Going Home Again

I wrote last week about how I’m in a completely different place now to what I was this time last year. And that means my feelings about going home have changed to.

Dread is probably a little bit of an exaggeration, but it’s pretty close.

It doesn’t feel like long since I was last at home. It’s been eleven weeks, twelve by the time I go next week, but it’s gone so fast that I don’t really believe this term has happened at all.

It took me a while this term to get into a routine and now, for the first time in years, I feel completely in control of everything in my life. Going home means surrendering a lot of that control, falling into my family’s routine.

There are some good things about the coming month of so that I’ll be at home, though!

Most of my exams are in the next week, with the exception of my politics exam. Compared to the five I had to revise for last year, that nothing. I might actually get to relax a little this Christmas instead of stress over ancient biology or whatever else I was stressing about last year.

One thing I do feel the same about as I did last year is how uncertain I am about the next few weeks. Hopefully it should be fun, and a lot less stressful than last year. We’ll have to see how it goes.

Dropping Out Experience

University can be a stressful time. Moving away from home, becoming independent, starting courses you may not have experienced before. For some people, university is right. Others find that either their chosen university, their chosen course, or university life in general isn’t for them, and decide to quit.

I chose to drop out of my course at the end of February, and found very little information on doing so, so here’s my experience.

Firstly, make sure what you’re doing is the right thing. Talk to your tutor about your options, what you plan on doing next year, and if the university can do anything to help. If you find that you’re struggling to settle at university, there may be resources from your student union to help you. If you’re struggling on the course, the department may have routes you can take instead of dropping out. Dropping out is often final, and you don’t want to be changing your mind two weeks later and realising you made the wrong decision. I’d been talking to my tutor about dropping out since the Christmas break, and we’d gone through my options.

Make sure you know what you’re doing next year. If you’re applying for another university, remember to get your application in before the deadline (some point in January). If you’re not, be prepared with job applications or other training opportunities. Research as much as you did when applying to university. You don’t want to be stuck somewhere even worse.

Student Finance

Student finance is a mystical organisation in which even the student advice centre at my university didn’t know much about. Experiences change from case to case.

Most importantly, if you’re applying for a different university or course for September, remember the student finance (in England at least) will only give you a loan for the duration of your course plus one year. For example, I’m starting a three year course in September, so student finance will only give (lend) me four years’ worth of money. This will include my current year (the one I’ve dropped out of). Because I was only in first year when I dropped out, it shouldn’t be much of an issue for me. It will mean I won’t be able to take a resit year if I need to (or I’ll have to fund it myself in some other way), but that’s it. If I was in second year when I dropped out, however, I would still only get the four years of finance, the two years at my first university and then only two years at my second, and I would have to fund the third year myself. You shouldn’t stay on a course you hate just because of money, but it’s worth bearing in mind.

Alright, paying back your student loan. This is what varies from case to case. I quit midway through the second instalment of my loan. Student finance (supposedly) calculated what portion of my loan (and grant) I wouldn’t have spent (working on a day by day bases and assuming I didn’t spend more at one point in a month than another) and then the amount they calculated needed to be paid back immediately. It is possible to set up a payment plan if you don’t have the money to hand, for whatever reason, but I was able to pay mine off all at once. I won’t receive the third instalment of my loan, so that’s nothing to worry about.

The amount of loan that has covered when I was at university (the amount I didn’t have to immediately pay back) will go onto my student debt which I’ll start paying back after I start earning over £21,000 and is nothing to worry about. The grant that helped cover the cost of being at university will not have to be paid back.

If you get a grant from your university, check with the student advice centre there to see if you will have to pay that back. I didn’t, but I’ve no experience at other universities and you have to check.

The process of dropping out varies from university to university, but it always starts with talking to your tutor. It’s recommended you talk to the advice centre (which will really help, even if you don’t think it will). For me, I had to fill in a form, get my tutor to sign it, and then hand it in. That was that.

Check with your accommodation what their stance is. I was given a week after it was registered that I quit to get out of my halls of residence. Check with them if you will get any money back if you pay in advance too. It might help pay back anything you have to immediately pay back to student finance.

I hope this helps anybody thinking of quitting. If you are, remember that this doesn’t make you a failure. It’s simply a change of direction, and is nothing to be ashamed of.

Home Sweet Home

I never thought I’d say this but I’m so glad to be back at university. I have less than a week before my first exam which I have done exactly almost no revision for, but I feel so much better here than I did at home.

Home hasn’t changed, but I have. I’m an adult now. Whilst at uni, I was in charge of my day, myself, my lifestyle. I could go to bed whenever I wanted, eat whenever I wanted, shower whenever I wanted. Whilst at home, there was none of that. I was forced to fit back into the routine of my house hold and out of the routine that had me working productively for three months.

Am I worried about exams? Yes. There is 100% certainty I’m going to fail. The fact is that I barely did any revision all break, trying to learn course content for another module, trying to keep on top of my articles, and trying to see the friends I won’t have another chance to see for months. There was a lot to fit into three weeks, and I found myself having to adapt back into being a child with little freedom on top of that.

I missed home. Before I went away, I seriously missed home. And I am certain I will miss my friends and family whilst I’m at university. But seeing them was not worth those three weeks, and I am so glad to be back in my own independence.

The one good thing about being back home is that it has forced me to reassess what I’m doing with my life. Looking back on the past term, I have not been happy with what I’ve been doing and I’m not happy with where I am now. Looking forward, some things are going to start changing. It’s time to take my life back into my own hands.

Hopefully this term doesn’t turn out to be as bad as the last.

Home?

It’s now five days until I go home for the first time since I came to university. Nearly three months ago, I was moving halfway across the country to start an exciting new adventure. Now I’m going back for three weeks to see my friends and family again. Is it strange I’m more scared about going back than I was about coming here?

I think I’ve changed a lot since coming to university. I’m definitely a happier person. I feel like I’ve grown up, at least a little bit, but I can’t say for sure that I won’t fall back into bad habits whilst I’m at home.

I’m also scared about my friends having changed. Though we’ve kept in touch quite well (or I have with some of my friends at least), there’s a chance they will be different people when I go back, and I don’t like that possibility if it means we no longer get on.

There’s also the lack of routine I worry about. At university, I’m able to isolate myself and do my work (or not, as the case so often is), and that’s something I will miss whilst I’m at home. Though I was able to revise very well last year, I don’t know if I will be able to do the same thing this year. Hopefully, without lectures and society meets and everything else, the three weeks I have at home won’t go too fast, and I will have plenty of time to get all the revision for the dreaded e-word done.

I am still excited about going home though. I miss my family lots, and my friends. It will be nice to have the three weeks of not having to get up at four in the morning and not having to go to lectures and not having to get onto a packed bus to go to the oceanography centre.

I hope I can find the right balance between studying and socialising, but I’m not too confident in that ability.