Lucky to have chosen Reading
I feel extremely lucky to have chosen the University of Reading. While it was my first choice for exchange, I did not choose it because I thought it would make my experience in any way better. It was purely the semester timetabling, module options and proximity to London that drew me to Reading. But it was the best decision of my life. I knew my exchange experience would be good, life-changing even, but I had friends who went on exchange and didn’t truly click with anyone, who spent the first few weeks or months lonely, who didn’t get the university life experience they had hoped for. This was my fear and thankfully it turned out to be unfounded.
It was little things during my exchange that made my experience so amazing. The University of Reading offered the perfect opportunities for exchange students to connect, and I never had the chance to experience the loneliness I was prepared for. My new friends opened my eyes to different cultures, made me feel like Reading is my second home and gave me access to opportunities to travel Europe way more than I ever thought I would. Being a fifteen-minute walk from campus is incredible. Without a commute, I was able to try out societies, study with friends in the library, enjoy the student bar and club and just generally experience what I always felt uni life should be. Not to mention the campus is gorgeous. Being an hour from London on an actual campus gives me the benefit of being able to go into London on weekends while having a quiet, personal experience in a smaller town to retreat to.
But as I said, it was the little things that made my experience what it was: sharing card games from four different continents, cooking food from each of our homes, travelling all across Europe with people I had known for less than three months (surreal), teaching each other our hobbies (rock climbing, ice skating, handstanding) and spending late nights watching movies. It is hard to describe the sense of contentment I felt in those moments: I had stopped worrying about the future because the present was more than enough.
Incoming Student
