I've been thinking of ways to write this blog post for a while because I want to make it clear. It was not the actual university experience that made me feel what I'm about to say, but just my choices and how my personality doesn't necessarily fit with those choices. So, I'm going to start off by explaining my situation and how it got me to how I feel right now. Remember this is my experience only and I know some people who would have loved to be in my position which just proves, it really is a subjective experience of my first year at university.
First of all, let me give you some CONTEXT. My entire life I have been wanting to go to university; my mum went when she was 32 years old and she's a very successful teacher because of that. Perhaps this is why I've been so motivated to go to university, because I've seen just how quickly it can change your life. I'm living proof of that. However, my mum obviously had me at the time (I was 8 when she started) so she lived at home and just travelled in. When it came to me deciding if I was going to live at university, I automatically said I wanted to 'get the real experience' and live there like a 'proper student'. I now realise how wrong I was. For me, it was the worst decision I could have made. I spent the best part of a year feeling the most alone, most miserable I have ever felt in my entire life.
There were many things that made me feel this way and I'll explain them in full detail but again remember, it was my own experience. Just because I hated it, doesn't mean you won't. I really want to promote university because my actual course there is really amazing, it was just everything else that went to shit.
One of the first things I'm going to talk about is fact that I lived in student accommodation, meaning that I shared a flat with 5 other people, nay STRANGERS, but I had my own bedroom and bathroom. Looking back, I don't remember being nervous about living with people I had never met before but I should have done. Not because they weren't nice, they were, but they just weren't the type of people I would be friends with. I knew pretty much straight away because we went on a night out the first day we met and while it was fun, I still felt a bit separate from them. I have always been the type of person to withdraw from people I don't feel comfortable with and I definitely did that with my flatmates. I just never really clicked with them straightaway the way I've literally done with every other of my other friends and so I started spending more and more time in my room away from them. I would only go into the kitchen/ lounge area to make some food or get a drink, but after a while I stopped doing that and just started buying food that I didn't need to heat up or put in the fridge in order to avoid them. Again, it wasn't because they were awful people, I just felt incredibly anxious walking into a room filled with people who got on well with each other and having them look at me. This sort of meant that the food that I buy was things like crisps, chocolate, sweets, anything that I didn't need to cook or refrigerate and as you can imagine, my weight crept up. I've always had a problem with food and it definitely showed this year. I put on a whole bunch of weight but it was the only thing that made me feel better. It was a short term solution that created a long time solution. Here I am, 4 stone heavier trying to fix what happened last year and failing. Literally as I'm writing this, I'm eating m&m's but I can't stop. It's as if even trying to write about what happened forces that part of my brain to think about being alone, and out comes the chocolate to fix it. That's one of the reasons I'm glad to be home, I'm kind of forced to eat in secret meaning that I don't eat as much in fear of someone finding out. At university when I was in the comfort of my room, I could devour anything I wanted to without consequences. Here I have to face my eating habits for what they are. Stupid and unhealthy.
Another thing about student accommodation that I didn't really think about but probably should have is the fact that it was filled with students. It sounds obvious but its only when you get there that you realise how awful students are. They drink all the time, most nights and when you are someone like me i.e. a non-drinker with anxiety issues, it kind of makes it hard to fit in. Like I said, I didn't spend time with my flatmates, one of the reasons being that they liked to drink, and so I spent every night alone in my room, you guessed it eating my pain away. it also meant that I didn't go to sleep until god knows what time because of how loud my flatmates were and my room was next to the kitchen/ lounge. I was also on the 1st floor (after the ground floor) so I heard all the drunk people staggering home at 2am, shouting and screaming their heart out, not to mention the constant railway and construction noise surrounding my building. It was just a lot to deal with, especially for someone like me who likes the peace and quiet.
One of the last things I wanted to mention was the friends that I made at university which happened fairly quickly I'd say. They're a lot like me in that they like to have a laugh and a joke without the alcohol. However, as nice as they were, they lived at home and only travelled into university when we had a lecture meaning that we only saw each other for a few hours a week. We would text and everything but its really not the same. I spent a lot of time just being alone or ringing my family which would always make me feel better because it gave me that connection back home to where I was happiest. Every time I went home, which wasn't a lot thanks to my job and my lectures covering most days of the week so ringing home was all I had. I would count down the days to when I could finally go home and feel happy which sounds ridiculous but was honestly true.
I wanted to drop out so many times and come home but at the end of the day, this was what I wanted. I mean it wasn't exactly the way I pictured it but I was at university. The place I've worked so hard to get to and despite the fact this year has been one of the toughest of my life, I am still so proud of the fact that I managed to get there. I come from a working class background, a council estate, the child of a single parent but here I am, a university student well on her way to graduating. I'm definitely not going to live there next year, which means there's a lot of travelling in my future. Potentially 2 hours on the train and back 5 times a week but with how I've felt this year, I can honestly say it's going to be worth it. I know that I can do it, because trust me its going to be much better than feeling alone and miserable for the best part of a year. Its been a long, difficult year but I DID IT.
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