I’m definitely the person who spent lockdown thinking of what could have been and looking at where I was a year before. With all the pressure of first year to be the best year of uni – the famous uni experience – it being cut short felt like being robbed of something.
A year ago, I was a fresher, with a whole new group that could be my friends for life. Of course, not everyone I met was going to be my best friend. Friendships come and go easily in first year, especially during freshers week. You only have to have one thing in common, and it’s so easy to assume you’ll get on with them, just as well as you do with your friends from home. On top of that, staying friends with those people from home when you’re not seeing them every day, just adds another thing to have to adjust to. You make friends for life and friends that you only say hello to in the corridor, but it makes those first weeks that little bit less lonely when you have the time to sit and realise how much you miss home.
Then there was living independently for the first time. I don’t think I grasped how different it would be without my family until I did it. You don’t realise how much you ask them and how dependent you actually are until you have to do all those things for yourself.
There’s so much pressure on first year to be the best year. You can be so carefree, and so much of that pressure is put on to the first few weeks. The weeks where everyone is trying to be their best selves and friendships just happen without even trying. It seems that the memories I have of that first week shouldn’t have been able to squeeze into seven days. It’s underrated how important it is to slow down and get used to your new home.
There’s less pressure academically, but it’s still easy to feel just average. Going from the top of your A-level classes to surrounded by people who seem more confident about what they know, definitely can come as a shock. I, for one, felt like first year was the year that I had to prove to myself that I earned my place to be at university.
The new independence and new friends are a first-year highlight. Although first year can be rushed, lonely and full of finding your feet, I am gutted it got cut short. If I were to give the new first-years any advice, it would be don’t rush anything. The friendships that are meant to work out will in the end, and don’t stress yourself out when you’ve only just moved away from home.