The Things They Don't Tell You About Uni

By Gracie Bawden

So you’re at college, and you’re considering going to uni. You’re more than considering it because it is being rammed down your throat by teachers and other students implying that if you don’t go you’ll be working in Starbucks for the rest of your life. And don’t get me wrong, education is important, but it’s important also to remember that your college lecturers hold biased opinions. For a start, it looks great for the college if like 90% of their students go on to do degrees. Secondly, even if your lecturers are wonderful people who don’t care about the college statistics, they are likely to have had a very positive experience of university. After all, they have a job in their field. They’re already doing better than most. You’re probably not getting the whole picture. So here are some things, from a disillusioned second year, that they don’t tell you about uni.

1. It’s hard. Really hard. The amount of times I heard phrases like ‘A levels are the hardest thing you’ll ever do’ and ‘It’s so much easier when you get to study what you’re passionate about’ being banded around makes me feel sick. Degree level essays are harder and COMPLETELY DIFFERENT to anything you would have done before. Your opinion no longer matters. You will spend hours searching journals and library books for the opinions of people you don’t care about on subjects you probably don’t care about.
   
   
2. Most university courses are computer based. All of your homework and assignment details will be visible online, lots of your work will be submitted online and EVERYTHING you hand in will be computer processed. Computer failure will not be an acceptable excuse for missing a deadline. Even if you lose everything you have written ten minutes before the deadline, you will fail.
   
   
3. Student Finance are the spawn of Satan. Scratch that, they may be Satan himself. Dodgy website, useless phone operators, shitty attitude. There is a large chance you won’t get your loan on time. It doesn’t matter if you have rent to pay, text books to buy, they don’t care! They’ll palm you off with some ‘ask your parents for money’ bull as though your parents are just cash machines, handing it out willy nilly.
   
   
4. When your loan does come through, there is a large chance it will not be as much as you anticipated. There is a large chance you will have to get a job in order to be able to eat and other important stuff. But guess what?…
   
   
5. University is a FULL TIME job. Yes, you get a lot of ‘spare time’. In fact you may get as little as 5 or 6 teaching hours a week but unless you want to fail miserably, you will be spending the rest of your time doing independent work (or at least curled up in the fetal position crying about said work)
   
   
6. Uni lecturers are there to help. And a lot of the time, they want to (though it is worth mentioning, some definitely don’t). But they are busy people. Despite the fact that you are paying £9000 a year to be at university, they will only be able to see you to discuss your work at a time that suits them. Bearing in mind that lectures and seminars really aren’t there to help you with your assignments, it can sometimes feel like you’re very alone.
   
   
7. Some degrees are undeniably easier than others, and some undeniably hold less worth in the real world. You might love to study what you’re passionate about, but ultimately you have to ask yourself if it’s worth the stress and money. Equally you should consider whether it’s worth doing something you hate, just because you think you’ll earn loads of money at the end of it. Chances are, if you hate what you study, you’ll hate the job that it leads to.
   
   
8. You will have a weekly existential crisis due to all of the above.                                                                                             

It’s not all doom and gloom. You will be thrown into groups of people you’d never normally associate yourself with, and you’ll come away from it with fantastic friends from all walks of life. You’ll get to see a city you’ve possibly never seen before, and understand what it feels like to have the privilege of two homes, two places you love, two sets of people you love. You get to spread your wings without fear of poking your parents in the eyes, do things you’d never get away with at home. You get to learn stuff! And that’s pretty frickin’ awesome, when you actually think about it. But it all comes at a cost. And it’s definitely worth considering a lot more deeply than I did. It seems like one minute you’re whacking your details into UCAS and the next you’re having a breakdown, crying into the pages of a pragmatics and semantics book. It’s far too easy to forget to take a breather and consider what you actually want from life, when you want it, and the best way to get it.