Dealing with Mental Illness at University
by Natalie White
Being challenged with any kind of illness is something that can have a huge effect on your education. However, mental illness can impact your academic success more than you may realize. In ways that your tutors and lecturers probably won’t notice unless you tell them.
I started university in September 2016, and anxiety has already taken its toll on my experience. Language and Linguistics, the course I am enrolled on at university, is my passion. I can’t imagine myself having a career in any other field, and to have a successful career in that field, I ideally need to get my degree. I’ve had setbacks and I’ve been knocked down but I’ve gotten back up again and I’ve arrived at the realization that I cannot let mental illness hold me back from achieving my dreams.
Not long after I started my course, I moved out of my student flat and back into my family home 70 miles away from campus because I couldn’t handle looking after myself. I started a new course of antidepressants four weeks before my first semester exams, and to date, I have missed more lectures than I have attended because I just couldn’t face going.
All of these things shaped my university experience…Living at home and having to arrange my travel in advance means I’ve missed valuable extra sessions. It also means having to re-schedule classes.
The side effects of starting new medication meant I couldn’t study for my exams to the best of my ability. Also missing lectures has caused me to miss important chunks of information about assessments and exams.
For much of my first semester I felt lost and hopeless, as though I wasn’t cut out for and didn’t belong at university. The realization that I wasn’t coping with being at the university I’d dreamed of attending for years was absolutely crushing. I worked harder than I could’ve imagined to get there.
Yet there I was wandering the halls every day wondering what I was doing there and why I thought I could succeed. When it came to the Christmas holidays, I talked to my closest friends outside of university about wanting to drop out. I didn’t want to be there anymore, doing something I didn’t feel like I was good at.
But I carried on, and attended my January exams, just to see if I could actually do it. Grades aren’t everything, but knowing that you aren’t doing as awfully as you think you are can be massively encouraging! I got my coursework results for my first semester – a First class and three 2:1s (for those in countries other than the UK, that’s essentially an A and three B’s).
I had been expecting to fail at least two of my courses! So learning that I’d actually done well was the push I’d needed to get me through my exams.
The best advice I can give are as follows:
Don’t give up
Keep trying, no matter how much you feel like you can’t do it, you probably can. Had I dropped out, I probably would’ve stopped taking my medication and stopped looking for help because I wouldn’t have any reason to do so.
Talk to a member of staff
An even more valuable yet slightly hypocritical piece of advice, is to make at least one senior member of staff in your department/faculty aware of your issues. If they know you are struggling, they may be able to grant you extensions on assessed work, and arrange alternative exam venues if you are challenged with particularly bad exam anxiety.
Although I haven’t spoken to anyone at university about my issues, I am without doubt that being able to sit my sixth form exams (the qualifications that got me my place at university) in a small classroom with only seven or eight other people is the main reason I’m here – there’s no way I could have got the grades I needed with the added anxiety of sitting in a huge, windowless exam hall with hundreds of other people.
Seek medical help
Doctors and psychiatric professionals can also play a very important role in your coping with mental illness while at university. I probably would have ended up dropping out over Christmas if my friend had not convinced me to see my doctor. If my doctor had not then started me on a new course of medication, one that actually worked for me, that would have been it for me with my studies.
It may take several attempts to find the right course of treatment (in fact it probably will) but it’s more than worth it to keep trying, to keep pushing to find a method that works for you. Because however badly mental illness is impacting you now, it probably won’t be the same forever. It seems a shame to let something has the potential to hold you back from securing the qualifications that will allow you to take up a career in a field you love.
Speak to friend/family
I spoke to people about my problems and I went to my doctor and I asked for help because I want to graduate more than anything. In a way, being at university has pushed me to take the next step in my recovery.
I want to control this illness so that I can work hard and enjoy studying what I love. Setting realistic and achievable goals is the best thing you can do for yourself when challenged with mental illness.
So to sum up…
If you don’t have anything to work towards, there’s no point working at all – so set yourself a goal, make yourself a plan, and stick to it. Ask for help if you need it. Talk to your family. Talk to your friends. Be an open book. And don’t give up just because you don’t think you’re capable. You’ll never know what you could’ve done.
Natalie White is a 19-year-old student and freelance writer from Manchester. Natalie wants to use her own experienced with mental illness to change the lives of other young people challenged with their mental health. She writes for several mental health publications, and loves to read about linguistics, philosophy and astronomy in her spare time. A portfolio of her work can be found at natalieziona.com
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