Disclaimer – this advice is written by a student. This is not professional advice*
As I grasped my spanking new student ID card in my hand when first arriving at Cardiff University, the end date ‘2023’ winked back at me. It was my university clock, calmly ticking away in the background as I fluttered, wobbled and danced my way through three years of absolute delirium. As I look down at the same (yet slightly battered) card today, it no longer greets me with that youthful wink. Instead, I am met with a tired but knowing smile, one that says: we did it, but hell has it been a journey. I now possess a newfound nervousness nearing the end of my university years. Not the first-year suspenseful kind I had three years ago coming to Cardiff, but the ‘Big Wide World Beckons’ sort as I leave. Pocketing moments and memories across my time here in Cardiff whilst dodging flying VKs along the way, the time has now come where many like myself can sit back and press play on a film showing the gradual transition from student to graduate, forced to reminisce on all that has been learnt along the way.
University stands apart from any other life experience you will go through due to the flurry of hype and expectation that surrounds it prior. Due to constantly being told by those around you before going that the best days of your life await ahead of you, the silence that greets you when entering the real world is deafening. When looking for reassurance that the party will in fact continue once you possess the label of graduate, you are just met with tax reminders and the inability to go on a walk at 2 am and not be questioned about it. Do not wallow in shock as you feel life stretching ahead of you, for you are now armed with a degree and an opportunity to do all the things you once dreamed of doing, with a new sense of passion. The beauty of university is that it provides you with a jumping-off point to dabble in these opportunities and really hone what you enjoy doing with your time. The real-world beckons but you are now a coloured canvas of interests, hopes and dreams after you left it three years ago a blank one.
Being gifted the free run of a city with some of your closest friends who happen to be residing in the room next door is something no student will ever take for granted again, especially when curled up in a new room in a new city without them, under the same roof. Who wants to battle hangxiety after a particularly questionable night out without the soothing comfort of your close friends nearby? This is something you fear trading in when stepping out into the real world, especially when your parents reminisce on their university years, bringing up names along the way that you have never heard before just for them to tell you that they lost contact. a few years ago. The truth is, University isn’t the only time you have had to part ways with people you hold dearly. Growing up you may have had visions of certain friends reading out speeches at your weddings just for them to now be another Facebook friend whom you happened to once know. This parting of ways may seem more intimidating and real when everyone leaves university at once, but that’s the whole point. You are all leaving university at once and will all be clinging onto each other during a time when you need each other most. The distance between friendships can encourage you to look back and make you realise how lucky you were to be able to surround yourself with people like that on a daily basis, and the most beautiful lesson you will learn when navigating friendships miles apart after university is that true friends will, and can, grow separately without growing apart. Before coming to university, you may feel intimidated by the metropolitan megalith that looms ahead of you, fearful of it in all its gigantic possibility, but then you leave and realise that the city wasn’t actually that big or intimidating after all. It never got any smaller, you just got to know the people who filled it and that is the same when entering any new place throughout life.
Leaving university doesn’t have to be daunting for a graduating year that has sipped on a stress cocktail since coming to University during a global pandemic that ended on mass striking. Employers lay fearful, awaiting graduates that have built up the resilience of a Cathays rat on bin day after being limited socially during what is meant to be one of the most sociable times of their lives, and have been carved and chiselled into academic weapons after being left to their own devices when degrees turned digital. Honouring all that these life lessons have taught you will give you a set of wings that will come in handy when flying a nest of term time regularity and student loans, instilling a sense of achievement and confidence like no other. There is no need to fear what the outside world may bring when you were forced to reside on the inside and made to re-define the joys of the ‘University experience’.
The universal confusion every graduate will go through is immense. You may be applying to five jobs a day whilst that person who sat behind you in a lecture is pursuing the hobby you used to always hear them discussing with their friends. Having been programmed to compare ourselves with those around us right from a very young age, beginning with when the teacher would put everyone’s test scores on the board for the whole class to see, the habit of comparison works to deter you from seeing the bigger picture. All those in that same class in school may now be graduating with you here today, having all gone through the same highs and lows of university, especially during a pandemic. Find comfort in knowing that adult life is calling you all by your names and that no one is exempt from the same trials and tribulations that will take place along the way.