Showing up for yourself to find your feet: my honest first year

I'd love to say the jump from sixth form to university was easy and socially it was, but academically it hit me like a ton of bricks. Slight dramatic, but that's genuinely how it felt at the time.

At A-levels, you have a curriculum, a structure, and you know exactly what you need to know. University throws all of that out. It's independent study, lectures, seminars, and your own deadlines to manage, and nobody is chasing you. You have to show up for yourself. The biggest shift for me was seminars. It wasn't that I was shy, I just genuinely didn't understand what was going on half the time and suffered badly with imposter syndrome. I'd sit there hoping nobody would ask me directly. What changed everything was finding out I had dyslexia in my first year through one of my lecturers, who noticed (it’s funny because in secondary school I suspected I had dyslexia) Suddenly, everything started to make more sense. Why certain things took me longer, why I processed things differently. Getting that support completely transformed my academic experience at Birmingham.

Living away from home was an adjustment too. I cook for myself, manage my own money and in my first year, I was so conscious of my overdraft that I actually ended up budgeting really well because I was determined not to go into it. Day-to-day independence is a lot at first, but you figure it out quicker than you think.

Socially, Freshers’ Week was brilliant for me. I met the girls who are still my closest friends now. But being honest, I know that's rare. What actually built those friendships wasn't Freshers’ Week itself, it was the effort we made after. We met up, got to know each other properly, and formed a group. So, throw yourself into freshers, talk to people, but don't panic if you haven't found your people yet. Keep making the effort beyond that first week because that's where it really happens.