The In-Depth and Sordid History of My Not-So-Brief Jaunt at University: The Story of a Two-Time University Dropout

By Meg Donnelly

46,585.79. The amount of student debt I am in. 3. The number of years I attended university. 2. The number of universities I attended. 0. The number of degrees I hold.

I. Dropped. Out. Time and time again, I’ve told myself not to utter those three devastating words during professional encounters, and yet every time I do. Whilst a source of great shame and embarrassment for me, I end up telling the entire, in-depth and sordid history of my not-so-brief jaunt at university, beginning in 2016 and spanning until 2019, the year I finally threw in the towel.

I come from two working-class parents and a quintessentially late-2000s British comprehensive school experience (think: extremely disproportionate width-to-length-ratio ties and a penchant for Maybelline Dream Matte Mousse). Perhaps most importantly, there were no extravagant aspirations for my life.

Things started to change when, at sixteen, I achieved better grades than I had expected in my GCSEs. My mother will argue that it was, of course, her influence, and when I say ‘influence’, I mean turning off the Wi-Fi and using bodily threat to get me to revise.

With my newfound ‘intelligence’, I took it upon myself to apply to the local girls’ grammar school for sixth form. It quickly became apparent that I could not compete with my peers. Whilst I was a solid B-grade student with an interest in fashion, the girls surrounding me would accept nothing less than an A* and had illustrious medical and political futures ahead of them.

Feeling inferior, I ditched my dreams of fashion for the world of academia and instead decided to pursue the subject I was performing best in: English. I was predicted three As at A Level. I worked my arse off and got three Bs. It’s still a sore subject for me. With three Bs, I didn’t make it into my first choice – Leeds – and ultimately, I ended up at my backup option, which was the University of Liverpool.

I made my first error before I even got to my new city. A friend of mine was also accepted into Liverpool and given accommodation in the Carnatic Halls of Residence. I was given a room at the Vine Court halls. Given that Vine Court was infinitely more expensive, I thought it was a great idea to request a transfer over to Salisbury Hall on the Carnatic site – it was cheaper, I would be with my mate, and it was catered!

Most university accommodation is formed of flats with around six rooms and a shared kitchen/living space. Carnatic was made up of floors with around twenty rooms, a few shared bathrooms and a mini kitchen. It was also incredibly run-down. The halls are no longer in use today; the Carnatic site was shut down in 2019. So yeah, the reality of it was quite different from what I’d imagined.

When I got there, I holed up in my room with my friend from school and made no attempt to interact with those on my floor. That was my second error. I spent the remainder of the year lonely and petrified to go the toilet in case, God forbid, I was to run into any of the people on my floor. I was 100% regarded by all as that ‘weirdo’ in room 122, and understandably so. Looking back, I think I suffered from social anxiety.

I did make some friends on my course, however, and with this, I was welcomed into the world of booze and boys – my third and final error. There are plenty of nights out from this time period that I cannot recall a single memory of, and names of boys that I slept with that I can’t recall either. I went to the majority of my lectures, but for the most part my thoughts revolved around my next night out.

In an effort to salvage the mess that was my first year, I even changed accommodation halfway through my second term. But I was unhappy, and I went home most weekends, desperate to escape the suffocation induced by the four walls of my tiny box room and my own deteriorating thoughts. There was no fixing it.

My failed year at Liverpool ended in my withdrawal from the institution, citing an incompatibility with the course. Of course, it was the subject that was the issue. Certainly nothing to do with me. It couldn’t be because I wasn’t cut out for university.

Of course, my nineteen-year-old self could not fathom life without a degree, its importance having been drilled into my psyche during my time at grammar school. Without any hesitation, I reapplied to university, this time revisiting the passion that I had abandoned in sixth form out of self-doubt and insecurity – fashion.

It started so well. I was at the University of Southampton, studying Fashion Marketing and Management, living in fancy-schmancy, top-of-the-line accommodation with a solid group of friends. Life was good! Then, I started shagging my flatmate. Funnily enough, that didn’t end so well. We weren’t even dating but he broke my heart – my first ever heartbreak – and I was so devastated that I ended up going on anti-depressants. I was twenty years old, and prescribed Sertraline.

This would mark the beginning of the end of my final foray into the university experience (and the start of my rocky relationship with my mental health). I moved flats again – I think there might be a theme here – which proved to be one of the only decent choices I made during my time at Southampton.

The worst months of my life had one single beacon of light: the people I met in flat A703. I cannot help but smile when I recall my memories of them. The shared nights in our flat kitchen became my safe haven, and despite having their own hardships and difficulties, they dragged me out of the deep dark hole I had fallen into. In truth, my troubles were rather trivial in comparison to theirs and their experiences burst the bubble of security that I had naively spent my life enshrouded in.

It was the first time I encountered cancer. My flatmate’s girlfriend had been diagnosed with a rare malignancy just weeks before I had moved in. It would be many months after we had all moved out and progressed onto our second years that I would receive a truly devastating text message. Just one year after her diagnosis, she died. She was twenty-one years old.

Her death scared the absolute shit out of me. In my mind, young people didn’t die. You hear about it, sure, but it doesn’t actually happen in real life. I still feel uncomfortable thinking about it now. She was kind and sweet and was robbed of the life she truly deserved to live. I had finally stepped into the real world, the one that’s cruel and unforgiving, and there was no going back.

During this time, I entered my first relationship. This would be the final nail in the coffin. I fell hopelessly in love with a boy a year my junior, and my studies fell to the wayside. We lived together in the flat his parents paid for – they were sickeningly rich – and I got a job working twenty hours a week. It was all sunshine and rainbows, apart from the small fact that we both had a massive drinking problem and exacerbated each other’s alcoholism.

That year, I lost most of my friends on alcohol-fuelled, disastrous nights out. My anti-depressant prescription steadily increased until I was on the maximum allowance of 200mg. I stopped going to my lectures entirely. My final night at university ended in a boozy, depressive episode in which my parents had to drive two hours in the middle of the night to come and rescue me. I came home – permanently.

Three years have passed since then. These days, I’m a librarian. I’m not happy or sad. I still take anti-depressants (Citalopram now). I’m one year sober. Oh, and the boyfriend dumped me not long after, so I’m also painfully single.

I fall asleep looking at the same four walls I did when I was sixteen. In a Sims game, I would delete this version of my life and start fresh. But I’m not in a game, and there aren’t any do-overs. Instead of looking forward, I seem to find myself only ever looking back. I focus on the wrong decisions and the poor choices. My failures stay with me; they sit on my shoulders, whispering doubts in my ear as I walk through life, a permanent accompaniment that I cannot seem to shake. My inability to put my failings to rest is, in fact, my biggest failure of all.

I view my time at university as one of those failings. But it wasn’t a failing, not really. It was an incorrect path, a deviation from the route that had been planned for me from the very moment I entered this world. On average, 6 in 100 students drop out of university every year, and yet this is seldom spoken about during sixth form, when you are making, perhaps, one of the most important decisions of your life.

It is okay if university is not for you. For all the eighteen-year-olds contemplating what to do with their life, I will leave you with this one kernel of advice: go to university because you have a reason to, not because you have no reason not to. To be more specific, I mean, go to university if you have a clear career goal in mind – like a doctor or a teacher – not because you have no bloody clue what else to do.

There are many pathways out there that you can take after sixth form. Even taking a year out can provide you with a wealth of wisdom and clarity in regard to your next steps post-school. It may also be the case that university is for you but simply not at eighteen; pursuing higher education later in life, at nineteen, twenty-five, or even fifty, may be a better fit.

I think that may have been the case for me. Unfortunately, I’m not sure I’ll ever find out now. And, after many years of resentment, I think I’m finally starting to accept that.