Singing the praises of life in Manchester
Living as a student can be amongst the most exciting and exhilarating days of your life. But if you’re not careful, it can also become an intensely lonely chapter in your career. Choice of location can play a big part in coping with the debilitating effects of loneliness.
As a young person, the appeal of studying in a major city like London for example can, ostensibly, be very alluring. It’s ‘the place to be’; it’s the cultural centre of the country; it’s at the heart of any educational career path you might choose. But if you embark on this adventure on your own, without having any friends or relations in the place, as the writer of this blog can attest, it can be depressing. Particularly, as is the case with many London colleges, if they are non-residential. You may regard the bright city lights as hypnotic at first, but they can become considerably dimmed at times.
When you find yourself at the end of the day leaving the hubbub and bonhomie of your central London college venue, without any company, and wend your way as I did, on a cold Routemaster double decker bus in November, to a lonely bedsitter somewhere in suburbia, you begin to wonder whether you made the right decision to leave the parental nest in the first place.
In my case, my prime motivation in year one was to make enough friends to find a more fulfilling rental solution. Before the second year started, five of us duly got together to live in a suburban house in a rather insalubrious area of North London. But it was fun and the five of us learnt how to gel together to stave off the daunting nature of a city that can pull you in like a magnet and drop you off in the middle of nowhere, without caring about your ability to cope with it.
So, think yourself lucky that you are in Manchester and, if you’re in a multiple occupancy home like the ones on offer from Manchester Student Houses, have the potential to make friends and get the most out of an environment that, in many ways, is probably preferable to somewhere like London. Because rest assured, Manchester has a warmth and friendliness unlike anywhere else. Don’t let loneliness get the better of you at this crucial stage in your life. And remember, it won’t be all that long before you become a senior citizen and join the nine million other people who are having to start battling the effects of loneliness all over again. Go out now and make the most of it, while you can.