Hi,
I've been here for almost a month now, and at first I thought I was having general teething issues with the adjustment to life at Uni but I think it's begun to spiral into a bit more than that.
I'll start with the good parts, my flatmates are decent people and I haven't had any nightmare situations yet where we've genuinely clashed or butted heads, and I'm really thankful for that considering the number of horror stories you hear online. I'm also doing a foundation year, which means settling in academically hasn't been as demanding as it may have been had I not chosen to take one, and it's given me time to adjust to and accept where I am with everything at the moment. Sheffield is also a really lovely city and I'm really happy that I chose to come here for Uni over anywhere else.
That's about where the positives end though, everything else seems to be falling down around me and as much as I want to be able to stand up and face it all, I don't know if I can or not. My physical health is going to hell because of a number of factors, I'm not eating enough food but my body never seems to want to tell me it's hungry and I also have this weird anxiety around making food while others are in the kitchen, which has sort of put a limit on when I can and can't make myself food. I'm sure this will be something I get over eventually, but for now it's just kind of infuriating. I feel like a lack of a proper diet has had a massive knock-on effect on my sleep, which is something I've always struggled with anyway, but it's gotten even worse.
Sleep is something I feel completely lost with, as I don't think anyone really takes my issues with it seriously, even though it's been something I've struggled with since I was about 4 or 5 years old, yet every doctor I've seen regarding it has always given the same advice which never works (no screens before bed, have a glass of warm milk, have a wind-down routine etc.) and I'm nervous bringing it up with my new GP in the area as I know it'll almost definitely end up being a repetition of the same schtick I've been hearing for over a decade now. I'm not one to advocate for every problem in life being heavily medicated or anything, but surely when someone's following their doctor's advice and even taking OTC sleep aids and STILL ending up with sleep patterns as varied as 5am-2pm, 12pm-5pm, 9pm-4am (my sleep isn't even consistently like early morning-early afternoon cycles, there is genuinely just no cycle) then surely there's got to be a viable prescription alternative.The social side of things is something I think we're all struggling with to some extent, but I'm not really sure what I can do that I'm not already doing. I'll preface this with saying that I don't do nights out clubbing etc. and I know that this likely hasn't helped in my efforts to meet people but it took maybe about 5 minutes in one during freshers week and bordering on a panic attack to know that life isn't for me, too much loud music and flashing lights for me. So I've tried socialising through other means, I tried joining a sport before realising most of the sports at Uni are extremely competitive and I just was not going to make the cut in the slightest. I've done some social sport outside of the university's reach itself (Football For Foodbanks) and it's great fun but I have so far found it a bit tough to really relate to anyone else there as many of them are former students in their mid 20s who have already graduated or are regular working people in their 30s. The football is fun though, so I'm going to keep going as and when I can. I've joined a couple of societies that revolve around my interests (Karting + Travel) but so far the only social events they've done are bar/club crawls and it's a shame because I really would like to get to know these people. The disability support teams run social events for autistic students every couple of days, but they're always in the early afternoon for some god forsaken reason, so they always seem to clash with my lectures, seminars etc. so I've still not been able to go to any of them. I might end up skipping to go to one at some point just so see what's going on, but I'm way more worried about falling behind than I should reasonably be at this point, I know I should just ease up a bit but my brain likes to overthink more than it should.
Those are my main major concerns, but I do have a few smaller issues that I want to get off my mind too. The student accommodation building I'm in is too bloody hot. It's October, why does my bedroom feel like a sauna? There's no AC (I expected as such) but it was only built a few years ago so I thought there would at least be some form of protection against 'Holy crap, I'm melting!' syndrome.
I also feel a bit alienated from my flatmates in a weird sense, we all come from similar backgrounds (lower-middle/working class British) but they all live way closer to home than I do. 2 of them live in Leicester, one lives in Derby and one lives in Manchester. I came up from Great Yarmouth. All of them have been home to their family for the day or weekend at least once already and it feels a bit like a gut punch knowing that if I wanted to do that, it would cost me over £50 (with a railcard!) and 4 and a half hours of travel either way. I know it's partly my fault for choosing Sheffield, but it's one of the best cities I could have chosen for my course (Sports Journalism) and I actually love the city itself, it's just a bit of a cold reminder that when they go home semi-regularly, I can only really reasonably go back around Christmas or whenever I have more than a week off.
Circuit Laundry can go to hell, that's all I need to say about the laundrette here.
Money is constantly on my mind even though there's no real reason it should be. I have a job, I have over £400 in savings already, I've still got about £60 to last me the next 2 weeks and I still have a freezer shelf full of enough food to last me a round a week, same for the fridge. But for some reason I'm still consistently anxious about it. I suppose it's a good thing to worry about, but it's still kind of a shame that I have more worries to pile on to the existing ones.
Anyway, thanks for reading this jumbled up mess of a rant (kind of?) - any help and advice is much appreciated, same for any just general words of comfort. Here's to hoping it gets better soon