I’m about to go into my last exams which start next week (wish me luck!). So, I’m going to ‘reflect’ on my first year, of course the word reflect is silly and I hate having to do it but alas…
As you may or may not know, I started a little bit late at University. I missed ‘arrivals week’ and came into university just before ‘Freshers week.’
My housemates were brilliant at first. When I pressed that doorbell to see two housemates, and I’ll never forget their faces and my house-mate calling to the others that ‘Lauren was here!’ I’ve never seen them run that fast before, even to this day.
My room was large, bare and in the attic. The rest of the night consisted of getting drunk playing Ring of Fire and learning about my 6 other house-mates. I remember collapsing into bed that night thinking that this had been the “right thing to do and why the hell had I even doubted coming to university in the first place.”
The nights out were something to remember. No longer was I in Croydon, I was officially a university student with money to spend, a house with six great people and a course that I was sure I would like.
University was different than I expected; I found out what lectures were really like, seminars were definitely ones not to miss and try to get to know some of my course mates.
I got a job early on, in hindsight, I shouldn’t have done it but I can’t regret it. I got to work in a retail job, something I hadn’t done before and to really see what happens in a shop. Though I didn’t really meet a lot of friends and I really hated it, I tried my best to do a good job. But being a student in my first couple of weeks of starting University I didn’t want to miss out on anything. I would go out with everyone on a Friday knowing I had to get up at 6am the next day. I had done it before back in Croydon, I could do it again but, sometimes you wake up drunk at 6am and stumble into work a state; hung-over included.
I think after the incident with a night out and a week old pasta I re-evaluated everything that I was doing. I stopped going on nights out on a Friday and concentrated on getting more sleep but I think by then I was already really jealous of my housemates being at home relaxing on the weekend.
I may have had a four day week of university but to me it was like I couldn’t ever really relax. Even when I was at home I was still working, I was still in ‘university mode’ I could never switch it off. I thought that having a weekend I could maybe switch it off and actually have some me time.
Maybe I should have planned it out differently, maybe I can’t handle two things at once or maybe a retail job really isn’t for me. I know for a fact that that job didn’t treat anyone nicely – even the managers complained how much they hated it. Mainly it was because I was only a Christmas temp. They weren’t going to keep any of us so why bother helping?
I can probably go on all day about how much it bothered me and though I put it to the back of my mind that I wasn’t going to be let go – it was inevitable. I did get some good things out of that job, the other Christmas temps and some of the younger staff were actually quite nice and I was complimented on how good my customer skills were by the customers. Shame my bosses didn’t see that and only noticed I was putting in the voucher codes wrong…
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UNIVERSITY WORK
University work turned out to be tougher than I thought, I was struggling early on and it didn’t help that everyone around me were doing well or wasn’t doing anything at all.
Even though I had group work, my first assignment did well but I had the horrible feeling that my group didn’t like the fact that I was so casual about it all. They freaked while I told them that we were doing well. As the weeks went on and the assignments kept on coming with other groups and I learnt that everyone was taking this a lot more seriously than me.
I missed lectures, I missed Financial Reporting a lot and only turned up to seminars and group work because apparently this was fine according to second year students.
They literally told us to get all the late nights and bunking off lectures/seminars done now for second year is a completely different story.
So that’s exactly what I did.
The first year of university doesn’t count towards our final grade; you just have to pass it. All the second year students told us “you’ll sail through first year.”
So why was everyone panicking? It wasn’t until later that a fourth year student told us that in our course you couldn’t just ‘sail through,’ you work hard in all four years.
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MAKING FRIENDS
I did have this idea that I would have loads of friends in my course and that I would go into Uni a different person. As much as I think I have changed, I didn’t really get the friends in my course.
I suppose it doesn’t bother me too much, I realised that everyone had much better and stronger personalities than what I was used to but also that I was quiet. I mostly listened and smiled a lot. I did get to work with many of my course-mates on group work which got me to talk more and to contribute more. Don’t get me wrong I’m not a loner, I do talk to a lot of my course-mates, we all sit together in lectures and I will always say hello.
If I’m going to reflect, I would say that actually does it matter if I haven’t made best friends with my course-mates? Well yes, because that’s why you take that 20minute journey into University but on the other side is all your housemates that make you smile and it’s not as if I haven’t got other friends elsewhere. I have friends through my housemates and my friends back home.
It’s just that little idea I did have before I came to University had been popped.
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SECOND TERM
I had made my mistakes and revelled in my good grades by Christmas and after the two week break I was back on form to do the best I could. I still missed lectures but I made it into the hard subjects like economics and financial reporting (the subjects that I should really never do, because I can just about count on my fingers).
I hadn’t gone into my overdraft yet (big smiley face), I was happy to be back with my housemates and the two week break I realised that I didn’t need my parents as much as I thought, most of my mates from back home had stopped talking to me so what was the point? I was happier than I had been in ages.
However, my life was a soap opera. I felt like I lived in Hollyoaks. Drama happened left, right and centre. My grades were still good – I had had two really bad nights out and had been sick once. Little things started to happen though; I was really struggling with economics and financial reporting was a bore.
But you do what you can and you carry on.
University timetable was five days a week, three nine am starts. However,
my timetable was four days a week (maybe five), with maybe one 9am start – if I hadn’t turned off my alarm in my sleep.
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THIRD TERM
By March I was a tad homesick which surprised me. I wasn’t one to get upset about missing home however, I was talking more to my friends back home and little habits my housemates had would bug me.. So going home for the month of April really helped.
I was doubting about going returning to the next year of University though; I had changed my mind about what I wanted to do for a career (something I had had planned out since I was about 14/15 years old). It started when all my lectures and my friend stated this out for me: none of the guest lecturers, people we were supposed to aspire to be like, had degrees or any kind of experience in the field they were working in. They just worked their way from bottom to top. So why was I struggling over a degree when I could go out and gain that experience, working my way from the bottom to the top?
Additionally, it was little things like relatives asking me how my course was going and when I answered “hard,” they all rolled their eyes as if to say that I was obviously lying because University wasn’t hard.
It was weird but I was sick of always doing some sort of school work. I had been doing it since I was 5 and now at 19 years of age, I was sick of it. Irony.
It took some time; my parents freaked out just a little and a horrible career interview (while a tad hung-over, I’m not going to lie) for me to really have a look at what I was doing with my life.
Since then I’ve decided to stay. I’ll get the experience and the degree under my belt and then from there, I can look at where I want to go.
It just takes me a look at my grades so far to tell myself that I’m not actually struggling. It’s just me over thinking it. I’ve got a 1st in Financial Reporting (when two days before I had run down to the beach in a state because I thought that I would fail the test) and I haven’t gotten less than a 2:1 (yet…)
So in reflection, I have a house for next year with five (almost) great people and I pray that my course gets interesting in the second year, come September/ October. I’m gaining a really good experience with good friends, cheap nights out and the only real responsibility is to not kill myself with my own cooking.
So here’s to good grades in my four exams. But most importantly, a good summer getting drunk.
Survival of a University Student =)
