Despite how different I feel now, I can still clearly remember how proud I felt about studying a difficult, well-respected degree in a good university when I first started. But I was proud for all the wrong reasons. I was proud that my parents could boast about their daughter, about how I was one of the few people from my primary school to have gone to university, about moving away to a city I deemed better than where I’d came from, about going for a profession where I’d be well paid and well respected. Maybe I’d confused pride with smugness. Because none of those reasons really were my own personal achievements or attributes. Yes, I’d been the one to achieve the good a-levels to meet the entry requirements - but only just.
I didn’t feel that proud on results day, I don’t think I really felt anything. In fact, I was slightly disappointed that I hadn’t achieved an A* in English. Even before results day, I knew I’d be able to achieve better grades if I wasn’t studying science. The relief I felt about not having failed my exams was cancelled out by the relief that I knew I would have felt if I had fucked up my sciences. I would sometimes voice that it would almost be a blessing in disguise to not meet the requirements for pharmacy because it would free me to pursue my passion. I still feel like having a certain degree of intelligence, or academic ability, burdens you with the expectation of going on to do a degree that’s deemed ‘difficult’ or ‘worthwhile’ - rather than something you actually want to spend time studying. I felt that if I was to go to university and do an English degree I’d be wasting my hard work at A-level, as if it was below me - and this was also the vibe I got from those around me too.
I’d been encouraged by several ex-boyfriends to pursue something creative, something that I loved - like fashion or writing. At the time, I always took this as them trying to sabotage my ‘progress’, maybe as a way of getting me to stick around or maybe my ambition intimidated them - so rich of me, I know. Looking back, yes - that encouragement could have come from a selfish place on their part, but it could also have come from the way that I was open with them. Maybe some of them knew me better than I knew myself.
I kept ignoring all these red flags that I was chasing after the wrong path because I felt - and still do to an extent - that university was my only way out of a life of longing. Longing for more money, experiences and friends - all these things I thought I lacked and other people didn’t. I felt like any other option would trap me in North Wales for the rest of my life - that’d I would never get to see the world or grow, that’d it would trap me in an endless cycle of unhappiness and envy. What I didn’t realise is that there’s nothing wrong with longing - it’s essential to give you drive to actually go get the things you want.
For a little while at Bath, I was so caught up in trying to be social and going on dates that I didn’t have much time to be alone with myself so of course, I wouldn’t have seen the problems. But when the cracks begin to show, when people begin becoming who I didn’t think they were or when I knuckled down to study - is it only then I realised how much this degree was costing me. I began to feel dark and numb, alone and hateful. I couldn’t explain it, I was desperate to be included but wanted to be alone. I used to actually scare myself because I would be having so many hateful thoughts and dark thoughts about wanting to end my life. I don’t even remember what made me feel this way in particular - I just had an overwhelming feeling of not wanting to be alive.
When the novelty and sparkle of freshers week wore away I realised Bath wasn’t as big and exciting as I wanted from a university city, it was claustrophobic and stagnant. I didn’t quite fit into the middle class surroundings or super sporty uni. I laughed along to the chants about Bath Spa being less of a uni, but I never told anyone that I’d ordered a prospectus to study English there. I didn’t join any sports or societies because I didn’t have time due to the demands of my degree and nor could I seem to see any groups where I’d feel more at ease. I was left with a very limited group of friends which soon left me very isolated when it became apparent that I didn’t feel comfortable around my peers.
Despite the extreme lows that making this mistake caused me to feel, I’m incredibly grateful that I went and made the mistake of not following my heart. As clichéd as that sounds, without seeing how detrimental it is to force myself into an artificial, unnatural mould I would have never summoned the courage to pursue a dream I’d dismissed as ludicrous and self-indulgent. Now I’m experiencing something completely novel and alien - a real drive and determination to be the best.
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