Taking responsibility for yourself living away from home for the first time is an essential factor in enjoying your time at university, because feeling secure is a key to feeling happy and relaxed in a new and often unsettling environment. If there is one nugget of wisdom that I can possibly impart to you by way of achieving this, it would be this: get insurance. Because if there was ever a time to believe in the probability of Sod’s Law striking, then personal insurance of your possessions has to be one gamble that will always pay off, literally and metaphorically.

My own recent scenario was a classic case in point. I had not long since moved into a new house, beginning a 12-month contract with two new housemates, and during those frenzied first few days of moving in, had dithered over whether to fork out for coverage of my belongings. Wrangling over the overall costs and following a conversation with my parents about individual items such as my phone and computer already having been insured individually, I decided against it, reasoning that the only other thing a thief could take would be my clothes, which was an unlikely objective as I mostly shop for bargains at Primark and TK Maxx. In the hazy days of summer barbecues and housemate get togethers, we were too blasé and it came back to haunt us . . .

So, recalling latter days of blissful unawareness, I will never forget returning home from a late shift at the bar where I currently work, chatting on my mobile phone whilst heading upstairs to my room. But, reaching for my keys to unlock the padlocked door, I realised with surprise that there was no need, as the door itself was gaping wide open. And the lock was barged right out of its post. Initially I reasoned that perhaps my housemates had urgently needed to get something from my room – I conceded I would have to address the situation with them to some degree of annoyance, until I actually looked inside. Uttering the brief words, “We’ve been burgled, I’ll call you back,” I was forced to abruptly terminate the chatter and involuntarily felt my hands fly to my head in shock and disbelief at the dawning realisation that someone who was not at all welcome had evidently been a visitor to my home, making off with my brother’s laptop and my wallet.

Already exhausted from a busy night at work, and quite frankly, having been mentally preparing myself for a well deserved sleep upon arriving at my boudoir, I couldn’t comprehend that this was the truth, even with the visual proof of drawers left hanging open, clothes in disarray and jewellery strewn across the floor. It was an unforgettable feeling of numb sickness, that someone whose face I would never know to identify, had been rummaging through my personal possessions and felt they had the right to simply take them. I wasn’t hysterical, I wasn’t upset; I was absolutely furious, and ultimately it was my fault for failing to cover myself with insurance.

There is an overriding sense of calm that presents itself in such situations and actually has become for me a valuable skill – pro-activity and common sense are the keys to resolving the problem head on rather than getting into a flap. This lesson is easily applicable to many scenarios of life, and particularly handling the responsibility of your own safety whilst undertaking a new life away from the safe confines of home. In my case, all I felt like doing at that moment in time was interrogating the boys, who had arrived home to find the alarm going off, presumably only moments after the event itself, had proceeded to do a casual “sweep” check of the entire house (except, apparently, my room), and had unassumingly gone to watch telly in the living room for hours until my discovery. I can’t pretend I wasn’t annoyed in hindsight at their lazy investigative work, especially recalling the shocked looks on their faces as I yelped in surprise, which in hindsight their faces were expressions of guilt and sheepishness.

Three boys were home that night and not one of them noticed my door had been busted off its hinges- hours had gone by without the crime being reported. It basically goes to show that you cannot rely on anyone else and you have to look out for yourself in the big wide world. I mean although I would not wish theft on anyone, there was a slight indignance that, even though the house was full of expensive equipment, it was only my room to be pillaged, me being the most conscientious housemate who actually had a lock on my door. So I say “we” were burgled, when in fact it was only me who suffered - and all because a culprit, who to this day will not own up, left the big bathroom window open upstairs. The boys could sympathise but at the end of the day the numb feeling of violation was all mine, and I felt a bit cheated.

Well, even though at that point all I wanted to do was sit cursing words that would have turned the air blue, I realised the first thing on my list was to ring and cancel my bank cards, then I called the local police, who arrived soon after. At that time in the morning after an exhausting work shift the last thing I wanted to do was meet the police and try to give them details of an event I knew little about. Then, for some inexplicable reason, I called my parents who live miles away in Great Yarmouth, to leave a stroppy message on their answer phone, despite knowing that they couldn’t feasibly help me. In my defence, I was feeling somewhat irrationally disgruntled with them for not answering the phone at nearly 2am in what I considered to be my hour of need!

Luckily when the stolen articles were actually listed, it turns out we had a pretty rubbish thief, likely to have been a child, who had managed to miss, among other things, my Ipod and some expensive jewellery, presumably because they had been disturbed by the house alarm. Other things like my wallet and the laptop were not recoverable, but that is because we later discovered that the laptop warranty did not actually cover it for theft: always read the small print. Thankfully my favourite knee high boots were also still where I had left them…so every cloud…I vowed that had I ever encountered the thief in the act I would have acted in anger and furious vengeance on his or her person with a ceramic oven dish over the head.

What made me laugh the next day was when the forensic detective came to the house the next day to take dusting for fingerprints; me and my housemate were examining the leap from the rear yard drainpipe to the upstairs bathroom window in incredulous tones and were informed by the seasoned professional that children can climb the walls like cats and occasionally are a little too ambitious, meaning that often the police find a remorseful miserable heap on the floor outside the house, where they have fallen from a precarious position only to break a leg or and ankle that renders them trapped. Had I had the pleasure of finding our thief in this predicament I am sure I would have found it impossible to refrain from gleefully pelting them with raw eggs by way of minor revenge.

The whole experience was pretty unpleasant and a shock to my naïve little bubble of the illusion of safety, thinking it would never happen to me. What the burglary did for me in positive consequences was to sharpen my senses and take more notice of behaving responsibly, which also applied to my housemates. Where before I was perhaps too sure of myself, which is a good thing in some respects, I am now far more aware of personal security and in fact organised personal insurance with Endsleigh the very next day, which covered all of my possessions – household insurance was discussed but in the reality of having to wrangle over whose things are worth what amount of the payout it can become a difficult potential situation, so I would definitely advise from experience: look out for your friends but ultimately be smart and look after number one.