Irrelerant: Uni

For the most part University is great. However, I think the pressure for it to be "the time of our lives", coupled with social media's impact on believing everyone else is 'living their best lives' (vom), often means we can feel guilty for not having constant fun. 

Have no fear though, today I have decided to break down barriers and the lift the taboo on pretending uni is all fun, by moaning about somethings I just bl**dy hate about Uni. Welcome to a privileged person's irrelerant about something they are lucky to experience.

a rare sighting of me attempting to work. excuse my friends face, she can't help it.

Cost.

Let's tackle the most obvious issue first. Price. Uni is really f*cking expensive. On a weekly basis I question whether going to one lecture a week then going home, and doing 0 work, is worth the £9250 a year. Probably not. And whilst you have a loan, this is never enough to cover all expenses, plus it means inevitable debt once you leave.

As a sad person trying to make a point, I have done some quick maths. The full loan for English students (outside of London) is just under £9000. If you have no other means of income this has to cover every expense. Bills, rent, weekly living costs and any fun social activities. To put this into context, my first year accommodation cost just under £7000, for September to early July. This means you'd have roughly £2000 left for all other costs. That's £38 a week, £5.43 a day. That might sound doable but in reality this would mean you couldn't go out and socialise, most clubs are over £5 to even get into, and you can only buy the cheapest food available. There is no manoeuvrability for unexpected costs like transport home or prescriptions. I think you get my point.

The stress of having to budget for the first time and balancing the pressure of having to pay to go out or balance food costs etc., can leave many students feeling constantly under pressure to save money. This is probably why 77% of all UK students have a part-time jobs in order to afford living/social costs of uni. How is this feasible when the expectations are that students complete 40 of independent work on top of University hours itself? 

from the University of Bristol's terms and conditions

Surely its no wonder that there has been a spike in the number of students suffering from mental health issues, if so many are worried about funding their lives? My roommate has resorted to letting me give her haircuts in order to avoid paying, that is a true act of desperation.

pls rate my haircut skills below.

 Similarly, if you are unable to afford social activities, Uni itself can become very monotonous and isolating. The pressure to bond with new people, especially in the first couple of months, in order to not be left out of forming important, supposed, 'friends for life' , adds another layer of stress to the need to budget efficiently. The majority of students have not been taught how to do this at school. The practicality of 'surviving' uni is something that is often overlooked by the promise of the need for a degree and the life experience it will provide.

Side Effects.

Weirdly eating shed loads of pasta, excessively drinking and not doing any exercise results in gaining loads of weight? Quite frankly this is incredibly rude. I think it's very unfair that even the fun things have to have depressing consequences. I'm willing to write to Theresa May to change this, so DM me if you're interested in starting a petition to ban unnecessary weight gain.

Of course it seems like everyone I know is immune, however gaining weight during fresher's is unavoidable. I am now a proud parent to 3 new chins and acne that makes me look like a ghost with measles.

Pro-tip: Enjoy the warmth your new found layers will provide as you refuse to switch on the heating in minus temperatures to save money.

Workload.

Continuing with the idea that practicalities are often overlooked when you are being sold the 'uni experience', in a weird way I completely forgot that Uni means working. This is stupid, I know, but I definitely didn't realise how hard the jump from secondary school to University is.

You may think this is obvious, but you are no longer guided through education and, whilst there are an abundance of resources, there is hardly any easy access to one-on-one help with your subject.  Gone are the days of your teacher marking a draft of your work before you hand it in. As a 2nd year Psychology student, my only contact with the staff is through lectures. We do not have seminars where we can discuss any concepts or issues we are having. We are spoken at for 1 or 2 hours and then expected to find out more ourselves.

It often feels like the faculty want you to fail. Whilst this is of course not the case, most of them do not respond well to anything they perceive as an attempt to be 'spoon fed'. Therefore, if you are struggling with a particular concept or essay it can seem like there is nowhere to go to get help. I find myself embarrassed at not understanding. The response to questions from most lecturers will be that you must look for yourselves.

I am halfway through year 2 and I still have no clue how to structure a Psychology essay. Every time I do one I have no idea how it will do, it feels a bit like a lucky dip. So whilst I find lectures interesting, the way we are assessed can make me resent the subject. I might understand a concept but I have no idea how to translate this understanding into a comprehensive, good essay or lab report. I do appreciate however that every uni is different in the way students are given/seek out academic support and it is of course completely believable that I just haven't tried hard enough to find the right support. However, this is my blog post so I just want to moan at how much I don't understand how I'm assessed. Anyway, ultimately uni work is not a walk in the park. Get ready to be confused by where a comma goes in a reference and how to use google scholar to find something to validate your own opinion. 

me living my best life on my sofa on a saturday night

Awkward small talk.

Who else loves group bonding activities? Um, me! You'd think you were done being forced into awkward two truths and a lie, or finding out one interesting thing about someone in the room when you left secondary school- think again.

The minute I arrived at my halls we were bundled into an awkward health and safety chat that was mixed in with ice breaking activities. AKA lets talk about spotting the signs of a suicidal person but also ask the person next to you where the coolest place they've travelled is. Sadly the awkward small talk doesn't end in formal, uni-led chats as you realise you don't actually know anyone so have to proactively start such mundane chat socially as well. The first week of uni literally feels like a constant first date as you sort through people to find those 'friends for lives' we are all supposed to discover. No pressure then.

Similarly, if the chat isn't mundane, then rest assured it will become the other extreme: highly embarrassing and personal drinking games. There's always that one person who begs everyone else to play 'Never Have I Ever', which leads to you leaving a party knowing that Kelly from floor 2 who you'll probably never talk to again had a threesome in the toilet of a MacDonalds. Kelly will of course be the one that brought up such a niche 'never have I ever', so she could boast about how 'crazy' and 'fun' she is. In reality Kelly will be an insecure chess champion from Yorkshire, who went to one party where she got drunk off one dark fruits and thinks she's the next Regina George. Little does Kelly realise popularity is no longer a thing at Uni and no-one will be impressed by your attempt at being fun and quirky. Kelly's of the world this is the time you can find your own people by being yourself, there will be tons of people who still play Pokemon Go and want to form a furries society. No judgement.

After a week I found myself sick of being asked "Hi, what a-levels did you do?" "what are you studying?" "where are you from?", but even more sick of hearing myself respond answers with "ah nice" "ah fairs" "haha cool". Trying to be more fun one night, upon being told the person was studying neurospace engineering I replied "So it is all rocket science aha", thinking I'd just made a brilliant joke. The confused stare that greeted me made me realise one bottle of wine was frankly not enough to compensate for the awkwardness of talking to new people. I also realised that anyone doing engineering of any kind may be a bit too intelligent for my social-science-brain's (excellent) puns, and I should stick to trying to explain where Kent is to an obnoxious Londoners who cannot compute not living in a ten minute radius of SW1. Pro Tip 2: Shock such people by revealing you got into the same uni as them without having to pay for your education!

Of course early days awkward bonding is unavoidable and important, but I think we can all agree there's no better way to make friends than being sh*t-faced and crying about the price of drinks in Bristol in a sh*tty club toilet. Jaeger bomb anyone?

this is actually not a photo of hogwarts but accommodation- classic uni amirite?

Lectures.

I'm aware I am basically saying I hate every part of uni at this point I swear it is worth it. I think. Anyway, despite being halfway through my second year the concept of lectures are still entirely foreign to me. Being talked at for up to 2 hours without any fun mind-map based activity in between makes my brain switch off. It's so weird that a lecturer can be so integral to your uni education but not even speak one word directly to you. I'm not saying that being a lecturer is easy but standing in front of a picture-less powerpoint, delivering the equivalent of the introduction to an level textbook to cover a subject that you have studied for 20 odd years and replying "you must read up on this yourself" to any genuine questions, in order to run back to the comfort of your stuffy office and conduct funded research in what you love *deep breath in*, doesn't sound half bad. But yeh they defo deserve to strike on one of the 8 contact hours I pay for to ask for more money. It's not like secondary school teachers are expected come in everyday, teach up to 7 different levels of their subject, have educational and pastoral responsibilities for their students, make a connection to ensure their students are motivated enough to come and do well at a tumultuous age, directly teach 30-odd students an extensive curriculum within hour long sessions as well as provide out of hours support and monitor changes in their attitude that may hint at issues at home. Hey ho.

Landlords.

They take the piss. My 2nd year house is full of damp, leaking and doesn't have a dining room table or chairs, but I still have to pay nearly £300 in agency fees and £445 a month for one bathroom between 4. But "that's just part of student life"right?

Mental Health Support.

Is shit. Thanks for coming to my ted talk.

In spite of those petty points uni is of course worth it because of the friends you make, the memories you'll treasure and the first rate education which will shape your future           student discounts.