My experience of University so far has been a mixed bag. Luckily, the overriding emotions are positive, but there are also elements that I really don’t love that much.

Last Thursday I cried when I read some feedback given to me by my language teacher about a practice paper I’d spent hours on. I’d done the paper the first time, received the marks and was disappointed. So, I spent around 8 hours this week translating every word of Japanese on it with my textbooks and notes. Then I redid my answers and rewrote the essay because I wanted to make sure that I knew how to do better. So I cried at the second lot of feedback my teacher gave me because after all of that time and effort, it was better but it still wasn’t right.

Oh and don’t think that I don’t know how pathetic it is that I do that hahahah. Trust me, I’m aware.

I know I have issues with being a perfectionist: I’m way too hard on myself when I don’t understand things straight away. I definitely need to try and ease up when it comes to my work ethic. But I don’t cry because of my ego, I cry because I want to love my degree and because I try really hard to improve. Plus, it didn’t help that at school we’re absolutely overwhelmed with feedback sheets. Whether it was a bullet point list, or ‘two ticks and a target’ in green pen, we were always given the correct and very specific direction. I hated the whole peer marking thing at the time, and now I’m realising just how much it made the work easier.

I absolutely don’t want to be spoon-fed answers. It just comes as a bit of a nasty shock when all of a sudden I’ve gone from thinking I was pretty decent at languages, to thinking that I’d chosen the wrong degree. I won’t change my degree because I don’t want to, and I did kind of throw myself in at the deep end with Japanese…so it’s sort of on me.

But the level of difficulty in my degree this year has made me feel stupid on many occasions. I don’t mean the ‘omg lol I’m so dumb’ jokey version of stupid, I mean straight-up ‘I’m actually just not clever’. And it might sound like a totally woe is me, first world problems lamentation but feeling that way for the first time is really awful. There have been plenty of things I’ve not been good at in my life but I’ve always liked to think that at least I’m clever. So when I’ve been thrust into situations where I really doubted that, naturally, I get upset about it.

University is meant to be really challenging, because if it weren’t then there would be little point in attending. So I recognise that I’ve got some catching up to do and I just have to keep reminding myself that even though I’m not doing as well as I’d like to, I know I couldn’t be working any harder. I’m not stupid, and eventually I’m going to be good at this language; just not yet.

So I’d like to finish by wishing all of the students reading this: good luck in your online exams!! Also, you’re not stupid if you’ve found this first year really difficult – specific shout-out to my fellow Durham students. And finally, thank you for using my blog as one of your many methods of procrastination. I’m honoured x