First-Year Follow Up

I'm overwhelmed by the response I received from last week's post. Not only did it receive over 200 reads, a number of people reached out to me expressing how they'd felt similarly or how grateful they were for me speaking out about it. I was quite surprised about how many people opened up to me, some were people I barely knew and some were those who are close to me. The response made me aware of how many of us let these feelings go unspoken and how much university can impact us mentally.

One girl in particular - who has given me her word to speak about this - was living under the same roof as me last year, feeling very similarly to how I did with regards to loneliness, yet neither of us knew we were both experiencing this and therefore didn't talk about it. Unfortunately it's not really something that you do speak about, connotations of loneliness suggest it's only a thing for the elderly but loneliness is incredibly prominent in young adults and I wouldn't be surprised if university lifestyle is in part to blame for that. When you think of university, you think of all the people you can meet and all the opportunities that can arise, but there are aspects of university life that can be extremely isolating.

Sixth Form to University

For me in particular, it was how I'd spend my days plus the lack of a communal environment that affected me the most. During the first term I found it hard to know what to do with all of the spare time I had. I thought back to how I'd spend the few hours after getting back from a day at sixth form and thought I'd replicate that into my university day. However, what I didn't consider at the time is that I wasn't living on campus at my sixth form, therefore resulting in me forgetting to include commute time and time I'd spend in the gym as part of my 'spare time'. During the very few hours I actually spent at home after sixth form I would eat dinner with my family, watch some television and then go to bed.

My days were full of social interaction, which I really took for granted, surrounded by my friends throughout the day at sixth form, followed by returning home to eat dinner around a table and then watching television with my family. The only thing I actually did by myself was gym and even then sometimes I'd go with people. Flash forward to university and I'm eating breakfast in my room (alone), turning up to lectures (alone), going to the gym (alone) and maybe occasionally managing to time my dinner to fit in with when the rest of the flat are in the kitchen. The only real social interaction came from evenings in the kitchen or nights out. Comparing that now to my sixth form routine and there is a massive difference in my social interactions, it's no wonder I started to feel lonely.

Homesickness

For the first few weeks I just presumed it was homesickness, like I mentioned in my previous post, I'm very close to my family so not having them around made quite a difference. That and the fact that Falmouth is quite literally the furthest south westerly university in England that I could have chosen...

To combat these feelings I'd ring home more often which definitely did help, but it can start to feel unnatural when the main source of social interaction you are getting is from a screen. During October my parents travelled the distance to come and visit me. We had such a lovely weekend and I made sure I really appreciated their company, but if anything, it only made the loneliness feel more real by the time they had left. I had been reminded of what it's like to have your days revolve around social interactions and it just left me wanting to go back home with them. Despite feeling a little out of place at home to start with, what I found really worked for me was actually going home and being immersed in that environment for a period of time. Spending that time being sat around the dinner table with family, doing things to help out around the house and just involving myself in other people's lives. Unfortunately for me, it's not quite as easy to regularly 'pop back' home so I didn't get to do that often enough. That being said, regularly going home might also impact your university experience negatively if you rely on it too much - you really can't win can you... so do bear in mind that it's important to find a balance and one that works for you.

Balance

Which brings me nicely onto balance, something I still haven't quite grasped, but have come a long way with. It's so important to separate your 'work life' with your 'home life', I regularly mixed these together during first term which caused a lot of stress. It actually got to a point where I was doing essay prep in my dressing gown, whilst drinking wine out of the bottle. I took this as 'what being a university student was all about' but it really didn't have to be and working like this just affected the quality of work I was producing and my enjoyment of it.

Come second term, where I was focusing on my health, not drinking and over doing it by keeping on top of my work, spending most of my time in the library. I had completely flipped to the other end of the scale as I didn't want to experience the same anxiety over the workload in my second term. This was great for my grades and I definitely didn't stress over the workload quite as much because of it, but my social life however, suffered ridiculously. Resulting in a whole new sense of loneliness being brought on by keeping myself isolated in order to better myself. It honestly is really quite hard to get the balance right during your first year, don't be concerned if you can't find what works for you right away, allow yourself that time to figure it out, it's a new experience and I evidently struggled to make it work in the beginning. Unfortunately for me, I seem to be an all or nothing kind of girl - which I'm working on - however, this year I feel very confident in successfully achieving balance. With the help of an environment change, it's a lot easier for me to separate uni and home life. Now that I'm not living on campus, I'm spending my daytime over at uni, either working or in the gym and then socialising in the lounge with my flatmates in the evenings. This works brilliantly for me, along with a nice walk back from campus to separate the two - provided the Cornish rain holds off...

Other things that could combat the loneliness

I'm not an expert, I don't know for sure what will work and different people will experience different kinds of loneliness. Homesickness could be helped by regular trips home and loneliness could be down to an environment or routine that lacks social interaction.

However, I've asked around and gathered a few things that have helped other people, so chances are they could help someone else if they are feeling similarly:

- Finding a hobby or joining a society: a relatively obvious one, universities offer many societies that open doors to meeting new groups of people and they are a good way to seek social interaction.

- Physical activity: there are so many studies on how physical activity can improve your mood. I find walking and resistance training are my favourite sources of exercise but there are so many forms of it and it really does impact you positively in so many ways.

- Day trips/Outings with flatmates and friends: you're most likely living in a completely new place now which offers so much to do. Despite how far away I am from home, I'm living in Cornwall, an absolutely gorgeous place that offers so much in the way of day trips. Go out on day trips with your flatmates - or if that's too expensive - just go out for breakfast or a coffee occasionally, it's surprising how much closer experiences like this can bring you together as a group.

- Study with people: due to how independent some aspects of the uni workload can be, you could fall into the trap of constantly working alone which can get extremely isolating. If you're writing an essay or doing some readings - even if the work should be done independently - go to the library or to a cafe with other people so that during your breaks you're still able to communicate with others and you're not spending your days completely isolated from everyone.

- Getting outside: I wasn't sure whether to include this one but I think it could be important to touch on. During first term I hardly left my room, I didn't go outside other than to walk to my lectures or to go on a night out. Spending your life inside one room can not only make your life feel very limiting, it can also make you associate any negative emotions with that particular room. This is certainly what happened to me and what unfortunately led to me experiencing low moods.

I know these are very generic - and some quite obvious - methods in which to gain more social interaction or to lift your mood, but they have worked for me and several others so why not mention them again eh? I personally don't think we are prepared well enough for university life and the independence that comes along with it so by sharing my experiences I hope I can at least help one person in however they may be feeling.

I'm going to continue to write my posts within the realm of university life and my experiences so far, so if anyone has any topic suggestions or things they are particularly interested in then please don't hesitate to message me. I really appreciate all the support I have received so far with this new blog so thank you for taking the time to read my posts and to those who reached out to me last week, it really meant a lot.

For now though, I shall leave you with some shots of places I've visited and things I've done around Cornwall since making the move...