Freshers’ Week, for the anxious introvert

Caitlin shares her experience as a fresher at university, and offers some advice to anyone feeling the same way.

-Caitlin Bracken

If I’m honest, with the struggle I was having at the end of my A-levels, for me to get to uni – my first-choice, and with flying colours too – was nothing short of a miracle. I’m now studying for the course I’ve always wanted to do, among people who are like me (although not exactly like me, for reasons you’ll soon be reading) for the first time. We’re all heading in the same direction, and it’s great. Things are going so well, now that my course has started, and the hell of Freshers’ is over (sorry, to those of you who found it exhilarating; a sacred time to forge new relationships!).

Before I moved in, I thought (perhaps naively) that during Freshers’ week it would be easy to find my fellow non-partygoers. Evidently, I didn’t think this through, because I conveniently forgot to factor in some pretty important factors:

• All the non-partygoers are probably a little like me, in that they’d rather go to bed early (by uni standards at least) than spend all hours of the night and early morning in a club. Meaning that when the party crowd went out, we were never going to find each other!
• Having anxiety made me 102% unwilling to go out of my room when things were getting extremely rowdy and alcohol-fuelled, out on the corridor. And even less willing to try and find any new friends once things had finally quietened down. 

I also didn’t bank on not-drinking being the cardinal sin of starting university. I didn’t expect there to be so much social expectation to drink. I suppose I was being naïve when I imagined it would be a simple task to find the people who weren’t drinking. It was nigh on impossible – in fact I didn’t find another person like me in this sense until my course started, a full nine days after I moved into Halls.  Student drinking culture wasn’t something that I thought I would find so intimidating! 

Surprisingly, it wasn’t the first night but the second that I found the hardest. I felt like the only person on campus, which I know was only the musing of an anxious mind, but that didn’t make the thought any less real at the time. It was the first time I’d felt truly lonely. I remember pacing the length of my long corridor from one end to the other, feeling like my chest was on fire. I’d have done anything to keep on walking til I was home. But as usual, the rational part of my brain took over and led me back to my room behind the safety of a locked door, with a cup of tea and a hot water bottle. 

I made it through Freshers’ quite independently, as is too often the case with mattes of mental health, my own especially. I did a lot of reading, I continued making sock monkeys (because it’s what I do best and is my favourite therapeutic activity), and I enjoyed the peace of early morning, when my flatmates were mostly still asleep.

I don’t want it to be a negative post, a moan about how much I’ve struggled at university to juggle my mental health with transitioning to a new life. Nor do I want to condemn the people who live Freshers’ Week to the fullest and take every event as a new socialising experience. If I was a drinker, I probably wouldn’t say no to £1 shots either. I don’t know if I did Freshers’ wrong, or just differently to the vast, vast majority. But there have been some excellent perks too, such as assembling an Ikea flat pack at half past ten in the evening, with a new friend and very limited instructions (possibly the best “icebreaker” I did all week), meeting my course tutors who reminded me of some of my most supportive sixth form teachers and were even more inspiring, if that’s possible, and discovering the education stack in the campus library.

Coming to uni was without doubt the best thing I’ve ever done – my confidence has skyrocketed and my anxiety, for the most part, has been under strict control. I just wish that my Freshers’ experience hadn’t been so… introverted. Am I wishing I was different? I’m not sure. I don’t think I’d like to swap places with people who partied until dawn and got on the wrong side of their tutors from day one for missing important induction lectures! Maybe what I’m wishing for is that I hadn’t been so afraid to open up and come clean about myself, and perhaps find like-minded people across the campus much sooner. 

The rational part of my brain is back, the one which reminded me to go back to bed on that difficult, anxious night when I needed to cope by myself; and I did cope, so that’s okay. It wasn’t the total disaster of a night I first saw it as. 

In a piece like this, I feel like I should be giving some kind of advice. I’m not built for this, forgive me if I’m too wordy or too boring. I think for first years like me, the best advice I could give would be to step out of your comfort zone earlier. Despite how intimidating it may feel, open up and find the people who don’t want to drink and dance until morning. Perhaps find the #BestNightIn posts a little earlier than I did, and reassure yourself that even in your little room, in an apparently empty Hall of Residence when it seems like the world is partying without you, you are not alone. 

(And definitely complain if the heating isn’t on and your building is cold!).