Some thoughts on being a student, my personal struggles, and activism
What does it mean to be a university student?
Three years ago, at the start of my degree, I would have told you that it’s one of those things that you hear about but never believe will happen to you. Uni is said to be the place to find your people, those who you really connect with; it’s a place to grow spiritually and mentally as well as intellectually; it’s what’s going to open the doors to the life you dream of building for yourself.
So why does being a student now feel more like a battle to the end? Like a way to spend 3+ years fighting off the anxiety and the stress, 3+ years spent wading through a sea of negative emotions and whatever ill mental health you’ve gained along the way until you can hopefully find enough in your reserves to pass the final exams and graduate with a decent grade. Has life really become a game of waiting for the bad to hit, just because it always seems to follow something good?
And why doesn’t anybody else care about how we feel?
It should hopefully come as no surprise to anyone (particularly followers of the Renegades Foundation) that students don’t always have it very easy. This holds true both on the individual and the governmental level. Personally, I found myself worn down over A-Levels – undoubtedly the hardest period of my life so far – and when I thought I was starting university fully charged and ready to go, I discovered after less than a semester that my mental reserves weren’t quite as full as I thought. I struggled on alone for over a year before I finally reached out to the Wellbeing Service at my university and started going to therapy.
This is a good time to note a couple of things. First, make no mistake: therapy is not just for when you’ve hit crisis point. I like to compare the use of therapy for mental health maintenance to the taking of regular medication for physical health maintenance: it’s better to treat it as preventative than curative. Everyone with the means to go to therapy should take advantage, and I fully believe it’s one of the best things you can do for yourself.
Second, if you do only go when you’ve hit crisis point (like I did), it’s important to remember that it isn’t going to ‘fix’ you. When I ended my sessions a few months after I started, I felt like this was it. I’d been cured. I was better now, and it was time to feel happy.
Except it doesn’t really work like that.
As it turns out, and to further feed my metaphor, therapy isn’t antibiotics. Therapy is that tablet you have to take once daily, because if you skip it for too long then the symptoms will return. Literally every day will come with its own battles, big or small. Some days that might look like not having enough energy to make dinner or being too anxious to go to lectures. Some days will start at 2.45am, continue with a flight to France where you’re moving to for a year, and end up with a panic attack in the middle of Paris (at least that’s what happened to me). And some days you might wake up, have a brief moment of peace and then remember that you’re actually seven months into a global pandemic and there’s another lockdown on its way.
Each of these battles is valid on its own and should be recognised as such. On a good day, it’s easy to employ some self-care techniques and tell yourself that this whole “living life” thing is easy. On a bad one? It’s difficult to imagine that life could ever feel like something other than a piece of dirt found on the bottom of someone’s shoe. What my therapy sessions gave me was short term relief and some coping mechanisms, so that I was more able to traverse life by myself. But these daily struggles are bound to wear you down, like chipping gently away at a piece of rock with a chisel.
Now, two years, several personal difficulties and a global one later, I feel like it’s time to go back to therapy. And I’m totally okay with that.
As my dear friend and Renegades founder Lucy says: “if you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention”. I’ve thought about that a lot recently. Historically, there’s always been something going on in the world that I feel passionately about, and I think I share that with a lot of other people my age. We are the generation to incite change. At the moment, it doesn’t really appear that the government cares about its students, even though we are the people of the future. More fool them, because we are the ones who care about the issues of this country and this world, and we are the ones willing to do something about it.
Take any action you can against injustice, be it big or small. It is important to note that you should also protect yourself in these times. If you need to take some time and think about only yourself and your wellbeing because you don’t feel you have the strength to fight for others just yet, then you’d better believe the world will be here waiting for you when you feel ready to re-emerge.
Elie Wiesel – Holocaust survivor, political activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner – once said: “There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.”
Student mental health might be at rock bottom, but we can use our pain to fuel us. Fight for your loved ones, to make sure they’re getting the help they need. Fight for those like you, to make sure the government cares when a student loses their battle against mental health. Fight for those unlike you, because they need your support too. Fight for your country and remember that it’s you who has to deal with the consequences of today’s actions. Fight for your world, because everybody deserves an ally. And if any of that sounds like too much for you, read. Educate yourself. And fight for yourself, because you deserve it too.
- Amy Saunders