Dear Freshers, From Her

Dear freshers,  

In a strange way, I am writing to myself last year.  

Writing this feels almost melancholic, knowing what I have experienced this last year. If she and I were to sit opposite one another, I suppose my present self wouldn’t answer any questions but ask them instead. In fact, I am not sure I would say anything at all. Sit in silence, knowing she needs to learn from what will happen in the coming months, just as I did. 

I have never been someone who wants to know what happens in the future, to be given the answer before I live the question. Instead, I find comfort in the unknown and ambiguous set of events that will soon unravel themselves out for me to experience head on.  

I have met some of my best friends in elevators, sitting on the floor of an art gallery, in the line to buy a coffee

Therefore, I write to you not with intention to tell you what your first year will entail, if it will be the best year ever or not, but to tell you that regardless of good moments or some you wish you weren’t in the middle of, each contributes like a brushstroke to a much larger piece of art.  

Closing conversations, grasping onto one another with tight hugs, and final photographs, all just to delay the moment of parting – these are the endings disguised as ordinary memories. They’re the moments that truly make you realise that school has come to an end. This is a goodbye that feels like the last firework, fizzling out of view until you wave for the very last time, and we all drive away in different directions.  

If you have arrived at university with friends, it can be easier to start. For me and many others, I had to introduce myself completely all over again, sat next to strangers, smiling to begin awkward encounters. I have met some of my best friends in elevators, sitting on the floor of an art gallery, in the line to buy a coffee, formal university events, the library, and finally in my flat. Although Warwick had not been my first choice, I truly believe it was where I needed to end up.  

The first view weeks are the most intimidating. The biggest misconception of all is that university is one grand beginning, when it is hundreds of little ones. Some imagine it to all fall into place at once. 

There may be nights that your room feels a little too empty, missing the old ways of life as you struggle to navigate the new

There may be nights that your room feels a little too empty, missing the old ways of life as you struggle to navigate the new. It is a time where you might feel like you are standing in a field, screaming for people in the distance to take notice.  

But remember, someone always will. It is impossible to not find one person.  

It’s also important to know that those that first take notice of you don’t need to be the ones you always stay with. You are never tied to doing the same thing. In fact, I encourage you not to.  

Sometimes it is in our space of feeling too comfortable that we long for something more, a slight discomfort to make a difference, to make it more memorable. Those things we almost said no to end up being the best things we said yes to instead.  

You can’t always be told something in advance, because knowing them takes away from the experience of them becoming.  

You don’t know yet. 

You don’t know who you will meet, where you will end up, what you will lose, what you will find, or who you will become. 

I didn’t either: that is exactly how it is supposed to be. 

From Her