Students' and Parents' Experiences
The Big Day: Leaving Home for Sheffield
"In the week before coming up to Sheffield, I wasn't exactly the easiest person to be around. My mum, concerned about my general lack of preparation, did tell me constantly that packing at the last minute was not the best idea: I decided to see if she was right or not by leaving it to the actual Saturday morning. Perhaps setting the scene for the following week, Intro Week, I had a hangover, and was not in the best of moods as a result.
Having been in denial that this was actually an incredibly big event in my life (and not just a minor shift), it suddenly dawned on me what a big step this was, and having felt really confident and excited about heading "up north", my fears and insecurities about meeting a whole bunch of new people began to emerge. I´ve never been particularly reserved or suffered from "social anxiety", but on that journey up the M1 I was practically a mental wreck.
I took it all out on my mum. Leaving late was her fault. The traffic jams were her fault. Not being able to find the Halls of Residence was her fault. I´m ashamed of it now, but I pretty much found a way to blame anything that went wrong on her!
Even though all that had happened was we´d arrived a couple of hours late, I was convinced that this would ruin my chances of making friends for the rest of… well the rest of my life for all I knew. I think my mum left in tears and I began my time at university (well the first few minutes anyway) feeling a bit down.
Predictably, my general state of malaise, along with the paranoia and general hangover-induced moodiness, quickly evaporated within a few minutes as I met the people I was going to be living amongst for the next 12 months. That very first day I met people who I´m still friends with now, two years later, and I know that day marked the beginning of one of the best periods of my life so far.
Luckily, my mum was pretty understanding about my having given her such a hard time, and so I suppose that´s the advice I´d give to anyone who has loved ones heading off to University; its probably inevitable that the uneasiness they feel (even if they don´t admit it) will cause some strain on your relationship.
The best thing to do is to just be supportive and, hard as it may be, ignore any mood swings that may occur. Even if it means biting your lip. Hard. Just rest assured that it´s unlikely to be caused by anything other than the apprehension they´re feeling at the prospect of what is almost certainly an unprecedented step in their life.
Having your children head off to university is of course difficult for both parent and child, in different ways perhaps, but to an equal extent. The best advice I can give you is to be honest with them about how you are feeling about them going and encourage them to do likewise; there´s no guarantee that this will lead to a stress free experience come moving day, but should at the very least prevent that ungrateful little brat telling you that the tailbacks from the accident at Junction 28 are entirely your fault and you should have taken the A1 instead!"
Tom Szekeres
First Year
French