How to enjoy your college life? Do you have your own idea?

College life will start in you in so many of life's practises. And practise, remember, makes perfect…

Guard against home sickness by creating as much as a home for yourself as you can. These days, you'll likely have all your photographs, award certificates, etc, on your computer. We had to cart all the hard copies. Otherwise the rule is: if in times of stress you reach for it, pack it.

Be more like my trainee Marine mate, George; less like I was going to college. He went to Falmouth to study fine art. Driven there by all his family; given his own annexe of Ikea Kitchen, The Student Cookbook; non-sharing in a double room in halls. First thing he sorted was student gym membership. I was decidedly opera-shaped when I went to study singing at Guildhall. I rented an attic room ten miles from college with a family so dysfunctional they made the Gallaghers look like the Waltons, was dropped off in a friend of my mother's taxi, with lidless bits of Tupperware, a slowly deflating balloon whisk and a catering pack of all one-flavour Snackpots. I took the bus to save a ten minute walk.

Oh, and George had an orchid. At that age, I'd never heard of an orchid.

Please remember that what's on your timetable is obligatory - it isn't a list of ill-considered suggestions for how you might possibly like to spend your time. Never be that person to ask, 'Professor, is this going to be on the exam?'

Join at least one society that you never thought you would, but remember the adage, 'Everybody's friend is everybody's fool.'