Overcoming Your Biggest Fears
Starting life as a Fresher, coming back for Second Year and especially Third Year, all entail overcoming some kind of personal fear.
If you’re just starting out you’re most likely to facing the fear of leaving home for the first time; how to make friends and not seem like a complete oddball; surviving when you don’t know how to cook or you’ve never used a washing machine before. The great thing about these is that there will most definitely be plenty of people in the same boat as well, it’s perfectly natural and completely normal to be scared of taking on the plight of university at first. You might begin questioning if the course you’re about to do for three years is really what you want to do and then all the fears of wasting an inordinate amount of money come along with it.
With Second Year it’s not as scary, just the constant little voice in the back of your mind telling you that this year does matter and you can’t doss off as much as what you could last year, so your biggest fear here is probably of your own commitment. With Third Year it’s much the same but increasingly more intensely. With the end of your time at University looming over you, the fear of the real adult world and finding a real job becomes a vastly scary idea that you could come out of this qualified with nowhere that wants you apart from your local corner shop.
The biggest way to overcome any fear is to challenge it.
This is especially true with University since most of the time you just have to do it to get through it. Every day might become a different type of challenge and there’s a good chance you’ll meet additional struggles you weren’t prepared for as you go along too. No doubt that at times it could feel like you’re drowning and it’s more than okay to ask for help, that doesn’t mean you’ve failed at facing your fears; getting through it is the most important part and any which way that helps you get there, is the right way for you.
Sometimes it’s best to focus on other things.
Don’t make the subject of your fear the main point of doing something. Say you’re scared of making new friends: sign up to a new society to give you that push forward to make you hang out with new people but focus on the fact you have always wanted to play a specific sport or be part of a book club, then those bonds should come more naturally than you think – just by starting on that one piece of common ground.
Forgive yourself.
It’s easy to beat yourself up over it. It’s also easier said than done to tell yourself not to. Fears and anxieties are a huge factor that can’t be ignored, they very happily play into your everyday life without a second thought. You might be the type of person to get angry at yourself if you don’t complete something – it’s a pretty common trait. Try to stay on the positive side because your biggest fears aren’t your biggest fears because they’re easy. There will be struggles, and you very much might feel like giving up but perseverance will be your best friend and it’ll all pay off in the end.
