What If?

Image Credit: https://fredericksburg.today/what-if

One of the questions I get asked the most by family members, and friends who didn't go to university, is this:

'If you could go back to sixth form and do this all over again, would you?'

I go back and forth on the answer to this question a lot. If you had asked me a year ago, I would have said absolutely not. Second year was, to put it bluntly, crap, for so many reasons. I nearly dropped out of university all together, and then where would I have ended up?

If you had asked me an hour ago, when I was having my third breakdown of the week about my dissertation, which refuses to come together, I would have said no. It's not worth it.

But now that the rational side of my brain is back in working order, I can really consider the question. Would I do this all over again? And honestly? I still don't think I would. I don't regret going and I'm glad that I did, but I don't think I could do it all over again. University is hard. Emotionally, it's almost ruined me. It's not that the university I go to is bad - quite the opposite. I love the course and I love the city, but university life is not quite what I thought it was going to be. I don't know what I was expecting really, but I just pictured it differently, I guess. No matter what university you go to, I think everyone will agree that it is not worth the money. I would love to see a breakdown of what exactly our £8500 a year goes on, because I think a lot of people would be surprised.

And I am not the only one who feels this way. I was having a discussion about this very thing with my housemates and friends from other universities, and we all said the same thing: given the chance, we wouldn't go to university again. Isn't that sad?

I don't know... maybe that says more about us than it does about university in general, but I think it's shocking that so many people I know wouldn't choose to do this again.