I am writing this only a day after officially half-registering as a student at the University of Winchester. I’m only half-registered because I still need to enrol formally on the day I arrive, but the first part of the process has all been done online. I had no real expectations of it before diving in, but as it turned out I would have had absolutely no reason to be intimidated – the registration only needed me to confirm or correct various personal details the university held for me. It was a most straightforward step-by-step task that took no longer than 15 minutes, by my reckoning. Once I had given Winchester all they needed to know, I was sent a confirmation email. You know what those can be like – they’re generally fairly run-of-the-mill acknowledgements of whatever it is you’ve done or provided for someone. In this case, however, the email acted not only as thanks, but also as a reminder of the increasing number of responsibilities entering my life as I approach my university adventure.

Some of these have been written down on the new to-do list Mum has created. As things stand, three items have been ticked off, but several more remain and time isn’t totally on our side. They include especially important money-based matters, and as someone with a particularly appalling track record in Maths, it’s fair to say I am unsettled by the prospect of making sure it is all in the right places and dealt with sensibly when I am living alone. Thankfully, I still have the wisdom of others to lean on until the end of next week, and this afternoon the building society will get involved when Mum and I go for a meeting there. It might be my money that we’ll be discussing, but I think I might let Mum do the majority of the talking – there are still a few things I need to get my head around before I fully understand my financial situation. I think it needs to be explained a few more times, so I’m very fortunate to still have eleven days to figure it out. Are all aspects of independent living as complicated?

Mason