Stage 3 Anthropology student Grace found her first year at University wasn’t all ‘sunshine, rainbows and unicorns’, but as she approaches the end of her degree she reflects how her persistence has transformed her experience.
Before coming to university, teachers promise you endless friendship and fun and assure you it will be the best time of your life. However, flash forward to late October of your first year, you spend the majority of time alone in your student accommodation, you have a handful of friends and the infamous freshers’ week was subpar at best. You are beginning to make decisions for your second year at university, who you are going to live with, what modules you are going to take but you don’t feel like you are prepared to make these frankly adult decisions.
This is exactly what happened to me. I was meeting people at university slowly, however, they all seemed to have expansive friendship groups and the ‘uni experience’, and I thought I was the only one who wasn’t enjoying university. When I went home for the Christmas holidays of my first year, I did not want to return. However, I’m so glad that I did. There are some crucial things to remember whilst starting your university journey.
Firstly, everyone and I mean everyone is going through the same experience as you, I retrospectively spoke to my friends about how they found the first term of first year and everyone was lonely, wishing they were having the same experience as their friends. However, this is all a façade. The perception of university before coming is false, and this is imperative to beginning to enjoy university.
University isn’t playing frisbee on the campus green, nor is it having a smiley coffee in a campus café, university is making sure you have clean pants to wear, and enough food and money to survive as well as tackling a brand new subject and also dealing with the mental pressures and struggles of moving to a new environment all whilst trying to make friends and have a good time.
However, all these tasks are achievable (even with time to spare to play frisbee!) if you are patient and persevere with university. It is not an overnight process adjusting to university and it will be a rollercoaster of emotions! And yes, even into your third year, you will question why you came to university, however, when you look back on the experiences you have had – both good and bad! You will be grateful for every day you spend at university.
If you were to tell 1st year miserable Grace, that in third year she would be dreading the end of her time at university, she probably would have laughed (and cried).
If you were to tell 1st year miserable Grace, that in third year she would be dreading the end of her time at university, she probably would have laughed (and cried).However, it is genuinely true, my experience at university is something entirely asymmetrical to when I started.
I do not mean to scare you off the idea of coming to university, however having realistic expectations is crucial for enjoying university, and unfortunately, often before coming to university you are promised sunshine, rainbows and unicorns and just like the latter, this doesn’t exist. University is what you make it and if you expect the friendships and fun times to come to you rather than finding them, then your university experience will not reach its full potential.
However, if you follow my handy tips to surviving university, then it can be an entirely unique priceless experience!