Just a little confused with life

Hi, long time TSR lurker here.

This is probably gonna end up more of a rant than anything else but I’ve had this feeling for quite a while now and I’d like to get it off my chest.

I’ve just been done with my second year at uni and got my results a while ago. So for this year I have an average of 2:2, not totally unexpected but I can’t say my heart didn’t drop a little when I received the news.

A little bit of backstory. I think I did pretty well for my A levels, but being the silly person I am I overestimated my capabilities and took one subject too many. Thus I got a good result for a subject I didn’t need and missed the one I needed, and so lost both my uni choices. I thought about taking a gap year and reapplying but in the end decided to just go through with Clearing and be done with it.

I got two offers: one from a London uni for my initial course and one from outside London, but for a joint honours program. At the time I thought going for the joint honours was a better idea since the uni was more well known for the subject, but now sometimes I feel like I would have been a lot happier in London since all my friends were there and the course was probably easier. Basically, I based my decision off uni and subject rankings and now regret it once in a while.

In my first year, things weren’t too bad. I ended the year with a high 2:1 and was quite happy with that. However by the middle of my second year things weren’t good. I didn’t feel motivated at all to do any work and I despised some of my compulsory modules. Everything just kind of went into a downward spiral and I just felt life was pretty pointless. I think those feelings were probably exacerbated by winter (long days of darkness really get to me) and living in a house with people I didn’t particularly like probably didn’t help much.

When spring came around I was feeling a bit better but still wasn’t motivated to start studying. Only when exams were around the corner did the panic start to set in and thus I crammed my way through twelve papers. Now that results are here I realise I have nobody to blame but myself but at the time I just really didn’t know what to do.

I guess my first mistake was choosing a course that ultimately isn’t very suitable for me but when I applied I didn’t know what else to do so I just chose something I thought I was good at and left it at that. Right now my overall average is just sitting on the border of a 2:1 and there’s a small hope in me that I can turn things around next year and get a first but I know realistically that’s unlikely to happen. I wanted to apply for a masters so I can start right after I graduate but especially with this year’s results I’m not sure any good uni will accept me.

Sorry if it sounds like a boring story, thanks for reading this far. Any advice you could send my way would be very much appreciated

In some ways I have been in the same situation too. After a good first year I achieved a 2:2 in second year, as you say despising some compulsory units that gave me scores in the 40, as well as one fail that required a result. Life was at a bit of a low point but I started my placement year so I didn't give up.

I felt motivated by my choices in third year being much more interesting on paper than in second year, and it mostly turned out to be true. As my course is 21 hours a week, I quickly worked out which lectures were worth going to and made sure to watch recorded versions of ones I didn't, which saved a lot of time as I could speed it up. For my coursework I planned well in advance what I need to do and by when, doing careful research into what I needed to do to get high marks in an essay and then doing it well ahead of the deadline. It was pretty hectic as I had 4 pieces of coursework due within a space of 3 weeks, but I planned which days I will be doing what and it worked, with only one all nighters pulled.

I didn't turn my 2:2 in second year around to get a first overall (it would have required an average of 76% which was beyond me) but I got a 2:1 and I was happy, because for all the hard work I did I didn't deserve any less, and in truth I didn't deserve more either.

It meant that I couldn't apply to a masters degree this year, apart from Warwick which was open for some reason, but if I don't get in then I'm going to work on making my application stronger, and from research I know exactly how I will do this, and I hope that my 2:1 and my work experience and my (hopefully well written) personal statement and things that demonstrate my interest in the course will get me where I want to go. I'm glad that I got involved with things at university that I can talk about in interviews etc, so use your third year to do the same.

Good luck!

Wow we are more similar than you thought! I too scraped 40's in 3 of my modules and failed another. (Un?)fortunately they won't let me resit so while it won't affect anything besides my grade, I have no second chance to make things better.

I've been looking at my module choices and hopefully I'll be able to do better next year as there are some filler modules I can sort of use as padding. Coincidentally the one uni you should mention is the one I'm attending I'm planning on taking a few essay based modules, hopefully that'll take some of the weight off of exam period. Having twelve quantitative papers in one sitting absolutely killed me.

Thanks so much for taking the time to reply to my post, it means a lot to me! I'm really glad to hear things turned out well for you Hearing how someone else has gone through the same thing makes me feel a ton better. I agree with your statement about not deserving any more or less, I think I might feel disappointed when the time comes but I know a 2:1 is probably what's right for me. All the best for your applications!