My life is like a game of Jenga – still in its early stages, but already dancing on the brink of violent collapse. Over the years, I have watched the pieces move, moved the pieces myself, and seen the tower tremble. As the game goes on, the stakes grow higher, and each decision bears more weight. For me, attending university was an exercise in growth – a move towards a life without a safety net. And there are a couple of things I’d do differently, if given the chance. It’s healthy to look back and recognise you’d change some things. It shows you’ve grown, and learnt, and you should be proud of that! People who claim to have no regrets are either lying to you, or they have terrible judgement, and I would never lie to you, dear reader! I do, however, have terrible judgement. So, let’s talk about all the things I’d do differently if I could restart my degree now…

The first thing I’d do is schedule a haircut. The second thing I’d do is find better friends. The haircut is important, but the friend issue was an oft recurring problem. If you know me, or if you look at any picture of me for more than five seconds, you’ll know I can’t say “no”. It’s such a problem. Every friend will one day ask you to sign a register for them, speak to their tutor over the phone, pretending to be their dying grandmother, or dress up as them to write their exam (and, just to be clear, I’ve not done this). It’s the campus experience (and slightly illegal)! I’m not condoning doing any of that, and I’m not saying you shouldn’t help your friends, but boundaries are important. I had friends who didn’t attend a single lecture, but who used my notes to excel in their classes. I had friends who asked me to write the entirety of their assignments – without pay (not that that matters)! I have done so many group projects – with my friends as group members – where I have done everything, and they still didn’t prepare their part of the presentation. Only one of my friends did prepare, and they didn’t use the cue cards I wrote; they badly memorised the Wikipedia page on the topic we were covering. And I didn’t say a thing.

Not one assignment passed without friends asking me to send them a copy of my work, the night before it was due. They “just want to see the structure” and, they can’t get into it, but “things have been so overwhelming”. You should be there for your friends, but that doesn’t include sending them your work to plagiarise. I cannot stress this point enough. I know students whose entire academic careers have been upended because of this. In some cases, it was someone they trusted, while other times, their friend shared their work with people they had never even met. Some people will call you selfish for standing up for yourself. When you’re insecure, and afraid of disappointing people, there’s a good chance you’ll believe them; but you deserve better, and you will find better. You’re not being selfish when you’re protecting yourself.   

Finally, I’d change the way I coped with psychological stress. My marks were never better than when my life was falling apart. During my second year of university, my friend group was collapsing, my relationship ended, and someone important to me passed away. My grades skyrocketed. If you asked me at the time, I would have said I was coping using sublimation – where you channel your painful emotions into a positive activity. Really, I was practicing repression – where you stuff your emotions deep down in yourself, then get surprised when those emotions don’t evaporate, but instead fester and metastasise. I refused to acknowledge my hurt, distracting myself with work, and I thought it was healthy because my marks were great. But the things I repressed in my second year made me spiral during my third, and final year of undergrad because I refused to face them. I’m so much better at dealing with my emotions now, at maintaining a healthy work-life balance. I am so much more secure in myself, and I’m not worried to lose people by standing up for myself. It takes a lot of time and a lot of practice, but eventually it becomes easier, eventually we grow and we learn.

You know, the fun thing about Jenga is, when the tower falls, everyone just laughs and rebuilds it. Your mistakes won’t mean the end of the world. You just have to learn from them.