Starting off as a student can be exciting. Coming from all parts of the country and even the world, stepping into a place you have never been before and exploring the city, the people, and everything else that makes the place so unique.
It’s hard to comprehend as a young adult where to draw the line between what you want to do and what you feel is expected from you.
There seems to be a natural course to everything that follows when you first start university. Collecting your keys and settling into your flat, then wandering through unfamiliar paths of this new city and making new friends.
Then of course comes the flat parties, stumbling back home at 4am after a night out and the frantic typing away at your keyboards as you rush to finish the assignment you said you would do last week.
But what happens when you don’t fall into this routine?
In my first year I was a week late to registering. This meant I missed all of freshers week plus the first week of the semester. Would you believe me if I said that this one week threw me off for the rest of the year?
Before coming to uni I had made a list of my goals:
- Get super drunk in freshers week
- Get (what I have now just titled) a ‘uni relationship’
- Attend ROAR like it’s the met gala and your presence is necessary for it to fully function
- Get more drunk for the rest of the year
I did none of it.
I didn’t party, I didn’t drink, I didn’t have the typical first year experience; the one where anything is possible.
What I did instead was spend a lot of my time in first year completing puzzles and watching Kitchen Nightmares in my room. And while this may not sound ideal to many of you, it was my utopia.
That’s when I learnt to scrap the list and find your own utopia!
You don’t have to conform to what is “uni life” if it isn’t the life you want.
Having the ability to do anything can still be quite limiting and as a young adult living away from their parents for the first time, I often found myself lost not knowing what to do.
So I looked to what the people around me did and followed the crowd. I learnt the ways of being a university student, a.k.a the partying and drinking culture which I hated.
The first time I ever went clubbing was a disaster. My parents also had expectations of me while growing up, which included no alcohol or partying, so coming into university it was hard for me to adapt.
I was sober watching everyone dance for hours on end. It was the most boring night of my life and I never did it again for the rest of first year.
Negotiating with yourself about what you should do with the newly found freedom as a fresher is essential to understanding where you draw the line with peer pressure.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t have fun or isolate yourself. University can be a lonely experience, especially after lockdown. A survey by Chegg.org in 2022 showed that 44% of students have trouble making friends and feel very lonely in university.
I have found that joining university societies prevents this loneliness. With so many different clubs and activities to pick from it was hard for me to find myself in a situation by which I was alone.
It is incredibly frightening to throw yourself into something you have never done before.
There were no thoughts in my head when I signed up to a pole fitness session alone. I was even late to the class and had to wait for the next class to start. And although it was incredibly embarrassing and I never went back, it helped me gain courage to do so many other things.
I continued attending other societies, trying new food, experiencing new things which still made my year worthwhile even without the drinking.
The key to not conforming to peer pressure for me is thinking: would I do this by myself?
You may see that you are actually able to do much more than you thought by not conforming. You may even find that this experience to be crucial to self-growth, allowing you to become an adult who makes decisions for their best life.