When The ‘Finding Yourself’ At University Cliché Comes True…
Finding your tribe, saying ‘yes’ and feeling the fear but doing it anyway…
Words: Laura Townsend
“University wasn’t an immediate choice for me. Being the first in my family to take a route into further education, something always felt slightly inaccessible about it right up until the day I unpacked my boxes in my new student halls. I made sure I’d considered all other options first; I toyed with the idea of starting an apprenticeship to learn a trade, doing an art foundation year or taking a gap year to save up and see the world. At one point I overlooked my life-long pollen allergy to seriously consider a career in floristry… Being confused at that stage of life is normal, but of one thing I was certain: I didn’t want to go to uni just for the sake of it. I had to be sure it was right for me.
Lo and behold, I sit here today newly graduated with a bachelor’s degree, token student debt and boxes full of stationary/bedding/pots and pans that now live in my parents’ garage. It remains the best decision I’ve ever made. While the choice to go to university enriched my life in more ways than one, the experience as a whole has been defined by the friendships I’ve made and the adventures I’ve shared with other people. Earning the degree was only ever really half the journey for me – the real challenge lay in that long and confusing process of researching, applying and having nerve-wracking interviews, fuelled by the never-ending worry that I may not even make the grades to get in. Combined with the surreal realisation that the decisions I was making would have an impact on the kind of opportunities available to me in the future, I panicked into a downward spiral of low self-esteem and social retreat at aged seventeen.
I left college stressed, deflated and above all else, isolated. I hadn’t adjusted to the transition of high school to college very well at all, and I know with hindsight that I had started to fall through the cracks. I left school with GCSEs I could be proud of and I couldn’t wait for the new-found freedom and the change of pace that college would bring. I remember how high my expectations for the next phase were. I hoped I would thrive in the new courses I was doing, get on well with my tutors and find new friendships, as well as maintain existing ones. I hoped so much for that, but my reality looked a lot more like: Start the day in English class. I get another D grade back. My tutor has no faith in me. I think he wonders why I’m even here. Spend my free period doing homework, alone. I don’t seem to have the same timetable as anyone else I know, so there’s never anybody around to spend time with. There’s so much to do that I can never relax anyway. I go to Art class, where my tutor tells me I’m burning myself out. I can’t think creatively because I’m too stressed about everything else. I spend lunchtime alone again, secretly eating in the library while working on another essay. My day ends in German class, where I just can’t get the hang of something no matter how hard I try. I think I’m the only one who doesn’t understand. I’m overwhelmed. When I get home I lie about the upcoming parents evening. “No, they don’t do that in college”. It’s not true – there’s one next week – but nobody will have anything good to say about me anyway.
All of that is significant now, because it impacted my experience at university so profoundly. The first year of university is overwhelming for many; it’s a time for homesickness, stress and self-consciousness. Pretty much every Fresher has picked up that fail-safe advice somewhere along the way to prop their bedroom door open to invite new flatmates inside, or to seek out like-minded people in societies they’ll enjoy. I speak from experience when I say that I know how hard it is to push yourself to do the things that scare you. I didn’t even have the courage to channel that kind of mind-set at a new college down the road from a place I’d lived my entire life – let alone in a big, new city without the comfort of a home-cooked meal or a pet to cuddle. Yet after a couple of years of habitually turning down what felt like every social event, and avoiding anything that would take me away from A-level revision for too long, I was ready to start saying “yes” to every opportunity that came my way. And for the first time in a long time, I was guilt-free while doing it. There’s no one-size-fits-all formula to finding friends at university, but I think simply being open-minded and fairly selfless with my free time were what made a difference in those early days. I might have wanted to spend a peaceful evening in the confines of my bedroom every now and then, or forgo a takeaway in favour of sticking to the meal I’d already planned, but I shunned that once constant instinct to withdraw in favour of trying new things with new people. Even the friendships that didn’t last allowed me to at least learn some important lessons about myself and how I can be a better friend.
I know how lucky I am to have found my tribe at university; not everybody does. Anyone gearing up for a new term with social life woes should know that it’s never too late to start searching for your people. Getting into uni is a big deal… and you deserve to reward yourself with all of the nights out, pub quizzes, movie nights, shopping trips, drinking games, lunches out between lectures and just about everything else you had to forgo in order to get to where you are today.”
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Thank you so much to Laura for contributing this insightful and inspiring piece! You can find her on Instagram at @l.towns or on Twitter at @lautowns.