Why university isn’t “the best time of my life”- An international student’s perspective

Everyone has heard the sentiment “university is the best time of your life”. However, this is not the case for me and here’s why.

When I was 13 I moved from a US public school to a private international school in the Netherlands. International school is an entirely different world. 72 different nationalities, traveling to different countries just to compete in sporting events, rich kids, important parents, and so MUCH work. My high school experience was spent constantly trying to keep up with my high achieving classmates which proved to be challenging at times. Yet everyone bonded over being in a foreign country in which they were not from, everyone was in the same boat. There was a sense of community, something I lost when I left.

After graduating I decided to go to the U.K. to get a bachelor’s degree. My university has around 20,000 students enrolled in undergraduate programs, a big step up from around 400 students enrolled in my high school. The mere size of universities makes you feel small, alone, and intimidated. I had a completely different perspective prior to arriving. I thought the more students would mean I would have more opportunities to make friends and although that is true to an extent you need opportunities to meet all of these new people. It’s for this reason why most people I know are still friends with the first people they met.

As an international student I find myself between the British students and the other international students. Although I am in a country that speaks my first language it can feel like there are constant miscommunications. During my first semester the slang, British accent (which completely varies), and the way people interacted with each other confused me but more evidently I confused them. Something normal to me like my name, Kayla, is something that most people can’t pronounce or spell correctly the first time (this name doesn’t really exist outside the US). As for other international students, they tend to gravitate towards other students from their country. That leaves me floating in the middle. This caused me to have an existential crisis about my identity and sense of belonging. Prior to university I considered myself charming, outgoing, and at times funny but when I arrived I felt like the complete opposite of that. I overestimated my ability to make friends. Throughout my entire time in education making friends was always easy for me and here it wasn’t just not easy, it felt impossible.

A good explanation to this has a lot to do with my priorities. I go to a party university and I don’t say that lightly. It’s primarily the thing everyone talks about all of the time. Going out every single night is not uncommon, blacking out is not uncommon, landing yourself in the hospital from drinking yourself into a comma is not uncommon, and when drinking isn’t enough that’s where the drugs come in. The most shocking part about it is how dedicated people are to the “sesh”. You could have had your stomached pumped the night before and still be planning your night out. This is a point of pride for many of my peers, something I don’t personally understand. Of course I expected some of this because drinking is a huge part of a university culture no matter where you go, however most students go through a party phase that starts to dissipate later on in their degree. At my university it is truly a 3 year blackout. I don’t want to be misconstrued as someone who is against having a good time because I went through a hard party phase myself when I first arrived. Now I am in my 3^rd year of university and for me going out every single night got old. At this point I befriended multiple people, ones I had class with and others that I partied with but nothing that was rooted in actual meaning. When I decided I didn’t want to go out all of the time most of my friendships showed how shallow the relationship actually was and with class only being 8 hours a week I hardly ever see the others. None of this is inherently bad, what I have learned is in this world you meet a lot of people you don’t have a lot in common with and that is okay. It makes you not take the people you are actually close with for granted. Not finding deep and meaningful relationships at university hasn’t been anybody’s fault, sometimes that is just the way it goes.

My experience at university hasn’t been the cliché “it’s the best time of your life cherish it while it lasts” but it also hasn’t been terrible. I have amazing friends that live and go to other universities, I get to travel, and most importantly the past 3 years have taught me more about myself than I ever knew. So while it hasn’t been the best 3 years, I believe it was an essential 3 years to give me the opportunity for the best life.