I'm a student as well, but unlike many students I'm a mature student and grew up in a house where everything was cooked from scratch. We only used to have take away on someone's birthday or New Year so that's a grand total of 5 times a year. My thought of take away now is a store bought pizza you can throw in the oven, so I'm pretty good at not wasting money on cheap take aways or cheap food in general.
The thing that I will need help with is lunches to bring to uni. I usually stick with sandwiches that I've made myself, as my thermos isn't that great for keeping things hot for super long periods of time. I travel 2 hrs to uni so I'm out of the house just after 6am so hot soup from that time till about 1 or so doesn't last that long. I guess I should get used to medium heat soup and get on with it. Any advice for lunches that don't need to be heated or hot would be great as for some odd reason my ice pack lasts longer then the thermos!
I use a slow cooker all the time, just throw everything in it and come back hours later to something amazing so you don't have to slave over a cooker, it's my best friend! The other thing is depending on how big your freezer is making things in batches such as a simple meaty/meat free sauce to make into spag bol, chilli, jacket option etc that way when you leave for the day you can take it out and defrost it in the fridge and throw a couple of things into it when you come back again another time saver for cooking.
It depends on how big your freezer is and how much time you want to spend cooking when you come back.