Going to university – it’s a lot!

My daughter, my youngest child, recently started at university. And I was reminded once more that university is a lot to deal with. Some young people take to it like a duck to water. They are the lucky ones.

But probably about half of young people struggle – maybe for days, maybe for weeks, months or even their whole time at university. Some will drop out. Some will move to a different university closer to home, so they can commute.

Anecdotally, it appears that slightly more girls than boys struggle. Or maybe girls are more likely to admit to their families that they are struggling.

Here are just a few of the challenges they face right from day one:

• Moving to a new city and finding their way around
• Living with new people
• Making friends
• Having to cook/ shop/ clean for themselves – possibly for the first time
• Missing family and friends
• Having to budget carefully

And that’s before lectures even start, with all the challenges that studying can bring…

That is a lot to deal with all in one go! It is completely overwhelming for many.

You can do your best to prepare your young people for it. Maybe  you will teach them to cook and supply them with meals and ingredients for the first few days. You can talk to them about personal safety and making friends. You can encourage them to research the societies and clubs at uni.

But, you can’t predict whether they will settle in or whether they will struggle. Ultimately, they have to do it themselves (with whatever support you can offer from afar). And it can be hard.

Freshers’ week isn’t for everyone – there might be too much going on or not enough. There will be events laid on by the students’ union and probably some local nightclubs. Drinking won’t be obligatory, but they will still be busy, which is too much for some young people.

On the flipside, there aren’t activities laid on 24/7 for freshers’ week. Students can easily find themselves spending long, lonely periods of time in their bedrooms, thinking about how much better and easier life was at home.

Your young person may be looking forward to partying hard and find themselves in a flat full of quiet people who just want to go to bed early. Or they might be the person who wants to go to bed early and find themselves in a flat full of party animals. Some universities allow students to include short biographies when they’re booking their accommodation, but it’s still a lottery as to whether they end up living with the sort of people they would choose to live with.

Even if they know how to cook, cooking for themselves may be a problem. If they are shy or nervous of being around other people in the kitchen, they might choose to avoid it. The controls on the hob or the oven might be different from what they have at home and they can’t work out how to use it. They might have forgotten to go to the supermarket and have no food left – because time management is a skill it can take a while to learn. Before you know it, they’re missing meals because cooking is too stressful.

You can tell them joining societies and sports clubs will help – and it almost certainly will. But if they’re struggling, that week or two they have to wait until societies start can seem like a really long time.

Faced with all of this, it’s no wonder so many students find the first weeks of university hard. If they want to go home for the weekend – or even midweek – don’t stop them and tell them to stick it out.

Remember just how much change they are having to deal with. Let them settle in their own time and their own way. And if that means spending some time back at home, where they feel safe and happy, let them go home as often as they need to.

I found university hard myself, way back in the 90s. This is my story.