a reflection on uni

You jumped from being happy, joyful and excited to sad, drained and depressed.
What happened to make you change like that?

posted this on the oxford uni forum but wanted to post it on here too in case anyone at other unis is struggling too. this is the sort of post i wanted to find when i started uni.
it's been a year since i got my offer to study at oxford (373 days). reflecting over the past year is a rollercoaster of emotions. a gap year student, seeing my offer come through and knowing it was a guaranteed ticket to the uni in october was a whirlwind of emotions. the days following were spent on a high. i hadn't been particularly set on going to oxford, as i wondered how i would cope with the high-pressure environment surrounded by people far more studious than myself, but the offer coming through meant i didn't need to resit my alevels as i already had the grades for my place (which i did not have for other unis). the excitement i felt therefore felt more like joy that the turmoil of resits was over, rather than excitement that i had a place for oxford. even so, it meant the rest of my gap year could be spent working at my part time job that i adore, doing some travelling and spending some time with my family for the first time without the pressures and stresses of academic work. although i had down moments, my gap year was one of the happiest moments of my life. october came around and i started at university. freshers week is a blur, not particularly because of social activities but because the combination of trying to make new friends, attend social events and write my first uni essay whilst living through my first proper week away from home. it was highly draining. michaelmas term passed slowly, happy times with friends scattered throughout a struggle i never anticipated to happen. i was sad, stressed and wishing to go home. i turned to friends who sympathised, but couldn't relate, and i spent many hours in tears on the phone to my parents. i held on and completed my first term art university. the winter holiday was a lifeline. spending time with family and time away from the city i was growing to resent was all i had dreamed about for the previous nine weeks. even so, this time was plagued with the knowledge that i would have to return to oxford and the life i was desperate to forget. i spoke with family about it, and they encouraged me to think about the positives and realise that these three years of hardship would be worth the lifetime of reward. this thought sits with me always - is the sadness and unease i feel really worth a degree i don't enjoy? i spent the winter holiday discussing with health professionals and am trialing some tablets that should hopefully help. i was able to return to my job for some christmas shifts but it all felt different. i was no longer the same person i was when i departed in october. people constantly asking me 'how's uni?' and 'i bet your having the most amazing time, i'm so jealous'. i'd lie with a smile and say it was amazing, i'm loving my course and i can't wait to return, then i'd drive home and sit with my parents on the sofa, my safe place, with a sense of numbness - the places i had longed to return to during my first term were no longer the happy places i remembered them to be. nostalgia truly is my greatest enemy and my greatest comfort. christmas and new year rolled past, collections revision touched upon but hardly started. every day i told myself that 'tomorrow would be the day' and i would start my revision then, but i would climb into my desk chair, laptop open in front of me, and stare. any thought i have ever had would cross my mind and i spent hours fighting the urge not to click off my word document and google strange thoughts. i spent ages on indeed, searching for jobs you can do without degrees and i turned to websites like tsr to see if anyone else from oxford could share in my feelings. now i sit here having completed my first night of hilary term. i returned to my room late yesterday morning with my parents and all my belongings in tow. i had not wanted to come back but couldn't even begin to imagine the regret of not. we unpacked my room, returning it to it's pre-christmas state, the new box of antidepressants a stark reminder of how i had changed since i first unpacked my room 3 months prior. my parents left me and i saw my friends. dinner was lovely, a nice chance to be around the people who had been so comforting for me in my first term. after we departed, various calls of 'my exam is at 9 tomorrow, need to get some sleep' and 'last minute revision is calling my name' spread throughout the quad, i returned to my room. i opened my laptop but no motivation came. i decided to go for a walk and wandered round the streets of the oxford in the misty dark. the tears fell and i felt comfort in this. when i retuned to my room i once again tried to start my revision, my exam less than 48 hours away, but nothing in me wanted to even touch my laptop. i lay on my bed and sobbed for a while, in slight disbelief that i really had returned to uni. the holidays had felt like an endless stretch but now i was back and it felt exactly how it was when i had left in december. now i sit here, my first (and only) collection exam set for tomorrow afternoon with the acceptance that if i do manage to muster up the motivation to do even a small bit of revision, it will be futile. i am strangely at peace with the idea i will fail tomorrow, which is completely unlike the perfectionist that i left sixth form as.
i often find myself on social media, looking at posts from my peers and wondering how they are managing to do it, or if they are managing to do it. i'll never really know if the people i envy actually feel like me, or if instead uni has been a beacon of light that they adore. sometimes i look at photos of oxford graduates and think about how it will feel for my own graduation ceremony. i also look at them in envy - they've done it and made it out alive, they've lived through what i have and so much more and yet they managed to make it through. perhaps they are stronger than me or perhaps they also felt like me at some point in their degree. either way, they managed to make it through. this is a comfort, but also a cause of unease. right now i'm not sure i will complete this degree and these photos are a reminder that i will have failed in some way if that is the case. maybe i'll never don a graduation robe and i wonder how that will feel.
people keep telling me that it's up to me to turn my uni experience around. and they're right. i can't sit in self-pity and sadness forever, nothing will get better. i am going to try and make changes to my attitude so that uni won't be the three years of awfulness i am currently imaging them to be. but even so, as i sit here with my first emails of reading lists and tutorial dates coming through, i am reminded of the person that started here in october. we're still the same, linked by the same feelings of sadness and dread. the same heart-drop moments when thinking about essays and the same lumps in our throats at the thought of exams. but we are also different. i have made true friends, something that she thought was impossible. i have returned home for the holidays, while she thought that 9 weeks would expand on forever and home would never come. we are united by our feelings but she has yet to experience the things that have altered me so drastically.
i've never been much of a writer (of the emotional kind, as an oxford humanities student i very much need to be a writer), but seeing current year 13/ gap year students receive their offers / rejections this week has stirred up some reflective moments in me. and if i'm being honest, i wanted to post this for the future version of me to see, so that they can compare themself to the one that writes these words now. i'm not even sure tsr is the place for me to post this. perhaps i'll be a second year who relates completely or maybe (hopefully) i'll feel sadness for the person i was, but maybe i will sit there as a second year who has experienced so much more and now has love for their degree, their uni room and the city they live in. perhaps i won't be an oxford student anymore, and i'll have to have made a difficult decision to leave behind the life i only ever kind of wanted. maybe i'll feel regret and guilt for taking an opportunity from someone who may have wanted it more, or perhaps i'll be relived and able to breathe freely for the first time in a while. whatever happens, i can't wait to meet them.