“What do you say to taking chances? What do you say to jumping off the edge?” – Celine Dion

If I told you to think of a scary experience, what do you think of? Going on a roller coaster? Jumping out of an aeroplane? Visiting a haunted house? For me, aside from starting a blog post with Celine Dion lyrics, it was starting university. Some people jump at the chance to start afresh in a big new city with like-minded people. To be honest, in theory it sounded brilliant to me too. But then it was time to leave, and it was simply terrifying.

I arrived at about 12 o’clock on the Sunday, unpacked and introduced myself to my new flatmates. What I discovered, however, was that all of my flatmates had arrived the day before and spent the night together, so had already bonded and made friendships. So about 5 minutes in to meeting them, I was already the outsider. Add to that the fact I’m awkward anyways and I just felt completely out of place. From reading my earlier posts, you may that know I live in a house with one girl and four boys. Four extremely confident boys who will tell you their opinion in a heartbeat. I’m a shy person who doesn’t know what to say at the best of times, so it was fair to say the first couple of weeks of uni were hell to me. I found it difficult fitting in, and I spent most of my time alone in my room because it was the only place where I didn’t have to pretend to be someone I’m not.

Here’s the thing though… No matter how much I hated it and I how unhappy I was, I stuck with it. I’ve made some friends now, and I’m finally starting to feel happier again. So starting university was the thing I was most scared of, and guess what? I survived. Writing this has made me think of so many things I was frightened of doing in the past, and looking back they almost seem like I was worrying over nothing at all. That’s sort of what I hope this story will become. I hope to become more confident in myself, so one day I’ll be able to look back at my freshers experience and be able to say, “Why was I even scared?”