University is something that everyone portrays as one of the best times of your life and tells you it is the place where you are going to meet all of your life-long friends. They make it out like you are going to go out partying and drinking every single night (at least during first year) and that the workload is only small.
But this isn't the only side of university. This is the side that people want you to see. There is another side that not many people will tell you about and even if they do briefly mention it they will then go on to say "but it's still really fun and you'll really enjoy it". What they don't tell you about is that you will also go through some really hard times, possibly the hardest times of your life, as you learn a lot more about yourself as a person, due to the fact that you will be spending a lot of time on your own.
University has probably made me the loneliest I have ever been. If you are in accommodation, you will probably spend the majority of time in your room on your own doing work. Even though during A-Levels I spent a lot of time in my room alone doing work, I was always able to go into the kitchen or lounge if I ever got bored or wanted to talk to someone, which I thought university was going to be like. How wrong I was!
If you are sat in your room at university, alone, and get bored or want to talk to someone, chances are if you go into the kitchen there will be no one in there for you to talk to. This means that you will be holding your thoughts in to yourself, which can become very dangerous if you are in need of someone to talk to but have no one there. You could say that I could go and talk to some of my friends in my accommodation, but if I'm being brutally honest, I haven't really made any other friends in my accommodation apart from a couple of people who I share a flat with. The majority of my friends are on my course but they commute to university and don't live anywhere particularly near to where I am staying and most of them have jobs so can't spontaneously meet up with me just because I need to talk.
My mental health has definitely suffered since moving away to university. I'm not sure whether it is because I'm out of my comfort zone by being away from home or if it is due to me feeling lonely and like I have no one to talk to (or both). I think it is important for me to acknowledge this as so many people will tell you how fun university is, and to be fair most people probably do experience university in the way it is portrayed by many, but there are also others, like me, who don't experience this side of university.
There have been times when I have wanted to drop out of university due to this reason as I didn't like the fact that I was really struggling with moving away from home and being completely on my own for the first time EVER and in a place where it didn't even resemble my home town in the slightest. The only thing that has really kept me in university was the fact that I was doing fairly well in my course (for my first two assignments I got a first) and I was trying to convince myself that things would change. They have slightly changed I guess, but not as much as I would like them to. The other reason why I have stuck at it is that since I was little I have always wanted to go to university, get a degree and get a job. I know that university isn't the only route you can take into getting a job, however for what I potentially want to do once I leave university, I will need some form of a degree for, so even if I were to drop out of my current course now, I would still have to go and do a different course in order to do this job.
After telling you all of this, I'm not going to then sit here and tell you that you should still go to university because it's really fun and you probably won't end up going through what I am, but then I would be lying. University isn't for everyone and let's be honest, it probably isn't for me but I don't really know what other routes I would take if I did drop out, hence why I have stuck at it because I didn't want to drop out and then not have anything to go on to do to be able to justify me dropping out.
I guess at the end of the day if you really want to get somewhere and there are a few steps along the way that you'd rather not take but have to in order to get to where you want to be, then you'll take it to make sure you get there. That's how I feel about university. I have always wanted to go to university since I was a little girl, but now I am here I have realised that it's not all it's made out to be and there are definitely some things about it that I never expected to experience. But at the end of the day, as long as taking this step means I am that little bit closer to getting into a career that I genuinely enjoy and that makes all of this worth it, then so be it. Because three years (and possibly a couple more) is nothing compared to 30 years of being in a job that I (hopefully) enjoy.
Love Beth xx
This was such an insightful post. I know exactly what you mean about being lonely at University when living in accommodation. I think if you really click with all your flatmates and make really close friends but that didn’t happen for me. It will all be worth it in the end though!
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