What University is REALLY like 👀😬

As the British weather worsens and the daylight evenings begin to get shorter, we all have to start facing the fact that the summer holidays are coming to a close. For many, this means returning to school for another year of maths, science, english and detentions. For others, this marks the start of a new chapter: university.

University has a shed load of pre-conceptions surrounding it. For some, university conjures up project-x style images of frat parties and those red beer pong cups that seem to serve no purpose but to reassure everyone else that you have the correct social status to even be at that party...
For others, university seems to emit pure despair; textbooks as thick as rugby players thighs, research papers as dense as the Magna Carta, and lectures so dull even Hermione would fall asleep in them.

When I was at school, the thought of not going to university never occurred to me. For me, university was the default option. Both my parents have English degrees; my older brother had gone to university the year before me. So whilst I fully expected to end up there, what I didn’t expect was what university would actually be like.

So, you can imagine my surprise when 6 months into my university experience, I found myself standing on the side of the road by a toll bridge outside Arras in France, dressed as a 118 118 runner, holding a cardboard sign that reads “Charity Hitchhike to Paris”.

You'll have to excuse this bookish reference, but University is like the wardrobe in the Chronicles of Narnia. From the outside, you think you know what you’re getting. You go, study for 3 years, do a fair bit of partying, and come away with lifelong friends and a degree. But in reality, nobody predicts what you’ll find on the inside.

It may be cliché, but university is full of people, knowledge and opportunities that you never even knew existed. Like Narnia’s wardrobe, it exposes you to a new world populated by political activists, journalists, innovators, linguists, athletes, engineers and entrepreneurs. You are able to challenge and be challenged, teach and learn, debate and discuss.

At A-level, you’re taught through textbooks. At university, you’re taught by the people who write those textbooks. The subject you thought you knew at school takes on a completely new form. You find yourself at the forefront of research, an agent for your subject, being briefed by the experts and sent out on a mission to explore and discover.

Now don’t get me wrong, my degree is great. But just like Narnia, you’ll never realise University’s full potential if you don’t ever stray from the conventional path… It was through looking beyond my degree, and getting involved in the Students' Union's RAG society that I found myself hitchhiking to Paris; through this that I was then able to organise a charity hitchhike to Edinburgh. Through my involvement with RAG, I now find myself involved in the organisation of a campus zombie apocalypse for halloween.

By seeking and seizing the opportunities that university has to offer, I have been on campaign teams, attended academic roundtables and debates, questioned my local MP, written for my university newspaper and stood in front of 350 people on open days explaining why they should go to university too.

You see, university gives you a voice. One that is never truly noticed at school. At uni, your ideas are listened to. Your ambitions are supported. You are completely in charge of who you want to become, what you want to do and how you want to do it. It empowers, equips and enables you.

If you are due to start university this month, I am so excited about the whole new world you're about to be introduced to. Throw those ridiculous shapes on the dance floor in freshers week. Go to all the taster sessions. Question your lecturers. Fill up your time and embrace juggling your studies, societies and social life.

Seize every single opportunity.

 Because I'm telling you now, it goes so damn quickly.