I wasn't planning for my first post to be about university but as I've skipped my seminar and spent the morning listening to Fine Line instead, it seemed fitting.
From years ten to twelve at school, I was convinced that I needed to go to a university that was as far away as possible. My initial plan was to go for one of the Australian Go8 universities, apply for various American colleges and even a Scottish university if all else failed. Through some cruel twist of fate, I couldn't have stayed any closer to home. Somehow I ended up choosing to stay in London, which is something that I feared I would regret but luckily so far I love it at King's. It is also however undeniable that sometimes I hate it here and I guess that's what this post is really about.
So many of usgullible fools skip off to uni expecting it to be this perfect experience where we 'find ourselves', make friends for life and come out with 2:1s even though we never read the books. During sixth form we're entirely consumed with gaining admission into these prestigious institutions, and fail to consider, that what we're meant to be doing and feeling might just become an extremely blurred line. Some may call it character building, I call it a big fat con.
I can't even blame Hollywood for misrepresenting university because that's supposed to be fake. Instead, I blame all the middle-aged people who had the most incredible time, got paid to go to university and somehow expect us to live up to that. I'm only in my first year and therefore have no choice but to assume that this is the worst part and the rest will only get better. Every aspect of this year has been incredibly tough at times: moving out and trying your best to cook rather than ordering endless ubereats, making friends/maintaining old friendships and the dreaded workload.
My first year of university has been so overwhelming that I've wanted to get the tube home and never come back, and so underwhelming that I've turned to my best friend in utter shock and whispered "surely, this isn't what it's really like?". When you take a step back and reflect on it all, you do realise that these experiences just single each other out.
If you're going to university soon, the one piece of advice that I can give is to not put too much pressure on yourself. Do the best that you can because it's just about staying afloat at the beginning and from my observations, no one actually knows what they're doing anyway. You probably won't feel like it's the best year of your life in the moment, but things will change drastically and I suppose there's a lot of fun in that.
So many of us
I can't even blame Hollywood for misrepresenting university because that's supposed to be fake. Instead, I blame all the middle-aged people who had the most incredible time, got paid to go to university and somehow expect us to live up to that. I'm only in my first year and therefore have no choice but to assume that this is the worst part and the rest will only get better. Every aspect of this year has been incredibly tough at times: moving out and trying your best to cook rather than ordering endless ubereats, making friends/maintaining old friendships and the dreaded workload.
I know that some will roll their eyes and say that the workload isn't that bad but I found having to read 4-5 texts/critical essays (plus extra research) per week a horrendously difficult task!
The best way to describe how I feel about uni so far is to confirm that in Europe one can indeed just feel 'whelmed'. (See Figure 1 below)
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| Figure 1 10 Things I Hate About You (1999) |
If you're going to university soon, the one piece of advice that I can give is to not put too much pressure on yourself. Do the best that you can because it's just about staying afloat at the beginning and from my observations, no one actually knows what they're doing anyway. You probably won't feel like it's the best year of your life in the moment, but things will change drastically and I suppose there's a lot of fun in that.
