Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. — Carl Sagan
This time two years ago I was getting myself ready to move to Bristol. I had accepted a place to study Cancer Biology and Immunology and despite being ecstatic about getting in, I was starting to feel the nerves and uncertainty surrounding my decision.
I had spent the 9 months prior to this, working my butt off at college, striving to get the grades I needed to be accepted by the oh so prestigious University of Bristol. I loved every minute of college. I really did. I was surrounded by classmates who genuinely wanted to learn. I was able to focus hard on my studies without being judged, and there was an unspoken mutual desire to do well.
I seemed to strike a fairly good study/life balance relatively early on where I would go through phases of not socialising in the evenings/weekends for a few weeks, allowing me to knuckle down and get my assignments done. And then when I’d completed those, I would allow myself a night or two (or three) off and I’d let my hair down, leaving me refreshed and socially satisfied for another few weeks. I’m aware this wouldn’t be a good strategy for some people, but it worked really well for me as I got a lot of social interaction in class and 4 afternoons a week at work.
The terms flew by, and before we knew it we were laying on the college green revising before our final exam. I got the grades I needed to get in to Bristol, and I couldn’t have been prouder. For the first time in my life, I had worked hard in school and achieved good grades. Whilst my high school grades as a teenager hadn’t been bad, they weren’t anything to boast about.
I think at some point over the summer I began to realise that, actually, I wasn’t too sure about this whole ‘move to Bristol’ plan that I’d been harping on about for the last year or so. I started to get panicky, I would cry a LOT and generally just had a bad feeling about it all. But, for whatever bizarre reason, I went against my gut feeling and ploughed on regardless – after all I’d worked so hard to get there, it would be silly NOT to give it a go, right?
I was going through a strange ‘I must be independent’ phase of my life back then, so I took myself off to Bristol for the day to find somewhere to live. I had decided I wanted to live alone, because I wasn’t too sure about living with other mature students in case we didn’t get on, and I couldn’t be dealing with petty bitchy drama alongside my studies. So instead I opted for isolation with an occasional side of interaction with the staff in the pizza shop below my studio.
The first alarm bells rang during freshers week, when we were instructed to complete some pre-course assignments once we had had our schools welcome talk (I was part of the school of Cellular and Molecular Medicine). I had intended to spend freshers week on some course preparation anyway (think along the lines of revising college notes, maybe reading a couple of chapter introductions from the reading list), so I wasn’t too put out by this request from the course leader. What I was not ready for was assignments on topics we were yet to actually be taught… not fun, and it did not make me feel good.
Still, not to worry though… because I am a Bristol University student. Ra ra ra. These things don’t phase me, because I am worthy of being here. I am here to work hard, to learn, to study, to absorb. Maybe they were just giving us a teaser for the end of the year, you know like ‘aim to be able to understand these topics’.
No. I was wrong. That was just the standard they expected us to be at. Fuck.
I’ll save the details for another post, but I didn’t enjoy my time at Bristol. The university has a loooooong way to go in terms of supporting students, although I think they know this now, following news reports on the shocking number of it’s students committing suicide (during my 6 months there, 10 UoB students took their lives…).
Eventually, a month before the end of the academic year, I decided to call it a day, packed an overnight bag and got the train home. In hindsight it would probably have been sensible to stick it out for the final month, but you know… why not throw £9,250 down the drain!? I’d had a real wobble upon my return from the Christmas break, and decided it might be a good idea to apply to some new universities for the coming September, as I wasn’t feeling hopeful that I would pass the summer exams and this way at least I would have my plan B already in place.
Having accepted an offer to study at a new university, when I got home I decided to defer this start date by a year and I took some time out of academia.
Fast forward 16 very monotonous and frustratingly corporate months, and HERE WE ARE. Ready and raring to go again! I’ve got a much clearer idea of how I’m going to navigate university this time, and have spent a bit of time organising and familiarising myself with various apps, so that I’m ready to hit the ground running when I start.
So, there we go! A whistle stop tour of my last couple of years, and this means that my first post done (tick)!
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