This discussion is now closed.

Check out other Related discussions

Pinning all your hopes on Uni

Scroll to see replies

I left home at 18, came to the Uk for the first time to join uni last sept. I had so much emotional baggage to deal with.I wanted to pass my foundation course,make tons of friends,find a guy,discover myself and be happy. A breakup, hospitalisation and 10months later, Ive learnt that pinning all your hopes on uni isint a great idea.Yeah its great to dream but settling in is so hard.You might be lucky - have brilliant flatmates,coursemates,teachers etc or not.But a change in environment means a change in your frame of mind and that is usually a good thing.Dream but don't fantasize.However once you get there live it to the max.I found hapiness when I stopped looking for it.

Reply 41

username51346

i wish i had a profound story.

Reply 42

Rooftopcowboy

having completed my first year at uni (with many great bits, but also several times of feeling really low, due to personal stuff, and also failing an exam and having to re-sit.

id say from my experience "pinning all your hopes" on uni is the worst thing to do.

Uni CAN be an amazing time, but ultimately it is what you make of it, 'uni' itself doesnt make it (if that makes sense)

uni is kind of like a blank canvas...its up to who you make freinds with, what you enjoy doing, what societies etc you join that makes the artwork.

as ive said, ive had a lot of great times at uni...but then at others its seemed a let down. Because i built my hopes on it being "perfect" before i started..so when the slightest little thing went wrong, i got far too stressed (even small things like the communal kitchen being untidy etc)

so id say try and be as open minded and calm as possible, and remember that dropping out, moving courses, moving uni etc IS an option...its not just "if its awful im stuck with it and my lifes ruined"

Reply 43

Montrose

When I say pinning my hopes on uni, i guess i do mean pinning my hopes on a blank canvas. It's a new start: new surroundings, new dwellings, new friends, new course, new job, pretty much new everything!

Reply 44

Rooftopcowboy

Alex Mann

it is a great "fresh start" i agree, its just that sometimes people can seek perfectionism too much (me included)

chances are your not going to like everyone, theres always some people who you dislike in life etc

and also there may be parts of your accomadation that bug you.

so i do totally agree that you can start a fresh life...just that sometimes uni is billed as "the time of your life" when it isnt possible for ALL of the thousands who go to uni everyyear to enjoy it, a few will dislike it etc and anyone could possibly in that few.

my biggest issues where getting used to the routine...such as at home me and my freinds go out mainly on thursdays...yet at uni, people rarely went out on thursdays for the most of the year. That may not sound like a big deal, but at the time, when its 9pm on a thursday, and i was a bit bored, id miss home and my home freinds.

another thing i found hard to get used to was how noisy halls where, im not a quiet dull type or anything! (im especially loud when drunk) but its not nice being woke up at 4am by people being immature...on a weekend i didnt mind, as Saturday night is saturday night, but when its 4am on tuesday/wednesdaymorning it is really annoying.

also a lot of people exagerate ive found, like every band theyve seen are "amazing", their course is great, their life is amazing etc etc which personally grates on me after a while, im not a fan of yuppies, and a lot seem to be at my uni (lots of great people though as well i might add!)

Reply 45

Montrose

Rooftopcowboy

chances are your not going to like everyone, theres always some people who you dislike in life etc

It's not perfectionism we're after. I think a lot of people who have had a bad time (I am talking real bad time, not just 'i am bored and need a change' or whatever), are just looking for a few things to like, not a complete "omg life is amazing" :smile:

Reply 46

2026

I think I may have pinned all my hopes on uni as well.

But I am quite hopeful that it will not disappoint me, or any of us.

Reply 47

Rooftopcowboy

Alex Mann

ah, i see

i was more in the "its going to be amazing" category though, as i dont really have much serious things in my past to worry about. So my comments are more in line with that.

still think my "go with the flow" type thinking applies to both though...as surely if people have had some awful expereinces in life will think "nothing can be worse than (insert event/expereince)" so uni surely cant be that bad in comparison.

Reply 48

RL99

wiggles

University wouldn't really have to be that great to live up to my hopes. There are only 4 things that I'm really hoping it will be like:
1. That I'll really enjoy my course and get a lot out of it, and actually look forward to going to lectures (well....as much as is possible anyway).
2. That I get along with my flatmates (even if they don't become my best friends).
3. That I make a close group of friends.
4. That (at some point) I get a girlfriend.

I think if you consider those to be 'only' 4 things then maybe you are pinning too much on Uni like the OP. Or maybe I'm just chippy because, as with other people in the thread, I pinned too much on going to Uni and on the whole I've been hugely disappointed by it. If I'd had each of those four things at the end of my first year I'd have been ecstatic, since as you are I was hopeful, even expectant, that they'd happen. But at the end of my first year:

1. Nope, very hard, not that interesting, struggled for motivation.

2. At first, but then several revealed themselves as being fickle, shallow w*nkers, and had been completely false early on. Others, though I didn't hate them, I just had very little in common with so no grounds for a good friendship there, but at least our relationship was civil.

3. No, in part because of the above, and I didn't meet many people on my course either. Housemates' friends-of-friends, and people I played rugby with (which often overlapped) were mostly tossers too. I could have tried doing more activities though (jobs/societies), though time constraints were part of the reason I didn't, however I would recommend joining things in this respect.

4. No, since I imagine any prospective girlfriend I'll meet in the same way as a friend, most of this is as above. My course is an unbelievable bloke-fest. I can't approach girls who I know nothing about, though there was one girl I met when my housemate randomly asked her and a friend to play drinking games with us, liked her, didn't take a chance and spent the rest of the first year regretting it.

So as you can imagine I was pretty :frown:

after the first year. It should be noted that, 2 years on, my living situation has improved a bit, I've met a few people who are decent friends, though not brilliant, and my course finally got interesting in the 3rd year :yy:

. Still nowhere near finding a gf though. I've got so fed up with it that I'm now taking a year off to live in Canada, which has brought the way I was feeling 3 years ago flooding back, and this time I'm trying not to hold my expectations too high. Which brings me back to the OP, from my experience I'd say the following:

1. Part of my problem was that I didn't realise how good my life at home was. In retrospect, if uni was as good or even a bit worse then that would've been great. To expect better than at home was foolish though I think - consider your life at home and ask yourself how good/bad it really is, and whether expecting better is realistic.

2. Be grateful you have 2-3 friends who are always there for you, I think if I had that at uni I'd be happy. I think you realise who your true friends are when people go away to uni, some might surprise you (in a good or bad way).

3. I think a large part of being happy at uni is down to luck with the people you get thrown together with. If you end up feeling like I did (hopefully you won't), it's unlikely to be because there's anything wrong with you.

Reply 49

Joey12

I agree with everything rooftopcowboy says. I thought uni was going to be amazing, and had all these different hopes for it. I imagined all these societies i was going to join and all these many groups of friends I was going to have. But i really did have an awful year, well first 2 terms anyway, my third term was excellent because i stopped caring and expecting things to be brilliant. My main problem was my course, it turned out to be awful from day one and proved to be my university downfall. Everything went wrong once i realised i hated my course. When i knew that my flatmates wern't going to be my best friends it felt like the world had ended it really did, because I had expected so much from university. From then on this was the general theme of my uni life. Until after the easter holidays, when i actually started making positive decisions, i reapplied for a different course but i also decided to finish the year so that i had something to show for my hard work and because I had finally made a decision after months of agonising, lots of trips home 'to sort my head out' and night after night of crying in my room i started to love uni! I met some fantastic people who had been in my hall the whole time and did everything, id wanted to do in my first year in uni.

Just realised that ive been rambling but anyway, my advice, do not have high expectations and dont go into it with pre-conceived ideas about what its going to be like.

xxx

Reply 50

2026

Joey12

I'm sure law is a much better course, and you will enjoy it more.

Good luck.

Reply 51

Joey12

Why thankyou!

I must say I cant actually wait! :biggrin:

Reply 52

2026

Joey12

Why thankyou!

I must say I cant actually wait! :biggrin:

I admire the fact that you're brave enough to drop a course after putting one year effort into it, and starting fresh.

I'm starting law this October as well, and after reading this thread, i am beginning to reconsider all the hopes I placed upon uni.

Good luck at Nottingham. Its a great uni.

Reply 53

Montrose

Joey12

Joey, the difference between you and me is that you have been happy at home before you went, and so the contrast between you being really happy here and then going off to Uni and being sad, was a big contrast! Where as we both know I've not been very happy for ages now, so it's not like things can get worse lol. But I agree about the pre-conceived ideas. I have none. :smile:

Reply 54

Squelchy

I think pinning your hopes on anything which might happen in the future is a terrible idea, regardless of what that might be.

The place to start making things better is here, the time to start making things better is now.

Read Bleak House by Charles Dickens, more specifically read into the Chancery Suit and Richard.