Starting university is an incredibly exciting thing – new friends, surroundings, clubs, societies, learning opportunities, future-defining experiences, and of course living on your own. It’s that time that you’ve been working so hard towards: you’ve sat your exams, said a bittersweet goodbye to your friends (perhaps a slightly more sweet OR bitter goodbye to some specific teachers who’s names I’m sure pop up in your head), and partied it up at prom and now it’s finally time for you to gain your independence and head to university!
While saying goodbye to your pets and family/friends is difficult, going to uni is a great experience that will help you grow as a person. However, what no one tells you about is the challenges that don’t seem challenging, and the everyday tasks that somehow slip away from you – leaving you wondering how you forgot to eat lunch that day, or how you blinked and suddenly the clock says 2am when it was 9pm half an hour ago.
We all throw ourselves into university at full force – freshers week rolls around and suddenly we’re charismatic and doing anything and everything to scramble to find the friends we’ve been dreaming of and the social lives we imagined, and suddenly, we’re right back where we were in our first year of secondary school; the youngest of the lot and the most clueless of our surroundings and any normality whatsoever.
Our routines change and suddenly we’re in an entirely new environment with absolutely no one we know about to start doing more coursework than we know what to do with absolutely no idea of how to manage the work, our jobs, our new social lives, relationships, our ‘me time’, and on top of all that how to remember to eat and shower like a normally functioning human. Young adulthood is about finding ourselves, though this is difficult to do when surrounded by so many people we want to impress, all with different styles and opinions.
A lot of people leave school with perfect grades and expect university to be no different, until you’re absolutely hammered by assignments and coursework, with deadlines so close together that you wonder how you ever thought you could manage this life.
Though, there’s nothing to worry about. While trying to figure out who we are while simultaneously trying to keep ourselves alive and truly live the lives we want, sometimes we need to just stop and think about who we are in this moment in time, and what we want to do. Even if that’sunknown, everything works out the way it does for a reason, and life is here to live to the fullest! Go on that trip, get coffee with that someone, go to your club/society socials, or even stay in with that cup of hot chocolate calling your name and snuggle up with a movie. We’re only young, time may move quickly, but there’s plenty of it.
Featured image credits: Amelia Fryer
