Hello Earthlings,
I missed a week and felt terrible for it but I am back. The truth is, is that last week on posting day (Thursday) I wasn't feel good. Not in a sicky way, but I was kinda mopey and didn't really know what to type. My initial post idea had failed me, or so I thought as I reread it and concluded it wasn't the best it could be...over and over again. Now, I have decided that it was in fact okay and will be published after this. I don't want to call this a catch up post and to be honest I didn't really feel like writing it out but as my Mum pointed out someone else may benefit from reading this.
As you know I commute to university, I get on the train which takes around 20 minutes and then walk the half hour walk from the station to my campus. I tend to get there early, mainly because I dread having to walk into a full lecture hall and have over 200 pairs of eyes staring at me, but also because I find a place in the library to catch up on some notes or research. This had been my plan all along, I commute meaning I can't go home in the middle of the day so I may as well just get all my notes done and then have free time at home. I started to fall behind, I felt so disappointed in myself that I was spending all this time at the library, often in the quiet section where there's one man who gets a little annoyed when I crinkle foil to eat my chicken, pesto and cucumber wrap, yet I was getting nowhere. I felt like I was already failing. You see, university is a big change and I really don't think you are prepared for it. For example, at sixth form if you needed to find an article you were often given it and told to highlight the relevant text, now I get to choose an article. I know, such a tough thing to do, right? It's the principle of it because if you start to add all these little things like this up you realise that yes, sixth form, no matter how stressful it was at the time, was actually a walk in the park on a summer's day. You have to take your notes and basically run with them, research various aspects but for me I'm always a bit like "oh, well is this relevant to anything?". I don't want to just waste my time here and I really want to try my best, I mean if for nothing else so it makes tuition fees and travel costs worth it.
I'm now on top of my work so far and am feeling a whole lot better regarding that situation. I'm trying my best to be as productive as I can and get into a whole new routine. I'm learning to start balancing everything so I can still maintain a fairly normal, chill life and I'm trying to learn how to just go with the flow a bit more.
Another idealised image of university is that you are going to make friends for life there and "the girl who I met on my first day is still my best friend now" and everything happens SO quickly that it feels like you've known them forever. That doesn't happen for everyone, sometimes it takes a little bit longer to form that bond with someone and if you're commuting you don't have the benefit of being 2 minutes away, you have several other benefits, and that doesn't make a difference. If you are going to be friends with someone then you'll end up being friends with them regardless of how far you are and it may just take time. You see, I'm making friends but what I have noticed is that it isn't as easy as it was when you were starting secondary school. I always remember, when I was 11 and starting the big, scary world of year 7, I found my group straight away. We instantly clicked and from then on, school was easy, now of course we had arguments; we were all over sensitive 11 year olds at the end of the day, thinking that we were so much more mature than we were but it was easy to initially make the close friendship. Over the years, you have fall outs, you lose friends, you realise you're too trusting and then all of a sudden you find it difficult to let new people in, you start to think about what the friendship is to you and all of a sudden there's more decisions to make, just about making a friend. So, you think more and you may seem reserved and you care more than you did in year 7, year 7 was about finding the friends who were going to make school fly by and the ones who you were going to annoy the supply teacher with but all this, it is a whole new ball game.
I want to say that it doesn't matter if at first you don't make friends, maybe that doesn't bother you, maybe you're quite happy talking to anyone, but just give it time. Things will fall into place where they are meant to.
To conclude, I'm enjoying university. I'm enjoying the challenge uni brings, I'm enjoying having a laugh with new people and in a weird way I'm enjoying my commute. I mean, I actually got my notes out on the train yesterday, am I a proper student now? But I just want to put this out there so maybe other people can read it and feel a bit better, oh feel free to get in touch with any other thoughts on starting uni etc and I may do a whole big post of advice on it.
Until next week,
Lia x
I missed a week and felt terrible for it but I am back. The truth is, is that last week on posting day (Thursday) I wasn't feel good. Not in a sicky way, but I was kinda mopey and didn't really know what to type. My initial post idea had failed me, or so I thought as I reread it and concluded it wasn't the best it could be...over and over again. Now, I have decided that it was in fact okay and will be published after this. I don't want to call this a catch up post and to be honest I didn't really feel like writing it out but as my Mum pointed out someone else may benefit from reading this.
As you know I commute to university, I get on the train which takes around 20 minutes and then walk the half hour walk from the station to my campus. I tend to get there early, mainly because I dread having to walk into a full lecture hall and have over 200 pairs of eyes staring at me, but also because I find a place in the library to catch up on some notes or research. This had been my plan all along, I commute meaning I can't go home in the middle of the day so I may as well just get all my notes done and then have free time at home. I started to fall behind, I felt so disappointed in myself that I was spending all this time at the library, often in the quiet section where there's one man who gets a little annoyed when I crinkle foil to eat my chicken, pesto and cucumber wrap, yet I was getting nowhere. I felt like I was already failing. You see, university is a big change and I really don't think you are prepared for it. For example, at sixth form if you needed to find an article you were often given it and told to highlight the relevant text, now I get to choose an article. I know, such a tough thing to do, right? It's the principle of it because if you start to add all these little things like this up you realise that yes, sixth form, no matter how stressful it was at the time, was actually a walk in the park on a summer's day. You have to take your notes and basically run with them, research various aspects but for me I'm always a bit like "oh, well is this relevant to anything?". I don't want to just waste my time here and I really want to try my best, I mean if for nothing else so it makes tuition fees and travel costs worth it.
I'm now on top of my work so far and am feeling a whole lot better regarding that situation. I'm trying my best to be as productive as I can and get into a whole new routine. I'm learning to start balancing everything so I can still maintain a fairly normal, chill life and I'm trying to learn how to just go with the flow a bit more.
Another idealised image of university is that you are going to make friends for life there and "the girl who I met on my first day is still my best friend now" and everything happens SO quickly that it feels like you've known them forever. That doesn't happen for everyone, sometimes it takes a little bit longer to form that bond with someone and if you're commuting you don't have the benefit of being 2 minutes away, you have several other benefits, and that doesn't make a difference. If you are going to be friends with someone then you'll end up being friends with them regardless of how far you are and it may just take time. You see, I'm making friends but what I have noticed is that it isn't as easy as it was when you were starting secondary school. I always remember, when I was 11 and starting the big, scary world of year 7, I found my group straight away. We instantly clicked and from then on, school was easy, now of course we had arguments; we were all over sensitive 11 year olds at the end of the day, thinking that we were so much more mature than we were but it was easy to initially make the close friendship. Over the years, you have fall outs, you lose friends, you realise you're too trusting and then all of a sudden you find it difficult to let new people in, you start to think about what the friendship is to you and all of a sudden there's more decisions to make, just about making a friend. So, you think more and you may seem reserved and you care more than you did in year 7, year 7 was about finding the friends who were going to make school fly by and the ones who you were going to annoy the supply teacher with but all this, it is a whole new ball game.
I want to say that it doesn't matter if at first you don't make friends, maybe that doesn't bother you, maybe you're quite happy talking to anyone, but just give it time. Things will fall into place where they are meant to.
To conclude, I'm enjoying university. I'm enjoying the challenge uni brings, I'm enjoying having a laugh with new people and in a weird way I'm enjoying my commute. I mean, I actually got my notes out on the train yesterday, am I a proper student now? But I just want to put this out there so maybe other people can read it and feel a bit better, oh feel free to get in touch with any other thoughts on starting uni etc and I may do a whole big post of advice on it.
Until next week,
Lia x
Comments
Post a Comment