University Challenge

Getting to uni was not an easy thing for me. Forget UCAS, forget leaving home, forget making new friends, forget planning the rest of my life… Getting to uni was still not an easy thing for me. As a long-term sufferer of depression, I survived three years of being bullied by classmates and ignored by teachers in secondary school, two years working for my GCSEs at a private school run by the NHS for children with mental instabilities, three years at college for A levels (I had to repeat one of my A levels due to being unable to complete the work in time because of depression), completing one of my final exams using one finger on a keyboard because I’d broken my hand punching a wall during a panic attack the week before and finally getting through the panic and horror of deciding about my future to settle with a place at Bath Spa University. And if you think that’s a long sentence, you should see my diary entries. Living with depression has halted me at every turn throughout my education.

 

The support I had received at school and college was at best shaky and at worst non-existent. I have seen every patronising and unhelpful guidance counsellor, every surly and stony-faced medical officer, every teacher who told me to ‘come and see them if I needed any help’… and none of them did. I was told repeatedly that I ‘seemed to be looking for answers no one could give’. I was told to ‘knuckle down and get on with things’ and often that ‘no one else seemed to be having the same problems.’ Despite the confessions of despairing and often suicidal thoughts, panic attacks, vomiting and the onset of my compulsive hair-pulling (which has continued to this day) no one mentioned the word depression. No one was there to tell me that lots of other young people go through the same thing. No one was there to help me feel like less of an oddball when other kids picked on me for being different. Basically, no one was there. If there’s one very strong message I took away from my school education, it’s that There Isn’t Enough Being Done. There needs to be qualified mental health welfare officers in schools and colleges, available at all times for students who need help. There needs to be a better understanding of depression and how it affects young people in full time education. Basically, it needs to be taken a lot more seriously than it is now. I remember all those afternoons where I would stand on the bridge down the road after school and think about hurling myself off because I felt so alone. I was twelve years old. If one teacher had understood and offered help, a lot of the struggles that I went through (and I imagine that a lot of other young people did too) could have been avoided.

 

So getting to university felt like climbing to the top of a mountain. I thought ‘Finally! I can be treated like an adult. I will have people around me who will understand. It’ll be the start of a whole new life.’ And I have started a whole new life. I am now living away from home, working at a degree I care about, and I also have a part-time job. I feel more on top of things than I have ever done in the past. BUT: How much of this do I owe to my university? I’d say… roughly 25%. If I thought that just because I was now an adult, working my way into the wider world, my depression would be treated with more severity, I was bitterly disappointed. Looking back now, I can say I was also pretty naïve. But that’s not to say I don’t have quite a few suggestions to my university that could have cleared up quite a few headaches in the past year and a half. In my next few blog entries, I will be talking about the kind of things I mean.

 

Watch this space…