A message from a third year to a fresher
I found this photo of a pile of books I took a while ago and it made me think of the many chapters we have in our lives.
Much like a book, one chapter can be completely different from the next. We’re always starting and ending new chapters in our lives.
It’s almost September now and seeing everyone posting about starting university reminded me about how that was myself 2 years ago.
Everyone at the moment is starting University, High school, 6th Form, college or a job.
No one is ever the same from one year to the next, we are constantly changing as individuals and going through various moments in our lives.
It is common for people to misjudge others.
We very often make a snap decision from how a person may appear and judge them before we even know them.
Quite possibly this is a natural thing, however it’s how we choose to act which makes the difference.
You may have made an assumption but if you ignore this natural impulse and get to know this person, then you may find your assumption about them to be proved wrong.
I know that I can appear more reserved towards people that I don’t know very well, although once someone gets to know me, I open up and they can see how bubbly I can be.
This can be the case for many other people so I did my best when starting university to make an effort with people to get to know them and not make an assumption based on the first meeting.
I’d expect that even the most confident people would admit that only their close friends know them properly, and if you know that people will only get to know you from spending time with you, then try your best to take that leap of faith and go to societies, nights out, to spend time with people.
At the end of the day you’re not going to be best friends with everyone, but you will find people you can connect with, if you make the effort.
It’s important to make an effort outside of your comfort zone but also do what suits you.
Starting university is scary and it’s easy to just want to follow what everyone else is doing in the hope that you’ll be friends.
If you’re constantly doing things you don’t want to do, people will get the wrong idea of who you are and you’re just conforming to their idea of you. It’s like making a book cover completely unrelated to the story inside.
There is always so much more to others than what may appear, everyone is their own book with chapters waiting to be written, but if you don’t get along with the people you meet first, don’t just hang around with them for the sake of it, venture out, talk to more people, you’ll find your crew eventually!
If you made a cup of tea to find out you didn’t like it, you don’t carry on drinking it do you? So if you find people that aren’t your cup of tea, go find some others that are!
Someone you thought you’d never socialise with could become your best friend…
…if you talk to them…it’s up to you, take the leap!
