Nayana McGee
Last week I returned to university for my second year of study. Only four lectures in, it’s already been an emotional rollercoaster. My anxiety is at an all-time high, and I’m blaming the pandemic entirely.
The New Normal?
It’s been over a year now since the UK’s first official lockdown and life is finally starting to return to ‘normal’. It all seems so exciting, things returning to the way they once were. After spending so long trapped inside our homes with no-one but ourselves for company, the return of normality is like a breath of fresh air.
The difference being, however, that the world we left in March 2020 is not the same one we have re-entered all this time later. So much has changed. From worrying about our physical health in a way many of us never had to before as well as increased pressure on our mental health, I’m finding this post-pandemic chapter of life pretty terrifying.
Post-pandemic Anxiety at University
I can probably count on two hands how many times I stepped foot on campus during my first year. Everything was done online. Lectures, presentations, assignments. I had to learn the names of people in my class by matching up their voice with their student ID picture on Microsoft Teams.
This essentially meant that I made zero friends in my first year. There was no contact, no socialising, just a few messages here and there in the group chat. And as I walked down onto campus for the first day of my second year it suddenly hit me. There’s no buffer anymore; no masks, no social distancing, no staggered classes. There is nothing standing in the way of me making friends now, except myself.
Keeping the World Outside
While the pandemic brought fear and frustration to many, it brought me a sense of comfort. As someone that struggles with anxiety, lockdown was the ultimate safety blanket for me. But one week into my return to university has made me realise that the comfort I felt during lockdown did me more harm than good.
It may have given me the opportunity to sit back and pause from the stress of work and study, but it gave me absolutely no room to grow. It was just enabling the worst parts of myself, wrapping me up in cotton wool and keeping the world at bay.
Letting Go Of The Safety Blanket
One of the hardest things to accept is that no matter what you’re going through, the world keeps on spinning. If you don’t keep up, you’ll miss out. The only person who loses out by not applying myself 100 percent is me.
Did I struggle making friends my first year? Yes. But I can either wallow in the struggle, wrap myself up in my safety blanket and miss out on getting the most out of my time at university, or I can pull myself up and try.
If you are feeling anxious about being back at Uni, just remember that if you are willing to keep trying, you are capable of succeeding. Anything that is outside of your comfort zone will only become more comfortable the more you do it. Test the waters slowly at first, but I guarantee that it will get easier.
Photo by Green Chameleon on Unsplash. Image license found here. No changes were made to the image.
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