I've never been excited to go to university. I've never really wanted to go. The only reason I decided to apply was because everyone else was and I didn't know what I would do instead. I remember my old teacher at school sitting with me almost every registration and continually asking me what I wanted to do in my career. I honestly didn't have a clue because nothing sounded appealing to me. He found out that my sister was at university studying Psychology and said he could imagine me doing the same. However, I kept insisting that I didn't want to get a degree or be in thousands of pounds worth of debt.

When I got to college, going to university was just considered the norm. Although my college didn't pressurise anyone to feel like they had to go to university, it was kind of expected of you to apply even if you didn't really know what you wanted to do for a career. I was stupid enough not to look into other options such as apprenticeships or other courses that I could do so I just decided that Psychology would be a good degree choice. It made sense: it was my favourite A Level subject, my sister was studying it at university at the time and it looked alright. So I began to apply to universities which were still quite local for me, since I knew my anxiety and previous experience with homesickness would come into play. I received conditional offers from all of my universities and passed all of my A Levels with flying colours, beating my target grades in two of my subjects and therefore getting into my first choice university. And even then, I wasn't excited to begin university.

I didn't give much thought about starting university over the summer leading up to it. Even when I was out buying duvets and laundry tablets, it still hadn't sunk in yet that I would be leaving home in just a few short weeks.

Move in day was pretty stressful; for some reason I had to move into my halls on a Friday but my parents were both working then. Luckily, they arranged to finish early so they could take me in the late afternoon. I walked into my room and I thought it looked quite cosy and was in really decent condition. After unpacking all of my things, I walked over to central campus with my family to pick up my campus card and then we walked back to my halls. I actually knew someone from school who was in the same halls of residence as me so I arranged to meet her so that we could walk back over to campus as we all had to attend a fire safety talk. I quickly waved goodbye to my family (trying not to make a big fuss over it) and off I walked with my friend and her flatmates. After the fire safety talk, I returned to my room just to settle in and change my clothes as my halls were hosting an informal get together at the bar attached to my halls with pizza and the rugby on TV. As soon as I walked into my room I burst into tears. I sat there for half an hour, just crying as all of a sudden it sunk into me where I was and what I was doing. I pulled myself together and headed over to the get together with my friend from home and her flatmates again, but I hated it. We arrived late and there was hardly any pizza left. I felt too self conscious to pick the cheese off of the pizza (I don't like cheese, I know, I'm weird) and so I didn't eat anything that night. It was really loud and everyone was drinking and I just felt so unlike myself in a bad way. When I finally got back to my halls, I was feeling so upset and hungry (it was like 11pm). I sat on my floor and tried to munch my way through some breadsticks as I was too scared to cook something in the communal kitchen. My anxiety made me feel like I was about to throw up and the smell of food wouldn't help that. When I'm anxious, I struggle to eat anything and so I got through around two breadsticks between hysterically crying. I managed to sleep that night but as soon as I woke up, I texted my mum saying "when can I come home?". Since my university was only about a 30 minute drive away from home, I knew I'd be going home quite often, but I never imagined that I would be coming home without even being at uni for 24 hours. My Dad came to pick me up and we went for a walk across campus so that I could find where my classes would be. Within three hours of texting my mum, I was back in the comfort of home. I had never been so grateful to have such understanding parents.

Obviously, I had to go back eventually but my friend from home who was driving into the same uni everyday gave me lifts in and out of uni during welcome week (thanks, Hope!). After welcome week, I began to stay one or two nights before coming home until I gradually built it up to three nights (one time I even stayed for four at a time). My uni schedule meant that a lot of the time I didn't have any lectures on a Friday, so my mum would take me home every Friday after she finished work and I'd catch a lift back to uni with Hope at the beginning of the next week.

I feel as though I should address my accommodation and flat mates. My accommodation was pretty decent as far as uni accommodation goes - I had a bed, desk, plenty of shelves, a wardrobe and an ensuite. On the other side of the hall was a communal kitchen and everyone in my flat had two cupboards, a drawer and a shelf in the fridge and freezer. In my hall, there was 6 of us - 2 I didn't really speak to (they were international students and kept to themselves), another international student who was homesick a lot so she usually stayed at her sister's house about an hour away and commuted in (so I didn't really see her much although she was lovely) and then 2 non-international students - one lived next door to me and the other was directly opposite to me. We usually cooked together and ate dinner together at the end of the day, but that was really all the interaction we had unless we bumped into each other at lunch or breakfast etc. They were really nice and although I never told them just how much I was struggling, they never made fun of me for not lasting more than four consecutive days at uni before going home. But like me, they were both kind of quiet and usually returned to their rooms after dinner. It was too quiet and I felt so isolated in my tiny, little room. When I'm at home, I have no problem shutting myself away in my room for a couple of hours but at uni, I felt so lonely. I couldn't concentrate on anything and my mind would betray me by overthinking.

I should also point out that I'm not big drinker at all so freshers week was a nightmare and so was socialising with other people. At my uni, freshers week lasted two weeks and they didn't seem to have any events that didn't involve clubbing or drinking apart from one (which I was really looking forward to) that got cancelled at the last minute (just my luck). I didn't do any of the freshers week activities and I didn't feel bad about it because I knew that I couldn't be alone - surely I wasn't the only one who hates feeling out of control of their body and panic at the idea of nights out. Other than my two flat mates, I never found anyone who, like me, would prefer to socialise but not by going out every night.

I made a friend sometime in the first week who was on my course and was in the same halls as me. She was nice and we got on well although we never really clicked. Other than walking to our lectures every day, we never really met up. I'm not complaining or blaming her - I mean I never suggested doing anything and towards the end of my time at university she did say that if ever I was feeling lonely, I could always come and hang out with her and her flatmates. But I never got a chance to take her up on the offer.

My course was interesting, don't get me wrong, but I never felt passionate about it and couldn't imagine myself doing the same subject for another few years. I don't know whether it was just my course but I had 1 lecture a week for each module (I had about 4-6 modules in term one I believe) and that was pretty much it. I stayed at uni up until the week before our Christmas break began and I only ever had two seminars and a couple of tutorials/workshops during that term. It was ridiculous - I was hardly in university at all and when I was, 80% of my week involved no interaction with my lecturers (aka like in a tutorial or seminar). I was so frustrated that there was no guidance and no way of actually having your queries answered. I guess at most universities they expect you to do independent study but honestly, I just found it complete and utter bullshit that I was paying all this money to teach myself a subject that I was unmotivated for. Some of my lecturers were actually rubbish (Hugh Grant lookalike, I'm talking to you) and would simply read the lecture slides out which were all available online so I could have done this myself from my room. So I found myself skipping his lectures and a couple of other ones which I found useless which I don't recommend as this probably didn't help at all - avoidance behaviour (bit of Psych for you there).

With the lack of hours on my timetable and the fact that I skipped a couple of my lectures each week, I was usually only in uni Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. I began to drive myself in more often for one day and then drive back home. There were 2 hour bays and plenty of spaces for me to park my car outside of my halls and then walk in to uni. I was spending more time at home than I was at university because I was happier when I was at home.

My mood began to spiral downwards and I found myself crying every night before I had to go back to university. I wasn't enjoying it and I hadn't settled in. I hated the thought of having to spend more time in that isolating little room. I began to feel really shit about myself - physically, mentally and emotionally. I was frustrated because I didn't know what to do - surely dropping out of university would be the worst thing I could possibly do as at the time I didn't know what I wanted to do instead. I think I've always been considered academic by my family so I was worried that by dropping out I would be considered a failure. Through my tears, I explained all of this to my mum and she told me to not be so silly - they would all support me in whatever I wanted to do and as long as it made me happy.

When I first wrote this blog post all about how I wasn't enjoying uni, I had pretty much decided there and then that I would try and give uni a go up until Christmas and then see how I feel. But deep down I knew that by Christmas, I would have already quit. And I did.

Throughout the last month at uni, I got in contact with my tutor who arranged a couple of 1:1 meetings to discuss how/why I wasn't enjoying uni. She was so lovely and tried to find solutions to my problems by suggesting I try commuting into uni instead. When she found out that I was basically doing that already, she became a lot more supportive over my desire to leave uni altogether.

At the beginning of the second to last week before the Christmas holiday, I emailed my tutor and said that I had made my final decision - that I wanted to permanently leave university - and so she gave me the email of the head of the department. I arranged a meeting with her on Monday morning and after a quick chat about my reasons for wanting to leave, she gave me all the forms to complete about dropping out which I had to hand into the student services team. I did this the following day and they told me about what would happen next in terms of student finance and moving out. They also reassured me that a hundred students had already dropped out that term. I know that some universities are really against students dropping out and try and force you to stay, but I was so lucky in that the staff completely respected my decision.

I had to be out of my halls by the end of the week so I drove in every day to my halls by myself and began to take things home. One of my flatmates even helped me move out on the Thursday which was nice of her. The relief I felt when I handed in my keys on that last day was overwhelming.

So what am I doing now you may wonder?
Within the first week of being home, I applied for two social media/marketing apprenticeships and had a phone interview for one of them, however this eventually fell through when I realised I was rushing into it again without even giving myself time to consider what I actually wanted to do. I began to look at degrees on UCAS one afternoon, just out of curiosity to see if anything took my fancy. Imagine my surprise when I came across a degree called 'media, communications and social media' at a university I had looked around before last year with a course that looked really, really interesting! I emailed the university to ask a couple of questions about the course just to make sure it was right for me and then frantically got to work on a new UCAS application.

This was so unbelievably stressful since I had to email my old tutor from college to ask her if she could submit my reference again as well as read over my new personal statement. She told me that she could do my reference again but didn't have the time to check my personal statement since she was too busy doing this for all the other students in the year below me. Luckily, I found a draft of my old personal statement and followed the structure of that. I finished my application way before Christmas but my tutor couldn't find the time to submit it until the first week back at college, on the 11th January.

The last month has consisted of me checking my emails literally ever hour waiting for that email from UCAS to say changes had been made to my application. I was so nervous that because my application had been sent so late that there would be no spaces left for me on the course, even though I had already received my A Level grades which would put me at a slight advantage compared to most applicants. I finally received an email from UCAS yesterday morning and sprinted upstairs (chasing my cat which she wasn't happy about) to log on on my laptop. I received an unconditional offer from them and will start studying there in September...I'm so happy, relieved and excited!!!
When I dropped out of university I had no intention of ever going back. I guess I was just a little bit slow in figuring out what I wanted to in my life. Some people have always known what they want to do and that's okay. But it's also okay to take some time out to figure everything out.

I'm not stupid: I know that uni is going to be just as hard and difficult as my first experience of it. I'm sure there will be some times where I consider giving up again, but I'm actually excited for this course and to explore the uni in a way that I never was this time last year. I've looked into career options and the course seems to strongly correlate with my ideal career. I'm excited to begin uni again and can't wait to document this new journey of mine!

Comment a ★ if have read all of this. Apologies for such a long post!