*Disclaimer* this is based on my own personal experience and shouldn't be used as a reference on deciding whether or not you should go to university if you have anxiety. Plenty of people go to university with anxiety and find people who are in the same boat as them and they become fast friends.
When people think of university, they think of making friends with their flatmates, getting drunk all the time, staying up late eating pizza and drinking vodka, going out to different clubs every night. But what rarely gets addressed is what it's like to go to university when you have anxiety.
University with anxiety is like getting thrown into a swimming pool at the deep end after 2 swimming lessons - you're a bit prepared but when it happens you feel like you're drowning.
Before I started university I told myself that it was going to be my year of changing everything, I was going to make friends and join societies and be a happier person. But, little did I know that it would be the opposite. University has brought me nothing but stress and loneliness.When I met my tutor group, I tried to communicate but just couldn't bring myself to say anything to them. But if I'm honest, none of them seemed like people who I could get on with very well anyway. However, I did make two friends at university, Luci and Jake. During the first few days of lectures, I'd seen Luci about and thought that she seemed like someone I could be friends with, and then on the thursday, I had my first lesson with my tutor and my tutor group and she walked in and got sat with me, said she had missed induction week. After that we were inseperable in lessons and often thought of together by most tutors, although I do think this was down to us both having brightly coloured, ever changing hair throughout the whole year. Luci is amazing, she has a wonderful personality but because of my anxiety, I find myself not knowing what to say to her most of the time so 75% of our conversations are about lectures and work. She is someone I spend most of my time wishing I was closer to, someone I wish I could call my best friend cos fuck, I haven't had one of those in 4 years. My other friend, Jake, he introduced himself to me (and later told me that he planned out how he was going to introduce himself to me) and in all honesty, I found it easier to talk to Jake because he treats everyone like he is already friends with them and that's great to me because it means i get to skip the awkward introductions (Although, Jake left university after 7 months so that friendship didn't last that long). Okay, so throughout the whole year, it was nice knowing I had friends but during the anxiety attacks knowing I had friends but not knowing how to talk to them about it fucking sucks and tbh, probably made it worse.
So flat parties. meant to be insanely good right? well, they kinda are. A bunch of drunk people drinking more alcohol and singing that stupid song while someone downs their drink, getting everyone to pour some of their drink into a big jug and getting everyone to down as much as they can. First one I went to was great but I think that was because one of the people I lived with was there and this was in the first week so she still pretended that we had the potential to be friends. The next one however, was a bummer - barely anyone turned up so I got ignored most of the night - possibly because anxiety stopped me having the guts to talk to anyone.
Another problem I faced at university was my work. It was never too difficult but there were plenty of times that I had my doubts that my work was good enough and because of anxiety, I couldn't go to my tutor and ask for help. I could never go to my tutor with any problems or doubts that I had which was a real shame because she was lovely. There were plenty of times that she would ask me if everything was going okay and even if I was close to tears I still couldn't bring myself to admit that I felt like I was falling apart.
University isn't all bad though, despite my anxiety, I did have a lovely year. One of my best memories was the day I spent out with Luci, it was after university had finished but I'm still going to count it. So, me and Luci went to mini golf and then we spent the rest of the day wondering around the city. I had spent the whole right before completely worried about what was going to happen, whether or not I'd have the guts to say anything to her, trying to plan out what I would say to her. And, I guess it payed off because we had a really lovely day together.
Throughout the year, anxiety has prevented me from doing a hell of a lot at university and i can honestly say that it isn't the same for everyone. I just thought I'd share my personal experience.
xox
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