I made the decision to interrupt my studies in the summer before final year. It was a decision not taken at all lightly, and one that tormented me. I’ve always been a girl who hates change, least of all the forced and unexpected change. To stray from a path I had so concretely pre-determined for myself felt like a rupture. I stubbornly resisted it.
Alas, the changes thrown at me during my university experience dared to be more stubborn than myself.
The elephant-al virus in the room of this whirlwind of change was of course COVID. Along with our celebrations of first year being near its close, the very first Corona lockdown decided to crash the party.
One moment I’m in the common room with some of my best friends – strangers essentially who, through navigating our newfound independence together had evolved into a family away from family. The next, sweeping headlines of Corona Virus, mandatory lockdown, and Boris Johnson’s affront-to-the-eyes haircut appears on our screens. The beloved playlist that had started to soundtrack our coming of age movie was in this instant drowned out by the surrounding chimes of parents’ and loved ones’ message alerts and incoming panicked phone calls arranging times and days for us to go back home.
The chaos settled. Momentarily. Second year swept into the Zoom-bordered screens of our lives. This new agenda of remote learning was, to put it bluntly, not for me. I didn’t respond well. I became detached from my studies. I lost my love for learning and Literature that had carried me through to University in the first place.
Not realising this at the time, or perhaps being in denial, I tried to push through. My mental health, along with my academic results and stamina pushed back at me.
Finally agreeing with those around me, in a constant to-and-fro debate, to interrupt my studies felt like defeat. Failure. Something I, as a self-proclaimed over-achiever never foresaw myself reduced to. “It will only be for this year”, I told myself. “I can get straight back into it as soon as I’m ready. And I will be ready soon” …
It was almost 4 years before I returned to my studies.
By the time I was “ready” to return, I felt like a completely different person. Hell, my frontal lobe was in almost-complete development. For someone branded a “mature” student though, I could not have felt more intimidated walking back into Strand campus on my first day. My main focus, I had repeated to myself in the run up to returning, was my studies. Of course I didn’t care about making friends or fitting in to a class of barely 20-year-olds! I already had my uni friends – I’d been here already, (almost) completed it, and got the Union store merch and Guys Bar stamps of honour to prove it.
But the very first group of students walking past me, shoulder-to-shoulder, sharing laughter and sharing debriefs of their days and my facade of resolve melted away. A wave of grief overcame me. I was grieving for what I could have had: the canonical, “typical” University experience; graduating with my friends, continuing to navigate the full experience together instead of cheering them on from the sidelines (as wonderful, of course, as that was) while I continued to try and be “ready”.
I had put in the work that was the trial by fire of Freshers. Why couldn’t I have sailed, at relative ease, through the rest of my uni years with that worked-for-confidence and foundational friendships?!
On top of this I felt the ever-dreaded anxiety of imposter syndrome. I was the 24 year old, arriving over halfway through the degree, into a class of people who had already forged friendships and bonds. There was no place for me. Or so I thought.
Life lesson for the socially anxious 101: on the whole, (most) people are nowhere near as scary as you imagine them to be. They are warm, welcoming and open to getting to know you. I found that, generally, our common connections – the main one being that we’re all just navigating our own challenges of life – will far outweigh the differences.
If you had given me a genie lamp in January tempting me with one wish guaranteed to come true, I would have closed my eyes and wished, in an instant, to have been able to complete University the “normal” way. I would have wished so hard the lamp would have shattered. I had spent so long resisting, feeling shame at my interruption. I was so focused on what I hadn’t been able to experience, I didn’t even think of what I could benefit from taking a break, and returning older and (ever so slightly) wiser.
Returning to University, knowing it’s something I fought tooth and nail for, that I determinedly chose for myself, not something generically paved out for me by school advisors before I even reached senior school, has shaped my mindset and motivation.
I almost walked away – was torn away – from a degree I so love. I’m not willing to take that for granted again.
Although it is nowhere near what I envisioned for myself, I do know that I am here owing to my commitment to both myself and my studies. And I have a greater respect for both through my “unconventional” experience.
As it turns out, I can be even more stubborn than my parents and teachers ever gave me credit for.