I always expected that I would change as a person from being at university, but I couldn’t quite guess about how that would be. Verbalising your expectations is always scary, so I stuck to vague notions of becoming more independent and mature.
When I packed my suitcase 8 months ago, I envisioned the girl I would be by the time spring rolled around. I would be a girl who got good grades, a girl who’s responsible, who never forgets her purse on the bus home from class, a girl who’s charismatic, easy to befriend, confident but not arrogant, patient but not a pushover – all in all, a girl who’s not real. It’s funny how as feminists, we can be so tired of impossible standards for women, yet still set them for ourselves. Nonetheless, the closest I could get to this dream girl, I figured, the more I would get out of my first year at St Andrews.
Naturally, it didn’t take long for this persona to break down. After a draining Freshers’ Week of endless introductions where everyone I spoke to had met a different version of me, I felt as if nobody really understood who I was, least of all me.
Even more complicated was that it was impossible to predict who would stay in your life from a first conversation, and who you’d never see again. People I’ve met in the queue at Shawarma House have become my close friends, yet I’ve never said a word to the girl who lives next door to me: a hard concept to adjust to, coming from a tight-knit school community. Genuine connections with strangers became frequent and the number of acquaintances that you smile at across the street skyrockets, but you still find that you sometimes feel alone.
The year continued, and plenty of advice was given to help us bridge the gap to tertiary education in terms of academics, yet I still felt it was much more needed mentally. As a Maths student, my workload transition to university was tough, but at least it was formulaic. More homework just meant I’d have to up my study time, harder questions just meant more practice. I knew the path to improvement was simple, even if I didn’t always follow it. Feeling like myself at university seemed to be a much greater challenge.
After Christmas, things started to look up (or rather, I realised they had never been that “down” to begin with). I’m as susceptible to seasonal depression as the next person, and the St Andrews winters are no joke. My lowest point in Semester 1 had been slipping on ice on the way home from a miserable 9am Statistics exam, but with longer days and brighter evenings, it was much easier to sleep feeling satisfied.
With great reluctance, I began to realise that all the advice I’d heard about enjoying university was actually right. You don’t actually have to drink your body weight in alcohol to be able to socialise! Joining societies is genuinely a super easy way to make friends!
It was infuriating to discover that the mysterious key to feeling at home away from home, this secret that had eluded me for so many months, might just be as simple as opening yourself up. Like so many life experiences, despite all the advice you’re given about a certain challenge, sometimes you just need to overcome it yourself. I’d wasted so much time waiting for things to feel like they were back home only to realise that they never would be – that’s the nature of university. But if you try, they could be even better.