The reason lots of people think you have to go into a hall in your first year is purely because of tradition. And often because first years are young, like 17-18 and straight out of high school. There’s no need at all to live in a hall in first year. Hall culture is weird and this expectation that you go and live in a crappy flat on castle st with your hall friends in second year and lose your shit because you’ve finally tasted freedom is one of the reasons locals rejoice when they all go away over summer. Unless you have exactly zero social or life skills you’ll be absolutely fine flatting in your first year. If you need support the University offers a lot, as others have suggested. And you pay for this support in your fees so you should absolutely get involved with it and all the other great non-academic stuff the uni offers. Don’t worry about not living in a hall. You’ll be fine. And if you make local Dunedin friends they’ll likely like you a lot more because you don’t engage with a culture that thinks destroying our home then leaving is cool, which is a bonus because us locals are awesome. You got this.