Missing my awful peanut-butter sandwiches (Simone)

At last, life at uni is starting to feel a bit more normal. It’s taken nearly a month, but maybe that’s only what I should have expected for such a big change! I miss highschool more than I thought I would. Does anyone feel the same? When you’re at school, you hate being so confined in this little space with the same people, day in and day out, and by the end of year 12 you have an urge to get out and explore the world. God – all through year 12 you are working so hard to get into university! It becomes your life goal! But deep down, you actually really love school. If you’re reading this as a schoolkid right now, and are getting up at 6:30am tomorrow morning for another draining, busy school day, thinking you’ve gotta be joking, school and love in the same sentence?! – just think about it for just a second. Didn’t or don’t you love walking down the corridor and bumping into a friend and saying hey, or knowing all the teachers that pass you and who ask you how you are? Or maybe you don’t realise how much you do or did love it. It’s cliche, but sometimes cliche’s are true – you often never realise what you had until it’s gone! I loved the safety of highschool, though it sounds lame to say that now, and I certainly wouldn’t have thought so last year. But really – just think – you loved your little daily routine on that busy tram with your friends, you loved that cute shirt and tie uniform even though you used to loathe the time it took you to put it on, you loved your subjects – okay, maybe not maths ever! – but even if you didn’t love it, you had your teacher right there, ready and willing to help you if you asked for it, and more often than not, you had a friend or a few beside you, doing the same thing. And if you had a bad day, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who did through the tension of year 12, or a bad SAC, or you were feeling down or doubtful, you could just head up to the lockers and meet your friends for a hug, and enjoy a quiet lunchtime under the big shady gum tree down the back of the school eating that peanut butter sandwhich.

I used to hate this peanut-butter sandwhich routine, in which my friends and I would complain endlessly about how we wish we could be at uni and able to get some ‘good’ food together and how much better it would be if we had that and didn’t have to go to fourth period… I never imagined I would miss that time so much!

But at university? It’s a whole new world. Brave new world! – but really! Melbourne University even has it’s own postcode! Like any suburb, it has it’s lane ways, buildings, rooms, lecture theatres, parks, cafes, paths… all new places to navigate and explore. And it’s huge, bigger than I’d ever even considered back at highschool. My school had 1200 students, and back in the day this seemed like heaps, but now it seems tiny! So in those first couple of weeks, I was feeling pretty lost in this big, scary new place. Not literally lost – I found all the places I needed to be a lot faster than I’d anticipated, and finally I’ve worked out all my best shortcuts to get to all my classes (I think!). But lost in terms of walking down through the campus and not seeing a single soul I knew, and being kind of terrified by that. You’re lost in the swarm of a crowd, most of them on their phones and iPods, or else talking to someone they know, or just simply staring straight ahead, kind of absently. And you realise it’s going to be like that during O-week, you know you’ve gone from being a ‘big fish in a little pond’ to a ‘little fish in a big pond’, but you don’t know just how many fish there are until you live it!

– so, you’re swimming anxiously around from lecture to lecture, trying to work out where you’re supposed to be, or simply what to do with yourself. You know a few people, and yeah, everyone in your tutes and all seem really nice, but you can’t find them in your lecture of 500 Arts students! Then on top of this awkward period of social isolation, the content at uni is quite intellectual and goes at a really fast pace. I know I’ve ranted about psychology in my previous blogs so I probably don’t need to remind you! – but on top of this neurosciencey stuff that was quite mind-rattling for a non-sciency type of student, I picked a couple of subjects that I’ve never really done before. It was risk, and one that I was excited about over the end of summer when I chose them, but after the first few lectures I was terrified! And moreover, the one subject I normally love and relax in – writing, or Creative Writing – was focussing on poetry. The last time I’d written poetry before recently was in year 8 for my ‘poetry anthology’ that I embarrassingly decorated in rainbows and butterflies and flowers! So I’ve also been starting to question my subject selection quite a bit. But more than that, just those kind of awful thoughts like what am I doing here?! Why did I study so hard through year 12 to get to uni again? Was it all worth it? What career do I actually want to pursuit? What do I want to do with my life?!? Which are pretty big questions…

But now… things are slowly, finally working themselves out, much to my relief. I’ve finally reached the conclusion that I have to go with the flow for a while and settle into the course before I make any big decisions about what subjects I want to major in or the like. But also that, like studying for ‘The Tempest’ that time, things are not always easy, and nor should they be. But that university is there to challenge, inspire, broaden horizons – not be a walk in the park (contrary to what the general perception of uni was in year 12!). I’ve already written a poem that I don’t mind too much, even though I know I have a lot of work to do on it, and I’m so relieved to have it down and have the tick of approval from my tutor. We’ve passed neuroscience in psych – hooray! – and I’ve finally finished writing up all my notes on it, so now just to revise them. And in terms of loneliness? I’m meeting new people all the time, who seem to feeling exactly the same about how hard it is proving to be to make friends at uni. I have a few lovely new friends from my Psych tute whom I spend my morning break with before the next lecture, and there are more and more people I see all the time and have finally figured I have many of the same lectures/breaks with. I’m still a bit worried about whether I’ll make a few good uni friends, but maybe that all comes with time, and I’m content in believing that for now. Further still, I’m still so close with a few of my school friends, and I feel so lucky to be able to catch up with them weekly and still know we are there for each other, can have a good giggle together, and seem to be getting closer instead of apart through these huge changes… even if we can’t sit under that big old gum tree, eating terrible peanut butter sandwiches and whinging ever again. After approx. 13 years of (mostly) peanut-butter as my primary-sandwhich spread, I don’t think I can ever taste it again!!
But to go back for an afternoon… I’m sure I could force-feed another.