I Moved to University...

University. I’m here in the tiny single bed bedroom with the lights that are either too bright or flickering too much to even claim they actually work; on FaceTime to my boyfriend, procrastinating 30 pages of reading I need to do for my next English Language lecture in two days. The weeks leading up to moving to university were probably some of the most anxiety fuelled weeks of my life. My friends moved before I did, and those who didn’t go already had their lives set in motion, and then there was me sat with little to do just waiting for move in day. It was the Wednesday before the Sunday I moved when things started getting busy. Mum and Dad took the rest of the week off work so we could get everything together and pack things away ready for me to move. And while they did so to spend time with me, I spent the rest of the week trying to see everyone I’d leave behind. One day that week, I don’t remember which now, Georgia came round. We hadn’t seen each other in a while, our plans the week before falling through, her starting to get busy with work and me spending most of my week with Jack. We went out for lunch that day, to a pub down the road from me, which I was sure I’d never been to despite my mother thinking otherwise. She paid, ‘a going away gift’ she said, although she also showed up to my house with a disgustingly cute card, the biggest bottle of Vodka I’ve ever seen and a book on Creative Writing for Dummies. A book I need to start reading because my creative writing seminars are already starting to get hard.

Jack came to mine the Friday afternoon, we made gingerbread and white chocolate cookies (all thanks to Jane’s Patisserie) and watched a couple of our favourite Marvel movies. I fell asleep on his chest while Shang-Chi was on. It was that day that sparked something for us, a realisation how much we loved each other and how desperately we didn’t want to be without each other. So, the messy and complicated but happy has now turned into serious but still a bit messy but still very very happy. I’m just very glad I can now go around introducing him as ‘my boyfriend, Jack’. It has a nice ring to it.

On the Saturday, my dad’s side of the family came round to bid me adieu, we ate more food than anyone would ever need, from sandwich platters from M&S to their entire picnic range. It was nice to see everyone together, because while they’re the side of the family we see most often it’s still relatively rare we are all in one place at one time. It’s odd to think this year they’re going to have gatherings like that and I’m not going to be there for them.

Sunday 2nd October. Move in day. Waking up at half past 7, rushing around the house first thing making sure I didn’t miss anything because fuck if I missed anything I’d be screwed. With a McDonald’s breakfast and a coffee, we began the road trip north to my home for the next year. If you don’t know, I’m currently studying English Language and Creative Writing, minoring (now, but that’s a tale for later) in Media and Cultural Studies at Lancaster University.

I’ll be honest with you guys, usually I write these sorts of posts as they're happening, a way to capture memories of big parts of my life so I can read back on them later. It’s now a month since I started university, the start of this post being written so long ago I can’t actually even remember when. I usually have a system, recount events, share emotions, be funny. But I can barely remember what happened now and when I’ve spent almost every day I’ve been there crying to myself in my room, it’s hard to be funny.

It's not that I don’t like university, if you ever get the pleasure of visiting Lancaster, it’s bloody beautiful. The campus is self-contained and acts as its own little village only a 10-minute bus ride from the city and I am so glad I’m there. There’s a sense of pride in myself I don’t usually get, with the knowledge I am at one of the best universities in the country studying something I thought I loved. That’s the issue though, I thought I loved English Language. It was my favourite subject at A Level supposedly, but as I go through years at school, I realise I cling to the subjects I am good at as well as the ones I have the most fun in. At A Level this was English, because I was best of the class and I had Emily and Eleni to keep me entertained through them. What I forgot to realise was that I don’t like English, not really, I never have. I hated it at GCSE, I was dozing my way through it at A Level. I remember searching for universities, telling myself not English, anything but English. Yet here I am doing an English degree, and without Em and Len, it has finally hit how much I hate it.

In addition to this, I’ve also realised I’m not a huge fan of creative writing. I mean you could call this creative writing, me writing to you ranting about mundane issues in my life. But it’s not so much, not in the way a degree wants you to creatively write. So, I’m at a stalemate. I hate my degree.

At the start of this post, a very long time ago, I told you I’d tell you a tale of my minors. Lancaster, unlike a lot of universities, allow students to take a second (or in my case, third) subject as an optional module alongside their main degree. For me, this was originally Moral and Political Philosophy. A subject I took because I thought it’d be different and maybe it could be fun. But two lectures in and they were talking about capitalism and farming or something I’m not even sure and I had to watch most of it online. The module didn’t work with my main degree, I had a lecture clash meaning every week I’d have to skip a lecture and catch up with the recording. So, it was like I was learning in covid all over again. Not a fan, I switched it to English lit. I told you I hate English right? English Language is the more bearable of the two. Hated that too, obviously, so I switched to Media. Media was the original plan; the one Georgia told me to do because she knew a month in I’d be hating English and wanting to change to Media. The girl was right. I didn’t take Media because at the time I was knee-deep in the A Level, hating every second of it because lessons were more casual chat with Scott than it was the course. But I loved the course, I did really, even when I thought I was doing terrible I loved it, like how Film was my favourite at GCSE. I’ve always wanted to go into that industry in some way. At the minute it’d be a dream to write for a media news outlet like Screen Rant or Cinema Blend or Comicbook.com. So yes, as much as I hate to admit Georgia was spot on, I’m probably going to change my degree at the end of my first year.

People describe university as the best years of their lives, the social, lively side of it all, the lifelong friends, the partying. But truthfully, it’s fucking lonely. I know I’ve only been there a month; I know I’ve spent most of it either at home or with Jack, but it still just feels like it’s me vs the world and there is no one in my corner. I’ve made friends, of course I have, my flatmates are fucking lovely and the lot of us genuinely get on quite well, when Jacob isn’t screaming the words to Beggin’ by Måneskin at 4 in the morning in the kitchen. I’ve made a couple of friends in my seminars too; everyone seems so nice. But this social side of university sounded great, until I realised I was an introvert, add to the fact I have the biggest fear of missing out and a chronic tendency to convince myself everyone I have ever met secretly hates me. So, when my flatmates started inviting me to play drinking games, I started passing it up, and then started wondering why they stopped asking, I got myself all upset. I don’t know why either. I’m a freak.

No, maybe at the minute university isn’t quite my thing, and I’m sure Alyssa and I will have many more drunk conversations about dropping out while crying in my bathroom. I didn’t realise how much I’d miss home, not just my family as people, but the blueprint of the house, the knowing where everything is, the familiarity, the pipe under the sink that isn’t leaking like the one in my room still is. I miss the decorations, the homely feel. Of course, I miss my family too, the ability to walk downstairs and someone be there to chat to and it not feel forced or awkward. The walking into my brother’s room to pester him while he plays his PlayStation. The watching TV with my dad in the evening, tormenting him as I sit next to him, rubbing the bald spot on the back of his head because he hates it or putting my feet in his face to block his view. I always knew I hated watching TV alone, but I hadn’t done anything I enjoyed until last week. I never felt right enough to get a crafts project out or sit and read an actual book. I just did work and talked to my parents or to Jack.

Maybe getting with Jack just after moving to uni didn’t help the homesickness. It’s not solely because of him, I know I like my comforts. But it went from seeing him three times a week to all of a sudden, he was 110.8 miles away. It was hard. It was so hard starting a relationship and falling in love with someone over FaceTime. We managed it though, we’re managing. He stayed the entire week last week. I had always been someone who couldn’t do sleepovers, because by the second day I missed my own company. But he stayed the week, and it was so blissfully perfect. Me and him, together, living life pretending to be grown-ups. I told him before he came it’d be a bad idea, that I’d get used to him being there, start to depend on him. And I’ve done exactly that. The thought of being by myself now scares me, because it was him and then I was home for a week and still then I haven’t spent more than two nights in a row without him. I go back tomorrow, and I’m dreading every second of it, even though I know it’s only a week and a half and I’m back again. But a week and a half alone. In that tiny single bed bedroom. Just me.

That’s me now. I’m at university and I am struggling. Every day it gets a little bit harder, every day it feels like something goes a little bit wrong. But at the end of the day, I’m there, I got in, and I’m so proud of myself for that. And I know as time goes on it will get easier, maybe it’ll get a lot harder before it does, but I know it will. Maybe university won’t be the best years of my life, or maybe I’ll finally find my place. But for now, I’m surviving each day as they come, knowing at the end of it every second will be worth it. Because this is the start of the rest of my life, and the rest of my life is going to be fucking brilliant.