Coming up against difficulties

 

Coming up against difficulties - How I'm finding uni

My second week of uni is going better than I thought it would be. I haven’t given up yet. I’m hoping that in time everything will fall into place and the things that I’m still finding difficult will all work themselves out. I am still struggling with quite a few things though. I’m finding it quite tough to connect with people. I think I’m scared of letting people in because I’m worried about what they might think when they realise who I really am. I’m worried about what their reactions might be when they see me struggling, when they see me do things in a way that might seem different from other people. I look around in my lectures and see everyone else getting on so well with each other – I just seem to be finding this a lot more difficult than the others in my classes. I’ve tried really hard and still am trying to push myself out of my comfort zone, I sit on a table with the same four people every lecture and I try to engage in their conversations, even when what they’re talking about doesn’t interest me at all. I’ve gotten to know them quite well, but still don’t feel as though I’ve found the right people. I’m quite lucky because we generally have lectures in the same room and so everyone has their set table and seats that they sit at. Ours is right by the window, near the wall and opposite the door. I can easily see who comes in and out of the room and at the same time can watch what’s going on outside if I need something to keep me distracted. I am finding lectures quite hard too though; I’m struggling to keep focussed. I try so hard to listen and take notes on what the lecturers saying, but the noise of other people typing on their keyboards or even sometimes the noise of my own typing can really irritate me and cause me to lose concentration. When this happens, I just want to walk out, I have to stop myself from getting upset. It’s stupid really – getting upset over the annoyingness of people typing but it really gets to me. I just want to put my fingers in my ears and block everything out, but I can’t. I don’t feel I can be myself. I can’t act the way I acted in secondary school because no one would understand. I can’t just walk out of a lecture with my hands over my ears and go on a walk because… I just can’t. No one knows I’m struggling because I don’t know who to tell, no one can see I’m struggling because I’m probably hiding it quite well. I’ve started having sessions with my mentor and they seem really nice, but in our first session I told them about a teacher I got on well with at secondary school and they said that they’re the new them. This made me a little annoyed because no one could ever replace this teacher I had at secondary school. I think I’m probably supposed to speak to my mentor about all these things, but I don’t feel that I can, they know nothing about me, and I don’t see how I can trust someone who I’ve only just met.

I guess I’m just struggling to find my place a little, struggling to fit in and find where I’m supposed to be. I think all I can do at the moment is keep on trying and keep on pushing myself out of my comfort zone. Maybe over time these things that I now find difficult will all seem so easy, and I’ll be wondering why I was ever worrying about them. Right now, all I can do is be myself. Although at the moment I don’t feel I can act this way whilst I’m in uni, I hope that once I find a group of people who I feel I can really get along with, I will feel able to show them who I really am. For now, I’ll just have to wait until that day.