The beginning of a new year at university brings the opportunity to try out taster sessions for societies. I went to the TEDxUoN society’s intro talk and found myself struck by a TED talk that they played by Kathryn Schulz, called ‘On Being Wrong’, where she talks about our society’s obsession with being right and how there are benefits to being wrong. In an article for CNN she explains that ‘wrongness is a vital part of how we learn and change.’ The reason this struck me so hard is that for me, this is what being a university student is all about.
When you start university, everyone is ready to give you advice: family and friends reflecting on their memories and mistakes, tutors telling you the importance of doing all your reading, the Students’ Union telling you the importance of getting involved. Websites from the Guardian to Buzzfeed telling you how to settle in, or what the so-called typical uni experience is. By the time you get to third year, it doesn’t stop – instead, the advice is how to make yourself employable before it is too late, university bucket lists of things you must do before you leave, and even how to avoid the stresses of third year. The irony of the last one however is that the idea behind this advice, whether from loved ones or the beloved internet, is based on the need for us to feel that we must do university the right way and not make any mistakes – a lot of pressure for a new student. What is fundamentally lost is that for most university students this is our first vaguely substantial step at independence from our parents and anything that starts with the word ‘first’ is bound to be full of missteps.
As a fresher, I was constantly thinking about whether I was doing university ‘the right way’. I joined too many societies to count. I became paranoid when I hadn’t made a group of friends by the second day. I felt like an idiot because I had an A* in my English A Level but couldn’t even finish half of the required book in time for my seminar. I wasn’t at all confident that I could cope with being at university. However, I now have the hindsight of living through these mistakes. The societies kept me busy for the first term, but limited time and interest gave me a couple of solid commitments by second term and I even joined the committee of one at the end of the year. By 3 days after my paranoid second day at university I was sitting with my hallmates having a Big Bang Theory marathon. That book was over 600 pages long, I never had to write an essay on it and I still got a 2:1 for my first year.
I still put my hands over my eyes when I look back at my mistake-laden days as a fresher. However, that is exactly the frame of mind which makes me upset, anxious to try new things, and a perfectionist. For some, this perfectionism even leads to mental illness as it did for Morwenna Jones, a Cambridge student who developed an eating disorder from pressures to excel in all areas of university, as explained in a recent article for The Observer. The comments section includes revelations from many other students of their own struggles with the culture of perfectionism. If instead, I look at my freshers experience as a period of personal growth from making and learning from my mistakes, I become stronger, more adventurous and have more self-belief. I take a plane alone for the first time to start my semester abroad and on my first day in Knoxville spend an hour and a half walking around looking for a restaurant to find out there’s at least 15 in a row ten minutes away from my apartment, and just laugh into my fries. Soon Google Maps becomes my best friend and directions much less problematic. Sure, I still hate making mistakes, but I hope I’ve grown enough to have a positive perspective afterwards. Just this past week, I overslept and missed the first half an hour of my lecture, to later appreciate the irony that the lecture was about a character that had awoken after sleeping for two hundred years. Now I know that I need to get a better alarm clock and more sleep.
So the next time you’re concerned that instead of being on track for a first, in a relationship, great friends, active social life, part-time job, going to the gym, great clothes, president of a society, doing an internship and having studied abroad you are instead late for lectures, haven’t done your laundry in three weeks, have a pile of washing up to do, a messy bedroom, a long to-do list (if you’ve written one) and your favourite hobby is procrastinating, don’t sweat it. I’ve somewhat covered one or two of the first list, and all of the second. Being a well-rounded student is hard, but it should be fun too. Okay, so maybe take one little piece of advice from an old third year – it’s ok to make mistakes and learning from them gets you so much further than beating yourself up about it. If you can cross this off your university bucket list, you’ll do just fine.
Edited by Jayde Richards.
Sources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QleRgTBMX88
http://edition.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/05/15/schulz.admitting.wrong/
Image Sources:
http://ablibberinghumdinger.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/my-8th-grade-piano-exam.html