about trying to do any studying at this stage.
Although you will get very tired, from the journey to the UK and the busy programme of settling in and the effort of living in a new environment, you will not have much time to feel homesick. However, you will probably want to contact friends and family at home just to let them know how you are settling in.
British people have a reputation for always talking about the weather – and the popular image of British weather is that it is always raining. Be assured that neither of these is true! Wherever in the world you come from to the UK, though, you will notice that the weather and climate are different from home.
Experiencing the British weather is part of experiencing Britain. There are two main things to know about it:
• It is very changeable. It is quite common for a single day to have a wide variety of weather from rain to sunshine to cloud and for the temperature to change from cool to warm or the other way round. It also changes a lot from day to day. This means that you need to be ready for almost any weather at any time.
• It does not tend to have extremes. British winters are not usually too cold, and the summers are not usually either very hot or very wet. Also, there are very few extreme or violent events, such as hurricanes.
So what is it like? Well, it depends a little on where in the UK you are going to be living, as the weather in Glasgow, for example, in Scotland, is different from that in London, or on the south coast at Brighton. The further north you live the colder you will find the weather, both in summer and winter. The driest part of the country is the south-east, and the annual rainfall increases as you go west or north from there.
We can look at the weather for each season of the year, and there are four seasons recognised in Britain: winter (December to March), spring (March to June), summer (June to September) and autumn (September to December). As most students arrive in the UK in September, we will look at the weather through the year from autumn onwards.
• Autumn sees the weather change from summer to winter. At the start temperatures are typically 15–20 Celsius during the day and 5–10 Celsius at night. By the end of autumn, daytime temperatures will be 5–15 Celsius, while night time temperatures will be 0 to 5 Celsius. It will rain on about 50 per cent of days, but there may be drier spells of a few days, particularly in September. When it rains it will rain for 2–4 hours, often of showers rather than heavy rain.
• Winter is the coldest and wettest season of the year. Generally the weather is cloudy, with sunny spells, with daytime temperatures reaching 5–10 Celsius, and night temperatures between –2 and +5 Celsius. Frosty nights are common, but snow is quite rare in most of the country; it is more common in the north, but even here there will usually only be 5–7 snowy days each year. Rainfall is typically 2–5 cm per month with 15–20 rainy days each month.
• Spring sees the weather improving towards summer. It can include a mixture of winter and summer weather. By April daytime temperatures are typically 12–14 Celsius and night time temperatures are 5–10 Celsius, although there may still be occasional night time frosts. Rainfall declines during spring, although most months have 5–15 days with rain.
• Summer is the warmest and driest time of the year, but there are no very dry months, and even in July and August there may be rain on 5–10 days each month. Daytime temperatures are usually 18–25 Celsius, with night time temperatures of 7–12 Celsius. Most summers, though, have one or more hot dry spells, usually of 5–10 days, when temperatures can sometimes reach 30 Celsius or occasionally more. Hot weather in Britain is often quite humid and sticky, though, and hot spells often end with a short period of thunderstorms.
You will need to be ready for any weather, therefore. How you feel about the weather will depend upon what the weather is like at home and what you are used to. If home is in a tropical or sub-tropical country you will find the winters cold, but if you come from Scandinavia, Canada or Russia then the winters will feel mild. So, you will need a waterproof coat and an umbrella for the wet weather, a few sweaters and a good coat for the cold weather, and light clothing and sunglasses for the warm weather. You may prefer to wait to buy some of this clothing once you get to the UK – the clothing here is obviously designed for British weather, and you can also see what you need once you are in the UK. However, you are probably best advised to bring a waterproof coat and at least one sweater with you in your luggage.
