Starting School/College/University
Ok so in the past few weeks some of you may have just started a new school or are just heading off to University, this is a scary time but also a really exciting one. I imagine that this is one of the few times everyone experiences mixed feelings.
So advice, EVERYONE experiences these feelings, meaning that you are not alone, you may think everyone has loads of friends already but no one has too many friends, I have never experienced or seen a situation where someone turns to someone new and says “I don’t want to be friends, I have too many” and if some does say that or something similar do you really want to be friends with someone so arrogant, because I wouldn’t. If you are worried about a subject and how hard it’ll be, remember that the teacher know this and they plan the year so that the harder topics are nearer the end of the year so you will probably go into you first class of any subject and find it is at a similar level to the last class of your school before and the difficulty will increase as time goes on slowly so you may not even notice when you start the harder topics and if you do start stuggeling then ask, there is no harm in being stuck, my mother’s classroom has an inspirational wall and one of the quotes is along the lines of “A good learner knows when to ask for help and bad learner struggles alone” and this is a good quote because it says that even if you are stuck and you ask for help you are still good student. I know I struggled to ask for help but when I started my GCSE (age 14-16) I realized that if I don’t suck up my pride I was going to end up failing my exams and at the end of the day my pride would suffer more for failing an exam all because I didn’t get help then the actual asking for help, I do still struggle with this but I am trying to improve my ability to admit I don’t understand.
So if you are starting University, your anxieties may be based on different things. For example you could be moving out on your own or never studied the subject before. Well if it’s a new subject then like I said earlier the lecturers know this and will start with the basics and are always available to support you however you are expected to be more independent so there are a couple of websites I can recommend to get the basic or answers to your question, they are www.google .com and www.wikipedia .org, enjoy.
Moving out however is probably new to you, maybe you have never really been to the city before, maybe you don’t know anyone who can call that city home, maybe you have never been away from home for longer than 48 hours before. Homesickness is common in first year university however it can hit at any point in the first couple of months, I myself experienced it after fresher’s week so 2 weeks after leaving home because to someone who had never had a holiday last longer than 2 weeks, it felt to me that it was now time to go home because I had my holiday and it dawned on me that my parents would not be coming to pick me up and boom, homesickness. This seems to be a fairly common point however within my 8 flatmates we all experienced it at different times, on girl experienced it on her second night, I believe this was because of an un-expectant visit from her parents because she had forgot her ID. Another housemate didn’t experience it until they went home one weekend at the beginning of November because they realized how much their home life had changed “home was not home” and suddenly they felt they had nowhere to call home. Whenever homesickness kicks in there are tips to get through it, my own include keeping yourself busy doing something, work/societies/sports/partying it doesn’t matter at all. Another tip is to not plan a trip home until after you have set up a life at University, because leaving home again will be easier if you have something at Uni to look forward to, be it an event with an society or a sport fixture or just some good friends. A thing to remember is you will get over it and that how long you suffer or how long it takes to actually experience it doesn’t reflect on anything. If you feel you need to talk about it or you feel it is really bad or gone on too long, my ask box is open but you may want to try and talk to the counsellor at you university. However something to remember is that while you may feel fine, your parent/guardians might not especially if you are the last/only child because your parents will probably experience the empty nest syndrome and may be missing you, this is the biggest thing I would change about my first year, I didn’t phone my mother and father enough and it was only after I realized how much my lack of communication affected them and in this day and age there is really no excuse as a quick text can take only a couple of minutes and can make them feel so much more happier
School and University can be the best years of your life and there is nothing to be scared or nervous about, now if only I followed that myself.
Enjoy the new experiences.
Sleepy Student
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