Yomi Adegoke - Slay In Your Lane

Alexis also speaks about the importance of her friendships at university – many of which have continued several years later:

‘I didn’t find it difficult socialising at all. I think the best thing I learnt about Roehampton was my social experience; it being an independent space from home, paying my own bills, just being an adult and starting to live an adult life and living myself. Even in the first year, I didn’t live on campus, I lived with two guys in a house and everyone was like, “Aren’t you scared to live with two guys?” And I was like, “No,” and I thank God because the two guys, they were like my brothers. They literally were like brothers to me, it was a blessing … they looked after me and I looked after them. It was a really good experience, I met some really good people out there and most of the people I met are coming to my wedding; we kept our friendships.’

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‘The future’s so bright, I gotta wear shades.’

Timbuk 3, The Future’s So Bright

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The long and short of it is that everyone’s university experience will be different. Some people will end up going exactly where they wanted to go and then realise it’s not what they had expected; others will go to their backup choice and find that it’s the best thing that ever happened to them. The most important thing is to arm yourself with knowledge: before you make any life-changing decisions, make sure they are informed ones. That information may lead you to take a completely different route in itself: university is full of opportunity, but so is the world.

‘To sum it up, don’t think of higher education as simply the next step after A-levels, think of higher education as a pathway into a career,’ says Sharmaine.

‘When you think about higher education as the pathway to your career, you think about it in terms of its practicality. When you are at university, if you do decide to go to university straight away, then make sure that there is a lot of time in between writing essays; in your second year, make sure that you are getting those placements. Don’t leave it to the university to do everything for you, actually think about it practically: what is it that I have to do to be better? Listen to your friends and then just think of ways that you can try to do things a little bit differently to stand out. Don’t be afraid to not follow the crowd, but do it in your own, subtle, private way. Don’t let people second-guess you, be like, “This is what I want to do,” and go and speak to people in the industries and write to people and ask them to mentor you or ask people who do that job. Find the experts.

‘My second thing is, be an expert. Be brilliant and bold and brave and know your industry inside out; know how it works and know the history and the culture, and just know it and breathe it and live it. I think that’s just so important, when you get to university, it’s not just about passing exams, it’s actually about learning. Really learning a skill or a trade or having an understanding of a topic or a subject, and so really take it on board. See it as an opportunity to have the time. It is all part of the process. I think what’s really important is that studying law or medicine to make your parents proud is a very different thing to actually studying it.’

Despite all the fuckeries and tomfoolery, university is still a brilliant place, where those who are lucky enough to go can find themselves, and so much more: lifelong friends, political views, endless knowledge and sometimes even a long-term partner. While there is still a long way to go in terms of diversity and inclusion, an increasingly self-assured and unapologetic student population is continuing to right wrongs at an unprecedented rate. I mentioned to a current Warwick student that there had been a slave auction during my time at uni and she told me ‘they wouldn’t dare’ host one these days – let alone a Django -themed one. I only attended four years before her. And as Alexis mentioned, the newfound freedom is particularly wonderful, for all students, sure, but more often specifically for black freshers who are sometimes still under a form of curfew for way longer than their white peers. The transition from having to barter and bargain with parents regarding nights out to simply going out whenever you please is just one of the many priceless things about uni, and in itself it is almost worth all the deadlines and all-nighters.

A culture shock can be just that – shocking – but it can also give you the opportunity to meet people and have experiences you would never have had otherwise. Like most things in life, it’s important to enter university aware, but also optimistic, as your future (as well as the future of these institutions) is set to get a great deal brighter.

‘We don’t need to get over a bar of excellence we didn’t create. Instead we have to create our own lane and our own version of success, our own version of good.’

Elizabeth

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‘We were bad, with very little of the boujee.’

Yomi

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