Reflecting on my Second Year of University

As I head back to Dundee for my penultimate year, I thought this would be a good place to finally do a short piece reflecting on the past year, and to let it go. I have a fresh new start for third year, and I plan to use it well. No more focusing on what went wrong, but getting up, and focusing on what I can do right. I have no control over whether or not I go into a flare, what my health decides to do or whether treatment works. But I am in control of keeping in close contact with my advisor, my lecturers, and knowing when to say no. My health comes first, but my degree is still important.

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Let’s start by saying that second year of university did not go as I was expecting. At. All. But, now that I’m no longer in it, and wallowing, I think I can reflect on the past year, from the absolutely brilliant start to the horrible ending and all the gruesome bits in between.

The year started off amazingly in September. After a rocky first year, with low grades, health scares, homesickness and the realisation that university was not what I expected, I thought second year would be my year. I was employed as a Student Support Assistant, a job that I am continuing into my third year and absolutely love, on the committee of two, then to become three societies, and I was hoping to pick my grades up. And I did: by the October midterms, my grades were Bs: a rarity in first year. I was happy, getting myself to every lecture, receiving support from the uni and not locking myself in my room whenever things got hard.

And then things really got hard.

A family emergency happened the week of the October midterms, and where I would have preferred to drop everything and go home, I couldn’t. I went into shock, and where I should have been reading up for the next half of the semester, I wasn’t. I cried for days, wouldn’t get out of bed, and wouldn’t even eat. This was an awful manifestation of my separation anxiety to my family. My worst nightmare came true, something had happened, and I couldn’t do anything to help. I hated it.

The week after that, I began having allergic reactions to everything when I stepped out of my flat. My skin would be covered in hives if I went into a lecture theatre, my eyes would run. I put up with this for a little while, slightly worried that it may be something to do with my anaphylaxis. Then I got weirder symptoms: little ulcers covering my tongue and mouth, bad stomach cramps, nausea. And then after that? Blood in my stool, loose stool, loose stool thirty times a day. They do not know the cause of Crohn’s; there’s theories it is genetic, that it’s caused by an infection, or, my personal favourite: that trauma and stress can set it off. I certainly experienced trauma and stress in my reading week: three assignments, a family emergency and a return of my debilitating anxiety.

Whatever caused my crohn’s, it also caused the downfall of the year.  

Towards the end of the year, as soon as I was admitted into hospital, I lost all faith in my ability to complete the year. I emailed my advisor of studies and visited her nearly in tears multiple times in the short time between being discharged and my first exam. And my worries were not unfounded, at the start of the semester I felt more in control of what was going on, I was hopeful that my treatment would at that stage work. But when it came to February, after the midterm assessments, and it was realised that I wasn’t reacting to or even absorbing the baseline treatment, my grades began to drop. I was getting As and high Bs in my midterms- this fell to Cs quickly. I was missing lectures for doctors appointments, blood tests, trips to the hospital, and just feeling crap. In my exams, inevitably, I got Cs and Ds. I missed two key topics in both of my examinable subjects while I was in hospital, meaning that I couldn’t answer two of the compulsory questions. I was absolutely devastated, and wanted to resit the year.

However, now that the exams are through with and it turned out that I passed them the first time around, I’m glad I put myself through the pain of sitting them. And it was painful. I cried, struggled to study, and couldn’t even bring myself to read. But I didn’t have to travel back to Dundee in July to resit the exams, and I didn’t have to delay my studies a year later than my peers. Yes, my grades are not where they should have been were I not ill, but thankfully this years’ semesters do not count towards my degree classification, and while the grades in first and second year university matter for things like the diploma in law, my health complaints are well documented. More cynically, I have saved my ‘spare’ year of SAAS funding, so if I fall as ill again in third or fourth year, I could potentially resit them as years counting towards my classification.

I’m ready and excited to head back to Dundee for my third year, surprisingly. And I think I know what to do if I can’t get my health on track.