Carlton is the easiest suburb in Melbourne to arrive in and one of the easiest to stay lonely in: everyone is new, everyone is busy, and the university's social calendar quietly assumes you are nineteen. The essentials: trams 1 and 6 run the spine, the Carlton Gardens are your default walk, and the good study rooms are not on campus. If you are here for a degree, know that the week-one clubs rush is real but decays fast; the people you meet in week one scatter by week four. What holds is anything weekly. Reply with what you wish you had known in your first month here.