"I remember my first day at halls, about three or four days before university started. We had a week of events and a fresher’s fortnight. We had the guided walk from our halls to uni, and an instructions talk by our director. There was lots of admin, such as being shown where the health centre is, getting signed up with a doctor, etc. We were also shown how to get our log in, how to get our timetables, etc.

My parents dropped me off at halls, stayed for about an hour, and then went. The first night of halls was erm, interesting, because I was in a shared room and didn’t get on with the girl I was going to share with. But I met another girl on the first day who I got on really well with, and she was in a shared room, so we thought, why don’t we swap, and we managed it because the girl she was sharing with moved out.

It’s a good thing to share a room. In your first month at uni, you don’t have anyone you know so if you’ve got a shared room and you can talk to them, you’ve got someone to ask, "how do you get a book out of the library?" or something. There is someone to ask questions. It was good for meeting people too, because we had a massive room to invite people back to. When we had to go to our first lectures, we went together, which took away the initial loneliness.

My halls were catered. We had a two-hour slot for dinner, and breakfast was always early, so if I missed a meal there was a communal kitchen. I remember eating in the canteen in my first week to meet people. Everyone goes down together, sit at the big tables and start asking "So where are you from? What A levels did you do? What’s your name?" – so much, that by the end of the week you want to walk around with a plaster on your head, saying "My name is Marie. I studied maths, chemistry and economics. I’m from Gloucestershire. Next!"

I went to sixth form where it is really structured, so there was a huge shock when I got to university and it was like, "What? I have to read and I don’t just get told what to do??!" I probably should have studied more in my first year, in retrospect. I do know some people in their first year who are already panicking about exams because the system at LSE means you get exams every year. Each topic you get a three hour exam and that’s it.

I think I chose the right degree. It’s really hard when you choose your degree because you don’t know what any of it’s going to be like. Taking your degree is such an arbitrary thing. I remember going through it with my mum and I looked at so many courses, saying "No, I’m not going to do that one because there’s a dissertation and I don’t like the idea of doing a dissertation". But I think no matter how much advice you get, you’re still going to make arbitrary decisions and you’re still going to get to university and think "This is not what what I was expecting".

Financially, my parents were a big help, and I worked loads while in sixth form, so I’d saved up quite a bit of money before I came. I was quite a rich student in comparison, because I had savings.

God knows how much money I spent in my first term. I look back and think, "Where did it all go?" I think getting involved in Freshers week is a great way to meet people. There were 300 people in my halls and there’s a hall committee where they organised stuff for Freshers to do. They took us around the university and organised a pub crawl up Upper Street.

I’m definitely staying in London after leaving university. I loved coming to London when I was little, and I thought London was the place to be. I knew my way around a bit of it, so I wasn’t daunted when I got here. A lot of my friends say they couldn’t live in London. But I always said, if you’re going to university and you go to a city, you might as well go to the biggest one. And if you’re going to be a student, be a student in London because you get a chance to live in the centre really cheaply; you’re young, you’re going to enjoy living in London, so do it while you can!"