Social life in student accommodation

Weekly shenanigans

So, every week in my flat we pick a night to make homemade pizza, I mean proper homemade, like dough from scratch. It’s often a Friday as we then have drinks afterwards in the flat, and when we can, we invite other friends over too. Beforehand we also get everyone involved in the flat clean so that the kitchen is clean and tidy before making dough and decorating pizzas. I always make the dough for everyone from this recipe and there’s always someone on their Xbox in the flat so I put the bowl on top of their Xbox where it gets really warm and rises in double the time, in 2-3 hours. The recipe makes four so for the five of us I add an extra half measure to the quantity of ingredients and that always makes enough and some extra for dough balls. It is quite a wet recipe, so I often leave about 50-70ml water out of the recipe as it's easier to add it than take it out.

Another slightly posh idea that we don’t do as often but still very much enjoy is cheese and wine night. We all went out and bought various fancy cheeses, biscuits, nibbles and some red wine and it was really good fun.

Movie and game night

We also do weekly movie or game nights. The most recent game we played was flat pub golf. It's like pub golf apart from in our flat so we have all sorts of holes to play, starting easy like straight down the hall, and getting trickier each time like from the top floor to the bottom in our block, with every hole having a different drink. And the best thing is that it is a £7 kids set from Amazon so the clubs are plastic, generally inaccurate and only 1.5 ft long, which makes the entire thing very comical. 

Our flat is well known for wasting hours on end in the kitchen playing some odd ‘would you rathers’ or the headbands game (a cheaper student friendly homemade version of writing one for someone else and sticking the sticky note onto their head). It is great fun and it doesn’t matter if there’s only two or 10 of you as you can play with however many people you have.

We also do regular movie nights, so every couple of nights or when we fancy it we watch films, like all of the Avenger’s movies or Christmas movies when the time comes. Sometimes we will order food in, sometimes we will all cook beforehand. But either way we really like it as it’s a cheap way of doing something together that we don’t need to spend hours getting ready or lots on drinks, it’s a good night in.

Outside adventures

I have loved halls but admittedly it can sometimes feel as though you’re all on top of each other so spending time outside is great for your health and it’s just nice to get out of the flat and have fun together in the city. We bought a football and we’d often go down to the park and have a casual kick about or sometimes go for adventures in the woods or walk along the canal to get the steps in! I also like to go on my own walks or just sit on the park and do some work from there to change up the scenery a little. Around Leeds there is plenty of spaces like that. I personally love Kirkstall Abbey as there’s lots of green space, the Abbey ruin that you can go inside and have a look at, the river and park benches.

Sure, you may come across a few tricky bits at times, but it’s a good opportunity to learn to work with people rather than against them. So, if people are reluctant to tidy, don’t shout at them, instead make it a fun thing to do together, put music on, get a drink in one hand and the dish scrubber in the other. Living in halls means that you learn to read people and notice when they may need time to themselves or when you need to watch out for them or cheer them up and just offering to cook for them one night can make a huge difference to someone’s day. All in all it's a great experience!