My First-Year University Experience and How It Impacted Me Mentally...

It's been a year since I started settling into the world of being a university student and seeing as a lot of people I know are new to this I thought I'd do a post about my first-year experience.

I'm actually going to start this piece by reflecting on the thoughts I had before starting university and how I've changed through my experience of first year.

The most memorable thought I had before starting uni was about who my flatmates were going to be. I remember thinking to myself that my future flatmates were out there in the world somewhere and I just didn't know them yet. I also expected to be in a mixed-sex flat so when I turned up to find six other girls sat around the kitchen table it was actually quite daunting for me. I've always found I get on better with guys, possibly due to my slight 'tomboy' period - all thanks to my brother - of loving WWE and playing Ps2 and Xbox. Looking back on that now, I definitely think the all-girls flat was a blessing in disguise. Originally I wasn't over the moon about it but when I think about how much easier I find it to make friends with guys than girls, having these really lovely girls pushed into my life made it really easy be a part of a girly group.

One thing that has massively changed for me - thanks to my first year at uni - is my independence. I was quite a dependent person before university, I had a boyfriend (Laurence - whom I will probably refer to a lot in my blog as he was - and still is - an important part of my life) for two and a half years and having someone to rely on and constantly fall back on really does impact how independent you are. It is honestly like having another half to yourself, someone who completes you, so independence isn't something I'd really ever felt before uni; especially as the relationship took up almost all of my 'defining' teenage years. At school, I often felt like I was known to a lot of people as 'Laurence's girlfriend' as opposed to 'Emily' and I was somewhat excited to start a new chapter as Emily in Falmouth. However that being said I wasn't prepared for what comes from having a boyfriend (who is also your best friend) to suddenly being single, in a new environment, where I knew nobody. Especially how that would impact me mentally.

I'll go into that in more detail later on.

I'd like to just add a cringe warning here - I really don't want this piece to become overly cringey but I will say now how my experience of first year made me incredibly independent and a lot stronger mentally. I went through a lot and I guess that's another reason why I want to write this post. Mental health is ridiculously provoked by moving away from home and the university lifestyle. Having struggled myself earlier this year with some mental health issues, I want to shed some light on them so if anyone is feeling this way themselves they know they aren't completely alone.

Let's start from the beginning, shall we?

September 15th 2017 my family and I (just about) transferred the entirety of my room into the car, ready to embark on the 6 and a half hour journey to Falmouth, Cornwall. I settled in relatively quickly and actually the first few months of university for me were brilliant. I quickly made friends with my flatmates and we always joke about our first night meeting each other, the dreaded 'go around the table and all answer the same questions about yourself'. It actually took one of the girls to say, "shall we just get drunk and go out?" for us to get over that initial awkwardness. By the end of the night I'd climbed through a stranger's bedroom window with one of the girls and been exposed to the infamous Club I (Falmouth's -at the time- only club and one that is known for how awful it smells - it's a club with a carpet dance floor I'll say that much...). I proved to become quite spontaneous during the first few months of uni, my flatmates and I actually refer to the freshers Emily as a different Emily. I'd always be the one to suggest we go out and I returned home at Christmas with three more piercings than I'd left with - which if you knew me before uni would have been something incredibly 'wild' of me.

Once the excitement of freshers was over I started to feel a bit lost. I'd been too busy during freshers to even think about the things I was beginning to miss. I remember thinking at the time that I must already be over Laurence because I hadn't had that Bridget Jones moment; crying into a tub of Ben & Jerry's, but I couldn't have been more wrong. Through all the partying, course inductions and acclimatising to new environments, I found I hadn't let myself process the fact I'd lost my best friend and was no longer surrounded by the strong support system of my family and friends. I started to feel incredibly alone and homesick. Now, I am someone who is very close to their parents, they mean the absolute world to me - and share my appalling sense of humour - so it was very easy for me to miss them and originally I thought that was all it was. Thinking a few FaceTime calls could fix this, we started to call each other a bit more often but it didn't fix the emptiness I was feeling.

On top of this, another thing that was causing me grief was the pressure to find friends and look like I was having the time of my life. Before you go off to university everyone tells you you'll have the best time and it's where you'll meet your life-long friends - well I was feeling far from that and was questioning if it was just me feeling this way. Especially with Snapchat and Instagram Stories allowing everyone to document their individual experiences at university, it really can become quite tricky when it looks like everyone else has fit right in to where they've moved to and you feel that you haven't. Now don't get me wrong, I had an amazing first few months at uni. My flatmates really are great fun and we had some hilarious nights out, but I was still really hung up about the fact I didn't feel how I felt towards my friends at home towards those at university. Something I now realise is so silly because I've known my friends at home for years, we have an incredibly tight knit group, we are all extremely comfortable around each other and we talk on our group chat everyday and have done for nearly three years now. I was never going to have that same comfort with my new university friends because I'd only known them a couple of months, however because I lacked this kind of close human interaction it became quite hard. I was still talking to my family and friends but because of how far away I was from home it was only ever through a screen, never a person to person kind of communication and this felt so unnatural and wasn't enough to make me feel any less lonely. I think also the fact that I'd gone from having a boyfriend for two and a half years, a constant source of human interaction, to having none at all, really emphasised this loneliness.

One more thing to add to the pile of reasons I was feeling lonely was the lack of communal space in our halls. We had a tiny television and only a kitchen table with uncomfortable seats to sit around so as a flat we spent the majority of our time in our rooms. Halls, as nice as it was, started to feel like a prison where our rooms were our individual cells - not helped at all by the fact my window looked onto a brick wall making my room dark 75% of the day. Without that communal environment, the only real opportunity to spend time with my flatmates came from nights out or going out for food, which ultimately became too expensive to uphold and the nights out - especially Falmouth nights out - started to become quite repetitive.

Christmas came around and it was time to go home and see everyone again. This was so exciting for me, I couldn't wait to spend time with my family and see how all of my friends were getting on. The first few days back home felt quite strange, you really do notice all the little differences the first time coming home after a long time away, paintings being moved to new places on the walls and a few new things dotted around. I genuinely thought coming home would fill the emptiness I'd been feeling as I'd be seeing everyone again but in actual fact, to start with, it only made things worse. I remember being sat on my bed in my room feeling like I didn't recognise home anymore or know how to live there because I'd been living so independently for so long. Luckily, this feeling didn't last long and after a couple of days I had settled back in. I then started to see friends again and was feeling positive towards a lot of things.

However, one thing hanging over me was how on earth I was supposed to act around Laurence. We share the same friendship group so I knew I'd be seeing him again - I really wanted to see him too but Laurence and I had never really just been friends. We didn't really know how to act as 'just friends' around each other so seeing him did feel very strange and sadly unnatural. I felt forced to push him away because I had set rules in my head that I wasn't allowed to act 'coupley' with him. It was certainly weird being back in a recognisable environment but feeling like a completely different person. So much reminded me of him at home, whereas in Falmouth I could easily associate the environment with being 'single'. I found it incredibly hard to feel this way at home, especially when we had broken up so close to the date we both left for uni. Anyway, I somewhat got through this and despite how confusing it was at times, we somehow managed it.

Christmas was lovely; being back with my family and friends, eating home cooked meals (actually at a table and not in bed) I was beginning to feel like myself again and genuinely felt like the loneliness was starting to disappear. This time at home was a big distraction, I could forget about how I'd been feeling at uni - despite feeling like I was lying to everyone when they'd ask how uni was going and I'd reply "Oh it's great!". When it came around to thinking about going back to Falmouth I started to feel less positively. I'd created associations with this empty feeling and Falmouth and I really didn't want to return - despite how lovely a place Falmouth is. Eventually, the time to go back came and off I was to start my second term of first year.

New Year, Old Me

Back in uni halls - or back in the prison cell as I saw it - I was feeling really confused. Going home had reminded me of who I was before university; I barely drank alcohol, I was extremely invested in the gym and I took care of myself mentally and physically. I'd lost sight of this person through the excitement of freshers and was determined to get back to this 'old me'. I decided to focus myself on three things: getting to the gym more often, eating healthily and concentrating on my studies. This meant turning down nights out, keeping on top of my work and learning how to cook. As I've mentioned in previous posts I joined in with the Veganuary movement which was an incredible help in teaching me about the right nutrition and through it I developed a love for cooking. I downloaded a workout guide to follow in the gym and went to the library nearly every day. The distraction worked, for a few months, until I hit absolute rock bottom. The emptiness came flooding back and was even worse than before. Not drinking or going out had stripped me of my social life so any human interaction I was getting was from the occasional small talk from someone in the kitchen or talking about work with people from my course.

4th of March 2018, I had a conversation over messenger with my mum and she told me she was concerned I was suffering from slight depression. I remember uncontrollably crying at this message for a good hour or so. I couldn't comprehend how I'd got to such a low point in my life considering how happy I was before uni and how uni was supposed to be this incredible time of your life. Despite how hard that evening was for me, it sent me in the right direction. I decided to stop being so negative about things and did what I do best: pick myself up and get on with things. I actually ended up going out that night, my first time in a while and I remember having a great time and questioning how a few hours ago I'd been so low. Now as much as I'd like to, I'm not about to tell you it was plain sailing from here on in, the feelings of loneliness did come back in waves and I did have a few more low points throughout this year but because I'm aware this is nearly turning into a novel I'm going to round it up a bit.

During April I had my deadlines, I got myself into a good routine, I spent my days in the library and gym and I made more of an effort to socialise - just without the alcohol. Resistance training in the gym really helped me, as I got stronger physically I also got stronger mentally and because I was beginning to lose the 'freshers 15' weight I was starting to recognise myself again. I ended up finishing April with good grades and came home for what was a ridiculously long - but incredibly needed - summer.

Not only was it the longest summer holiday I've ever had, it was also one of the most refreshing. This time allowed me to get back to being myself - apparently as a middle-aged woman who enjoys cups of tea, early nights and wholesome dinners with family and friends - and gave me enough time to actually leave me wanting to go back to university. I'm now living in a house five minutes from the beach, with flatmates who feel like family and a communal area where we all spend time together. Summer has honestly left me feeling so self-assured and I'm so incredibly happy to be feeling like myself again. I'm known as 'mum' in our house now - which I absolutely love - and I'm so lucky that my flatmates have been so accepting of me wanting to cut back on the drinking and supportive of my healthier habits.

My first year at university was incredibly challenging but I wouldn't feel so self-assured and independent now without it. You never really expect to go through something like that and I never want to experience those feelings again, nor do I want anyone else to feel that way either - that's what has motivated me to write this post. I know I don't have a big platform to share this on but if I can even help just one person feeling this way by sharing my experience of overcoming it then that's enough for me. Everyone has different university experiences, some much better than others but ultimately it's an experience and one that will shape you and help you mature as a person. Mental health issues are not something which we are prepared for or really taught about in school. Drastic environment and lifestyle changes such as those caused by university and the social pressures that come along with uni life really can provoke mental health issues and it is OK to not feel like you're fitting in or having the time of your life. University really is glamourised - especially first year - and for me it's taken that year to actually find myself in a place where I'm happy.

I really hope this post has given an insight into how university can be for some people. I would like to point out that I have focused on the negatives of first year within this piece, it sounds an awful lot like I hated every second - which I definitely didn't. I've made amazing friends in the girls I'm living with and those on my course and Falmouth really is such a beautiful place to live.

If you actually got this far into reading this bloody novel of a post then first of all wow, thank you, I really appreciate you taking the time to read it and second of all I really hope this in some way helps or raises awareness to some of the mental health issues university can cause. Like I said, its an experience and one that is different for all. I'm actually quite grateful for how challenging my first year was because of how it's left me feeling now but if anyone feels or felt this way, it's really not something to be ashamed of and it really should be spoken about more openly. Changing my lifestyle worked for me, but it might not work for everyone, so please seek medical advice if you feel like your low mood or feelings of depression can't be helped.

There were a few other things I went through during first year (oh yes there's more) but those are for a later date and definitely for another post because this one is by far long enough.

Thanks again for taking the time to read this and here's to a great second year,

Emily x