A Year of Reflection
My second year of university has been quite different to the typical experience. The global pandemic has meant this whole year has been online, and falling behind on work has never been easier.
In first year I was always on top of work, while I was stressed about assignments, I was going into university almost every day for lectures and seminars, which in turn meant I went to the library a lot more to complete said assignments. Second year couldn’t have been more different to this. I was at home (in London) for the whole of my second semester, only coming back to Manchester after easter. I am now planning on staying in Manchester until well into the summer to make up for lost time.
This has both been a bad and a good thing. During semester 1 everything was great until about half way through. By that point my social life had calmed down and I was beginning to realise just how claustrophobic I actually felt. I was stuck in the same house very day with the same people and this began to overwhelm me. To make matters worse, we all caught corona virus and had to quarantine together for 2 weeks. Looking back I feel like this is where I began to resent being at university.
After this I just wasn’t feeling the same about living in Manchester anymore, it wasn’t as exciting as it had been, and the days began to blend into each other to the point where I started losing track of what day it was and how much time had passed. I began to experience what I can only describe as an existential crisis. I started questioning what I was doing with my life, and what I was doing with my psychology degree. The fact we couldn’t attend lectures or even go into university made this much worse.
By the time christmas came around and I had been home for a few weeks, I found I was unable to go back to university. Everything was online, shops were closed, the weather was cold. I found infinite excuses as to why the time to return was never right, when really I was running away. I even decided to complete my short work placement at home to create another excuse for why I had to stay at home.
Eventually, while I enjoyed being at home, that ended up being just as claustrophobic as being in Manchester. By the end of second semester I found myself facing the exact same feelings I was running away from at the end of first semester. It was at that point I realised running away solves nothing.
Now that I am back in Manchester, university is still online, assignments are still hard to complete, the weather is still bad. Nothing has changed except for my mindset. I feel now that I have somewhat changed since the beginning of the year. Now, I can gladly say I have found some self motivation that I don’t believe I had in first year, or at the beginning of this year. Facing challenging feelings head on is difficult, and so is accepting change, but it is beneficial in the long run. I have now adapted to online learning, and have found ways for me to get the most out of it. The same goes for assignments, at first, I refused to talk to anyone at all because I couldn’t talk to them in person, but now I am better able to articulate myself in emails, and am more comfortable on zoom calls.
This year of university, and of my life, has allowed me to teach myself how to adapt to new environments. I’m not saying I enjoyed it, all in all this year has been tough, for everyone not just me, but I’m glad it happened. I feel as though this has truly been a year to reflect on myself, in every aspect of my life. This isn’t stuff that is taught in schools but I’m glad I’ve learnt it now as it will definitely be useful in terms of self motivation in my future career path.
