‘I have a new-found respect for adults’

A couple of months ago, I wrote about the fears I had when leaving home for university.

It seemed to me a daunting experience to be packing up everything familiar and heading into a life of unknown chaos. However, with three months of university life behind me, and thinking back to writing about the ‘real adults, not like me by age, but by life experience, who insist that university will be the best years of your life’, I can say they might actually be right.

This new world, initially full of uncertainty, quickly became my home away from home while stepping into adulthood.

But the first weekend was strange.

After disembarking at Poole – not exactly England’s Venice – I grew nervous, wondering whether the big island would be too big. These nerves gradually turned into butterflies as we got closer to the university during a four-hour drive south-west.

The day passed in a blur of movement – suitcases, campus maps, and introductions that I instantly forgot. Then, within the space of about 20 minutes, I was waving goodbye to Mum and Dad. After they left in what must be one of the most awkward emotional exchanges possible – Mum trying not to cry, Dad trying to help Mum not to cry, me trying not to look like I might – I sat on my bed surrounded by unpacked bags, listening to my flatmates dancing to Last Friday Night in the kitchen.

To be honest, I wondered if I’d landed myself with a bunch of crazies. So I did what any proper Gen Z’er does and doom-scrolled, pretending to be busy, hoping that if I waited long enough, some divine intervention would cause a social interaction. And it did.

They came and knocked on my door, and within 10 minutes we were playing cards in the kitchen. They were the reason I began to feel at home. This didn’t mean that I wasn’t still feeling nervous and homesick, but it did make everything easier. I have to admit, though, that I went to bed hungry and also skipped breakfast the following morning, owing to a vague feeling that if I tried to use the kitchen I would make myself look a right melon by setting off the fire alarm with cremated toast, and probably also because of awkwardly not wanting to do something ‘wrong’.

These nerves soon faded entirely, though. The following evening, we ordered pizza and sat in our hallway discussing everything from the new Peppa Pig movie to Buddhism. At the time it seemed like an unusual but fun weekend. It quickly became my new normal. 

The following Monday, lectures started. I may not have set the best first impression. I arrived at my first lecture five minutes late. Consequently, I had to walk to the top of a packed lecture theatre trying to find a seat only to realise there were none left. I had to walk back down and sit at the front, which was terribly embarrassing.

But not as bad as arriving five minutes after me, making the same walk up and down, and then dropping your laptop with a great clatter when finally sitting down. It was good of that lad to make my faux pas seem less significant and he would quickly become one of my closest mates.

The lectures here are a mixed bag. Sometimes they are very interesting. Some lecturers – clearly experts in their field – articulate well-researched and original ideas that help shape or change my own perceptions of a topic. At other times, lectures, and unfortunately entire modules, can be two or more hours of unrelenting nonsense of zero relation to the assignments which determine our grades.

This is annoying at first, but when it’s a 9am lecture for which you have forced yourself out of bed after too few hours of sleep following perhaps one too many drinks, it can become intolerable. Oh, the hardship of this life.

I am thoroughly enjoying the academic side of things. University acts as a vessel for self-directed research, and it’s up to the student to decide how much they wish to engage in their discipline. I have found this to be a refreshing new way of studying. I’ve been able to read several interesting books which I may well never have come across otherwise. Including The Model Occupation: The Channel Islands Under German Rule.

I found this in the university library and was so proud to see my little island home on the shelves. It’s a fascinating and controversial book. It inspired me to write an essay as part of an assignment about the legacy of the Occupation.

This style of learning, however, comes with barriers which must be overcome to get the most out of the university experience. The greatest of these is the difference between school and university. Until a few months ago, at school, teachers were showing me the ladder to climb the walls of my subjects. At university, they just point vaguely in the direction of the wall and basically say ‘good luck climbing’. If you get it right, independent learning is very rewarding. Occasionally, when you get it wrong, it leads to a smack in the mouth you can almost feel. My first assignment was three marks out of 100 away from a first, after I dropped several marks for using the wrong referencing style in some of my answers. It is instilling a level of self-determination I definitely lacked before arriving here.

Independence beyond the classroom is another significant challenge. It’s as bad as I assumed it would be – probably worse, if I’m honest. I now have a new-found respect for adults.

There is cooking, cleaning, more cleaning because you dropped the dishes you were cleaning, washing, cooking again, then some more cleaning, shopping, showering, calling the plumber because your shower turned into a bath, and finally sleep.

And sometimes not much sleep because the flat below sounds like they’re practising military manoeuvres. In fact, the strangest things tend to happen at night, including on one occasion at 2am a fire alarm because a flatmate left a wet shoe on a radiator and somehow there was a fire.

Nonetheless, gradually, it seems to get a little easier. Sadly, food requiring an oven remains a little too demanding for me. The last time I cooked an oven pizza it looked like it had been present during a hydrogen bomb test.

But I’ve now mastered Pot Noodle, toasties, and microwave packets of rice and pesto pasta. This is progress, if sometimes humiliating when my flatmates are cooking at the same time. Two in particular, Felix and Ollie. The former, a country bumpkin, and the latter, someone who spent the previous year travelling south-east Asia as a Scuba diver, are both amazing cooks. A whiff of their delicious food is part of the home-from-home feeling.

Besides the ordinary, I’ve had a few new experiences I wasn’t expecting. One that particularly sticks in the mind was a trip to the NHS Hospital in Truro in the back of an ambulance. I’d called it for a flatmate and travelled with her. In my first article, I wrote about my grandmother’s unrelenting fuss about meningitis.

Well, it turns out she wasn’t wrong. Thanks to her, I was well versed in the dangers and the actions to take if someone was showing symptoms. The paramedics weren’t as good as in Guernsey, but the hospital staff were brilliant throughout the seven hours we were there.

I’d like to say a big thank you to Evie, Ollie, Big Felix, Megan, Little Felix (an adopted flatmate), Maisie, and Iona. They, and me, are Block E, flat 1. Over the course of the past 11 weeks, they have become great friends, making every day enjoyable. We’ve got on so well that we’ve just signed a tenancy agreement for a private flat together next year.

Anyone wondering now about a future at university should go for it, in my view. Provided you make the most of the opportunity, it is an amazing and once-in-a-lifetime experience.