I had quite the opposite experience. In my first year of uni I was met with depression, which I didn't manage to overcome until my final year, when I started taking anti-depressants.

I didn't really feel like I fit in at university, I became more introverted, pessimistic and even misanthropic. I guess I found my real self.

Absolutely, my university changed me. I won't go over all the ways, but the main thing I came away with was the realisation that institutions don't need to be dehumanising. I'd grown up with an awful comprehensive school where just getting through the day seemed to take priority for students and teachers alike, my impression of police and emergency services were people who faltered under the sheer workload, and the world of private sector work is just punishingly indifferent toward individuals. Universities are beautiful, though, one of the few places that open-mindedness seems to take precedence over muddling through and covering your own tracks. I suppose the key difference is that universities place the emphasis on the student as a human being. My own university offered a genuinely good counselling service, where people would see you as soon as you walked in. It's among the last institutions that seem to recognise the inherent value in learning and truth. I was inspired to find essays on my lecturers personal websites about how why they resisted treating students as customers and the importance of academia.

I went to university in my home town, too. Came from a fairly impoverished area. Going to university supplied me with the right questions to ask regarding why one side of a town can do so well where the other suffers, it gave me a greater understanding of what class difference can mean and how people can transcend it, it helped me see the place where I was born in a more positive light. In so many ways it's given me hope that I don't need to fall into the same traps as my peers and that I don't need to sell my ideals just to get by.

It changed me, can't say for the better though. I was hoping that my time at university would be much like yours and let me grow and learn.

Instead I just blew a lot of money on getting wrecked in my room, depressed as shit and robbed of any passion I had for my subject by an institution with the lowest student satisfaction rate in the UK. Overall I think I made a lot of poor choices.

My job prospects look bleak and so does my future. Oh well, at least I lost my virginity.

>>4773

It really depends where you go. If you go to several institutions, one year at a time due to dropping out or doing top-up years or whatever, the experience is wildly different each time. For me, it was anywhere between going out most nights and having about 30 friends, to not being on the same wavelength as anyone there and behaving like an asocial shut-in.

>>4779

Well hopefully I'll have a better experience if I do a masters, as long as I can get this two year grad scheme out of the way without becoming even more of an asocial bastard

>>4776

I remember the uni sending me a questionnaire about my employment situation after I graduated and they asked it in an incredibly manipulative way so there was no way anyone could give the answer unemployed.

It asked if in three months' time I was going to be:

1. employed
2. continuing my education
3. not looking for work
4. looking for work but without any luck in finding any (I don't own a crystal ball)

>lowest student satisfaction rate in the UK.

I'm veering off topic here, but I was just wondering if some third party worked out the student satisfaction rate or if it's unusual for unis to manipulate those types of statistics.

>>4781

>I'm veering off topic here, but I was just wondering if some third party worked out the student satisfaction rate or if it's unusual for unis to manipulate those types of statistics.

The stats are likely from the National Student Survey, a third party polling body that universities encourage students to respond to, usually bribing them with a free USB stick or other such trinket.

Changed me in a variety of ways. In school I was bullied and had no real friends.

At uni I have no real friends. I made some, though neither of them through uni, but for various reasons that all went tits up. I'm struggling with depression and anxiety, have to do resits to progress into next year, and all in all I'm a miserable cunt. At least before uni I had the hope that things would be better at uni. But they're not. Everyone says schools are full of immature kids, but at uni there is no bullying. Bullshit. Living in halls for a year was the worst experience of my life.

Jesus lads, this is making me worried about starting University.

>>4783
>>4784

Halls can often be shit. My advice, if you can't deal with adults running around like 15-year-olds having a free house is to try and move into the mature accomodation your uni will have. After a month or so a lot of rooms in that block will empty as the older types move into private, and with luck ytou will find yourself living with a load of twenty somethings, many of whom foreign. Is is likely you will be twenty to a kitchen, but the atmosphere is much better, and the parties the best.

>>4783

In my experience, the halls of residence was full of 18-year-olds who can be vapid, shallow, judgmental pricks and can be prone to singling someone out (although they didn't do it to me).

It was in Liverpool and they refused to interact with anyone who lived round there and thought the Harry Enfield stereotype was a "typical" scouser.

I just treated it like a place to sleep and my friends were either long-term Liverpool residents or off the course.

>>4784
Don't worry. Most people cope fine with halls I reckon. If you're into bants and wackiness, you'll love it. If you're not misanthropic and like a bit of drunken shenanigans, you'll like it. If you're an autist, you'll hate it.

>>4787

I concur with this lad, the worse thing you can do is shut yourself in your room for the first couple of weeks. Everyone is in the same position and are more open to friendship, after the first few big parties everyone sort of segregates into groups and it becomes a bit more cliquey.

Had I not partied and made friends in those first few weeks in halls I would have been fucked. No friends, no future housemates, no girlfriend. Important shit, party and party hard.

>>4787
>bants and wackiness

Dear god.

>>4789

You sound like a proper bellend, m7.

University was alright for me.
Didn't make any real friends and lost most of my friends from home at the same time, this didn't bother me though because my friends from home were mostly spastics who I secretly loathed but I didn't try and make new friends because I never used to speak mainly because I had nothing to say I wasn't shy or nothing.
Did go out drinking and partying but I didn't know what to do involving that at the start so everyone must have thought I was a weirdo at first. Got into it after a while but then in 2nd year ended up not moving in with the cunts I went drinking with so slowly lost them as friends and stopped them drinking and the cunts I moved in with never went out drinking and we basically stopped talking within the first week.
None of that really bothered me though because I still had my smack.

>>4791

Good to see the rampant heroin abuse has not caused you any problems when it comes to communication and cognition.

I've stayed in halls before and it was okay. I'm going back and am really quite tempted to avoid the social thing completely.
I'm not a complete autist, but I've been dealing with the general public for the last three or four years and the thought of a few years left to my own devices sounds fantastic.

I'm a completely different person now after my first year of university than I was this time last year or a few years ago. My entire interests have changed, I have a different outlook on life and everything around me. I find 'normal' things that 'normal' people do like watching the same TV day in day out, listening to chart music, going out drinking, etc to all be boring now whereas before I could idly be a sheep and do what everyone else did. I think about my old friends a lot and how times were, I miss those days a lot and the way I used to be, I guess ignorance truly is bliss. My relationship with my girlfriend is changing and we are drifting apart now. I find that we are having less and less in common now than ever.

I can now read German as easily as English, so the number of sources potentially available to me is much, much greater for when I get round to doing a part-time MA.
I recently just passed through by the skin on my teeth with a basic pass. The first year was awful, as student finance were utter shit and didn't pay me a penny until January, plus I was living with stoner fools who also started dealing mephedrone (what a horrid headache that gives you!) and became increasingly aggressive towards everyone not in their smoking circle. Second was meh. Year abroad was absolutey fan-fucking-tastic. Lasses on tap, cheap beer, good sausages.
The final year was awful for depression and anxiety, but at least I met a good friend by chance (I moved into a flat blind) and he was suffering from the same, so we both talked to each other about things as openly as we could and frequently went out to do shopping or whatever. As for friends on my course? I will probably only see three or four of them ever again, my best friends came from my year abroad.
If any of you depressedlads have an option for a year abroad as part of your study, it might really, really help you with confidence to take the chance on it and might ensure the same bellends are not in your course. If you don't like it, you can always come back and just catch up on the bit of missed work.

On a whole and as a person, I couldn't give a shit standing up and talking to people in a room any more, just get on with it and crack a couple of jokes through, and I find it an awful lot easier just to approach strangers when sober now. Becoming a Labourlad in a Labur area and receiving generally positive feedback when canvassing might have helped with that. All symptoms of depression have vanished since I left.
Pic related, it was me last year.

Not including accommodation or fees, how much do students usually have to live on?

>>4797

When I went, I had about £9k in total per year to play with, from maintenance loans and bursaries. That's the maximum available to a normal student, though, many people don't get close to that.

>>4797
I have £5k for rent (more or less - that's my loan, goes entirely on rent) and about £3-4k for nefarious activities.

>>4797
I got the full student loan and I decided to get my Erasmus grant paid to me a year later. So I had £9k, £3k to spend on rent and then £6k topiss away, which I did quite well.

>>4797
Basic loan of just over £3k goes on rent and other costs from college. Then another £3k of own money for food, drink, pissing about etc. Although you could get away with less if you're skint.

I learnt that I'm a very boring person who struggles to make friends outside of a confined social situation such as school. If I didn't have an equally boring long-term boyfriend, I probably would have had a breakdown.

>>4797
Roughly: £3500 maintenance loan, £3000 maintenance grant, £1000 university bursary, £3500 part-time earnings.

>>4782 I heard that my uni department blackmailed students to say nice things about them in the NSS by warning that a negative response would push our course down in the league tables and devalue our degrees in the eyes of employers. All hearsay of course but not the kind of thing I'd put past them.

On topic: uni changed me a lot. Before I went I was quite a shy person, had plenty of friends in school and was well liked, they generally enjoyed my sense of humour, but never saw them outside of school as I was too shy and awkward to approach people about hanging out etc. Also didn't have a good dress sense and had stupid long hair. Three years later and I'm more outgoing, went from having no close friends whatsoever to having some that are like family to me, and I have the confidence to admit I'm not bad looking after shaving my hair and losing some weight. Still got room for improvement though, still have trouble chatting with people comfortably etc. Not because I'm shy or afraid but simply cause I've no fucking clue what to say.

I also know more about the real world now but I have become bloody cynical about it.

>>4804
I could've written this post, word for word.

>>4805 I hope you did something productive with the time I saved you

>>4806
I had a really good wank.