My First Month at University: Expectations vs Reality

Hello everyone!

Big news: I'm at university!!

I haven't blogged in a while (well, over a year if I'm honest) but I wanted to start writing again as my own little creative outlet. As much as I love writing essay on the origins of World War I. (History student here so that wasn't ironic in the slightest.) 

The first thing I really wanted to write about is my experience of my first month or so at university. There are so many expectations, pressures and emotions but people only tend to talk about the partying and how much alcohol they consumed. Which is fair enough, I'm the proud owner of about 8 empty bottles of vodka, but it's easy to forget to talk about the harder stuff. So here I go...

While fresher’s week is an overwhelming, party filled week, the reality of the first few weeks of university is different to what we expect. After seeing a never ending stream of fancy dressed, drunken selfies on Instagram, that’s what I thought uni would be full of. And nothing else.

To be brutally honest, the first month of uni has actually been more focused on managing money, missing home and an overall sense of  'I can’t do this'. 

That paints a very bleak picture of university, and I promise that you will also spend a lot of time socialising, working and generally drinking a lot, but I noticed that social media and blogs don’t tend to cover the other, tougher side of university.

I think the first thing that hit me was a weird sense of isolation. Being a very social person and having lived in a room with 6 girls for 5 months on a ski season, I am very used to being around people 24/7. But once my parents left on the day I moved in, there was a sense of what now?! And after speaking to my flatmates about it a bit later, I think a lot of people felt the same. You’re left in a new city, surrounded by strangers but without anything forcing you to leave your room, it is very easy to get a bit isolated.

I think the other thing that people don’t talk about is money. Yes, it’s common knowledge that students are poor, that’s standard. But what is hard to understand, as a first year is how on earth people afford to go out every night of the week, every week. There are 2 answers to that:

1. They don’t. Honestly. Even my friends that love going out all the time don’t go out every night. It’s unrealistic, unaffordable and just plain tiring.

2. A concept that is something that you have to deal with when you get to uni is that everyone will have a different budget. Whether it’s because people get bigger loans or bigger allowances from family, everyone’s different. So sometimes it feels like your trying to keep up with someone that’s miles ahead of you from the start

I think the second reality of university is that apart from a very small minority, people just don’t go out every night. From speaking to people in 1^st and 2^nd year, it seems like twice/three times a week is most common. Don’t feel like you’re not doing it right just because you’re not out out every night!!

Finally, homesickness. I know most people would think this one was obvious, but not for me. Everyone is different but I have never been someone that gets particularly home sick. I was working in France for 5 months and saw my parents for a total of 3 hours in that whole time and honestly, didn’t get homesick once. 

But the thing about uni that I didn’t really expect is that there is a whole lot of nothingness. Rather than working 9-5 then eating and going out, I have 1 or 2 lectures a day maximum. That means that unless I properly filled my time, there's a lot of time that you spend just in your room/the kitchen/walking to and from uni on your own. And that’s alright. But it does mean that if you have the tendency to get homesick, or even if you don’t, there’s a lot more time in which you’re not distracted and can just sit and think about things. Wallowing in self pity, stress and missing your family. But that might’ve just been me.

Now as I said before, this all paints a pretty negative picture of university. But sometimes when all you hear is ‘freshers is awesome’ and ‘these are the best years of your life’, it’s hard not to feel like you’re the only one going through this. Honestly, everyone does.

Anyway, on a more positive not, I am absolutely loving uni and have found ways to combat every single one of these. And that, you lucky lot, is going to be my next post so make sure to look out for that one!

I really hope you enjoyed this and I'm look forward to writing more,

Welcome back 

Laura x