Hey there! My name is Briana Halley and I’m a 17-year-old, first year Water Management student. I'm studying abroad at HZ University Of Applied Sciences. I’m about to share my student experiences from these past months of living alone, come along and read about my journey thus far and maybe you can grab some tips of how to cope with living alone. If you are a prospective student, this might give you some insight but keep in mind that if you know for sure that you are not ready to live alone, you can always share housing facilities with someone.
Everyone has to go through it sometime in their life
To me, accepting the fact that everyone will probably go through living alone sometime in their life is already a step ahead. Just knowing that will ease your mind. We all have to grow up and become adults and do adult things, and that just so happened to me at the age of 17. Now, I am not the youngest because there are also some 16 year olds that I know live alone, but just always keep in mind that your mom or dad is always a call away, and that brings me to my next tip.
Technology has come a long way
When feeling lonely, I’m pretty sure most of us like to talk about our emotions to someone, because it honestly helps tremendously (to be completely honest, I rant when I’m feeling down). Also, we are always on our phones, so why not just facetime or skype with a loved one when down? Think about people who were in university 20 years ago, when it was a lot harder to communicate to their loved ones every second of the day and they survived, so we should really appreciate the technology we have nowadays.
Adulting is hard!
Trying to do adult things while you’re still a teen can be hard at times considering some adults still think of you as a child. Also, some adult things like a simple trip to the bank can be complicated and I’m sure some adults can even agree with me on this one! Responsibility is one of the most challenging characteristics of being a young adult. Living alone, is like gaining 50 pounds of responsibility, but it all depends on how you perceive it. You are in control of your mind, and being aware of that also helps. You control your emotions, so when feeling lonely and you feel like giving up because it’s all so hard, just take a deep breath and think of how everything is a lesson and that this too will pass.
Self-growth
One of the biggest benefits of living alone is being able to realize that you are so strong and just learning so much about yourself is so rewarding. On a day to day basis everyone goes through slight troubles here and there, but at the end of the day you'll be alright and still breathing. You grow so much and you learn a significant number of things when you're alone. What helps for me, is sitting down with my journal at the end of the day and write about everything that happened. And then when I’m down I read through some of my journal entries which calms me down and reassures me that I can go through anything life places in front of me.
I hope that my blog post can help you, if you are a student at HZ or a prospective student who just wants an insight of what it’s like living alone at a young age.
And are you thinking of studying abroad in the Netherlands? Find out about the Dutch education system and read this whitepaper: 