It isnât often that I feel utterly alone at university anymore. Iâm a third year now,
watching my final semester slip away so fast itâs upsetting me already. But if you told
that to my first-year self, she wouldnât believe you. At my arrival at university, I
expected immediate friendships and crowded kitchens almost from the get-go. What
I didnât prepare for was that finding those people and those rooms means a lot of
being surrounded by thousands on a campus and never feeling more isolated. That
is the process of finding those people who you will come to cherish, but I know many,
myself included, become terrified when after the first day, week, month, that still
hasnât happened. Especially when everyone else is posting about doing just that.
Itâs incredulous really, how more than two thirds of UK university students in halls of
residence feel lonely or isolated. And even more so that 87% of these people feel
that their chosen accommodation affected their feelings of isolation. I know I for one
am guilty of blaming my accommodation â it was too far from campus to feel
connected to those living there, or my lectures, and I have never lived in any where
quieter than my first year flat â perhaps some of it was my own doing too; in theory I
wanted to put myself out there, but being freshly straight out of a very small sixth
form and realising the world was much bigger than I ever realised, made the
practicalities of that a lot harder.
But these feelings of isolation and the so-called, FOMO, are clear. In the space
between you and everyone you speak to in a day, there is still that dark, burdensome
sense of gloom that you are on your own. Which I found such a dissociative feeling
when you are constantly surrounded by so many, yet feeling like you know no one.
Feeling like that anonymous, unmemorable number in a crowd where a group might
not even notice you didnât turn up to a seminar. Perhaps not even the tutor.
I must clarify that my first year of university felt like a lonely fever dream, to put it
lightly. And whilst I embark on my final semester, never without my friends, the notion
of surface level intimacy still dawns on me. Growing up I had a small circle of close
friends, but at university its quite comical to how many people I have come to know.
But that little thought crosses my mind that breadth isnât equal to depth, and I
question if some know me on any below-surface level at all?
Similarly with lecturers, myself and my peers often discuss the lecture-student
dynamic where they will probably not know your name unless you make it known.
And that can become harder and harder the lonelier you feel. And even the ones that
do know you, youâre lucky if you see them much after their module en
In this shared experience of loneliness, a large weight is that of a disconnection to
the self. A fragmented identity of who you were, and who you are becoming.
And as you sit in that middle void, that waiting area, the silence is deafening. I think after
three years this is still something I think of every day. When I first arrived at
university, in a new city with new people and new expectations, I felt I lost who I was
when I was told Iâd find myself. I remember distinctly feeling like Iâd lost all sense of
academic credibility at first. From exceeding in my A-Levels to battling the standards
we are all expected to hit in every essay and every seminar, I felt detached from a
big part of what defined me.
In an office hour discussing feedback in my second year I expressed a sentence Iâd
said a thousand times before: âMy A-Level self could have written this essay
perfectly, but second year me could notâ. It was a joke. And as if reading the loss of
self written clearly on my face, my lecturer replied, âtoo bad, she doesnât exist
anymoreâ. First I thought, the audacity. But if you know me at all, youâll know that
sentence shook me to the core. She didnât exist, and I was in a weird purgatory
waiting for another version to replace her.
But these feelings of isolation, ultimately have a clear persecutor: the colloquial, yet
very accurate âfear of missing outâ. A study last year found that social media
addiction, loneliness and perfectionism contributes directly to the fear of missing out.
Swiping past everyoneâs great nights out and ever-growing social groups can be
somewhat disheartening, naturally, believing that everyone is having the one
experience you want but arenât having. And even when we do, we match it to an
impossibly high standard that it every night must be âthe bestâ, that you must capture
the best photos to confirm it did in fact happen. But when we are glued to our
screens and the digital world, these pressures of keeping up with the Jonesâs build
alongside the feeling of wasting the so-called âbest years of your lifeâ.
Likewise, these the perfect experience we curate for ourselves often comes from
before we have experienced it. Years before I came to university, I was imagining
what it would be like. Getting told youâll meet your future partner and live with the
best of friends. When I was planning what my first-year bedroom could look like, I
didnât leave room for the feeling that it would feel smaller every time I stepped into it.
So why am I comparing my university experience to a standard I created when
completely ignorant of university life?
When writing this, I had many conversations with my friends about these feelings.
Feelings that, despite having each other, we all have experienced. At the end of the
day, university and all its experiences should not be a competition of what to attend,
how many friends you get in one place, joining every society or even saying yes to
every invitation. To feel lonely in a new place is, in my experience, a prime symptom
growing pains.