Is University Really the Fresh Start We Envisioned?

The New Picture House on North Street, St Andrews

As Independent Learning Week approaches, many of us have settled into old routines or established new ones. First years have learned their way around town and others have gotten re-accustomed to the bubble. With the popular belief that no two semesters are ever the same comes an urge to do things differently each time around. The dream of reinventing academics, social life and self-care routines takes hold and much of our energy is devoted to bridging gaps of the past, be it high school or previous years of university.

This urge often manifests in concretized steps that alter our natural responses to events, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse; decisions to socialize more, explore the Poison bar at 601, show up to tutorials with the reading done and begin coursework weeks in advance. Much like a New Year’s resolution, this is borne out of a desire to do better, but often ends up as a fabricated personality and a life that requires far too much resolve to maintain.

A rite of passage, drifting away from your first-year friend group, catalyzes the social fresh starts. The hunt for and insistence on a ‘friend group’ becomes synonymous by distance from old companions. Most prominently, however, it is enabled by a change in personality: one resists their natural way of doing things by formulating and externalizing a new self-perception. TLDR: the disappointment of losing a valued group makes one change how they do everything for the next one in hopes that it shall succeed.

Academically, fresh starts demand an awful lot of reworking, to the point that it may even become detrimental to productivity (I say this as I sip my fourth coffee of the day). You must find new time slots to do your coursework, consolidate your work better, be alert at times that were previously reserved for naps and even find the coziest spot in whichever café you prefer (this is the most fatiguing). But we justify it in the name of a better grade and a notch on the CV.

Molly Malones, St Andrews

Fear not, this is not a column bashing new hobbies, friends and a work ethic. I only mean to point out that well-intentioned steps to improve facets of our lives may sometimes turn into a carefully curated collection of elements that you’d need an excel sheet (with offline access) to get right all the time. Done right though, finding new societies, texting that one person from your tutorial to meet for coffee or organizing a study session to decipher what Spivak is trying to say, may actually give you the fresh start you’re looking for – a routine that lets you take time to yourself to decompress, friends that enable (sometimes tolerate) your idiosyncrasies, and library time during which you get work done without (a lot of) self-doubt.

If this entire read was confusing because I have failed to draw a clear divisive line between performance and authenticity, I apologize, but I believe it’s meant to be this way. Fresh starts and new beginnings are an honorable mission, but they’re a disheartening process of trial and error. Attributing too much value to every interaction will put undue pressure on it and make you want to do everything to make sure it goes well. As a word of advice (as someone who is totally qualified to give it out): don’t fall into the trap. There are more people, more societies, more classes, more parties. Fresh starts are abundant and to keep them fresh and fun, only change yourself if you truly believe it is better for you (or if your therapist tells you to) and do it in small, manageable steps to make sure you don’t take on too much, too soon.