DS hating UK uni and feeling guilty for encouraging him to go

[Dailyster]

Hi everyone,

I am feeling really worried tonight and would love some perspective from people who have been through this. DS (18) has just started university in the UK and he is already saying he hates it. We lived in the UK until he was 3, then moved back to Russia. DH is British (from the South) and we always spoke English at home, so DS has grown up bilingual. When it came to applying for uni we really encouraged him to go back to the UK as we thought it would give him more opportunities, improve his career prospects and give him a chance to experience life in the country where he was born.

He was excited during the whole application process, worked hard on his A levels here and on his UCAS application, got a great offer and was thrilled when he got it. We visited in the spring and it all seemed perfect.

But now he is two weeks in and he sounds completely miserable. Every time we speak he just sounds flat and sad. He says his flatmates are friendly enough but he struggles to join in with them. They go out drinking and clubbing most nights and he is not really into that. He has gone out a couple of times but said he just felt awkward and left early.

He also says the accents are very hard to follow. He is in the North and although his English is good, he grew up hearing southern English from DH and his family and the northern accents plus slang are sometimes too fast for him. He feels embarrassed asking people to repeat themselves and just smiles along even when he does not fully understand. He told me that a couple of his flatmates sometimes laugh when he says certain words slightly differently and imitate him in a “jokey” way, which is making him feel self-conscious about speaking at all. He said he knows they do not mean to be cruel but it makes him want to stay in his room even more.

Academically he is finding it a shock too. The course is more theoretical than he expected, with long lectures and reading lists, and he said he struggles to keep up because he is translating things in his head all the time. He has joined a couple of societies but said he feels awkward turning up on his own and that everyone seems to already know each other.

He has already started saying he wants to come home and apply to a uni here next year. I have told him that it is normal to feel out of place at the start and that he should at least give it until Christmas before deciding. But I am starting to wonder if I am just making him suffer because I think it is “good for him” to stick it out. I feel so guilty because I really encouraged this whole idea and told him how amazing it would be. Now I am not sure if I have set him up for a horrible experience.

Has anyone had a DC who hated it at first but then found their feet later on? Or has anyone let their DC leave and come home? I want him to be happy but I also do not want him to miss out on what could be a great experience if he can just get through this first difficult term. Any advice or similar experiences would be very welcome.

And what does "standing up and being accountable" mean to you?

This really isn't the thread for this. This is a kid. A kid who was born in Britain for that matter. Grow up.

How is an 18 year old boy accountable in any way for the actions of Putin? Stop embarrassing yourself

Not electing a war criminal with a massive majority. Protesting against your government. Not popping into Ukraine to kiil and rape civilians.

This is not true at all.
OP try and ignore idiotic comments such as this one.
FWIW, one of my DS's friends is Russian living in the UK. The friend and his sister (both young people one graduated and one currently studying) have lots of nice British friends and nobody in their circles has such an issue with them. In fact, my own DS didn't make any connection whatsoever to politics.
I hope your DS settles in a bit better and grows to enjoy his student days.

I'm not embarrassed to think what the Russians are doing is wrong. Are the various sports bodies that don't let Russian athletes take part embarrassing themselves?

This 100%.

Not a good life lesson for the son. He is growing up, He needs to be resilient. He's a student. He's learning life lessons - and life is never easy. He needs to change his way of thinking and put on his "I can do this" hat.

This is a very young person and British born in any case. He is also innocent, and he is not Putin.

As we are against Putin then there is all the more reason to take in young Russians, get to know them, show them how much better it is to live in a reasonable society like ours and share our rich cultural heritage.
Russia too has one of the greatest cultural heritages known. Maybe U.K. students might learn from him too one way or another.

OP please ignore nasty comments about your DS being Russian.

re homesickness - what I did with mine was he had a webcam at the side of his desk.
I told him he could have it on all the time with me. We could talk as he did whatever.
As I suspected, he soon got tired of his mum "being there" all the time as it were! It became less and less that he did that.
Homesickness solved!

@Dailyster , I can relate to this very well. I was an international student in an English speaking country (not the UK) and that first year was very, very hard. The way people related to each other was very different and, in my opinion, quite superficial. I believed that most people were a lot more comfortable and adjusted than they were, in actuality, but they were a lot better at not showing it than I was.

I am Slavic and cultures are just different, it took me a while to find friends in the new place, but I eventually did and was very happy. Having other international people (other Slavs, Europeans, Latin Americans, in my case) to talk to helped a lot in my later years, even though I did not know many during my first year.

Good luck to your son! I would encourage him to stick it out for at least a semester.

OP, leave it a little longer, but it may be that this university just isn't a great fit with your child. My daughter's former boyfriend chose a campus university and hated it. so dropped out at the start of term 2 and transferred. He is now in London and loving every minute of it.

Don't keep going just because you have sunk money and time into this - if he's unhappy, think about moving him to somewhere in the south so he can understand the accents better; maybe a university in a city (such as London) where there are a lot of students and so a bigger pool of people to pick friends from.

First few weeks and months of uni are hard, takes time. I was Northern english to London for uni and had the piss taken in a jokey friendly way of my accent for ages, its usually banter and is a good sign. It's the sense of humour.

Uni flatmates in 1st year are the ones you either get lucky with and are pals for life or that you have to endure til you choose your housemates in 2nd year. I had such loud and obnoxious flat mates in 1st year, one had a decks and blasted it all hours, smoked so constantly set alarm off ao whole building had to evac, got drunk and chucked stuff out the window. Randomly chewed up loads of biscuits then spat the wet biscuits out over the kitchen so by morning it was rock hard like cement. I'm 37 and still remember that prick 😂

Gist is, it takes time and it's early days for your son. Unis are full of international students with every accent under the sun so if he can try and shrug that self consciousness off it would help. And letting friendships develop naturally, it all comes. It is hard being away from home and family but he's in the transitional period, it's alsona good life lesson too that not everything is as you imagined or planned and how you adapt and cope is useful.

Has he had a look for a Russian society? He has to suck up feeling awkward and get stuck in.

it’s like starting school, you have to make the effort a bit. Friends don’t just appear.

if he really wants to drop out then fine but being in a different country with different people will always be a bit hard at first.

He should try to find the international student groups, it might be a bit easier to make friends with other who are feeling the same way

He’s an international student and should access the support and activities for them. There’s far more than clubbing, if you follow uni social media you can nudge him towards suitable activities. Encourage him to go, everyone doesn’t know everyone.

Can I offer a slightly different perspective?

I went to University and hated it. The people were nice enough - though I didn't really bond with anyone - but I really disliked the courses I was on. Not what I expected at all. My parents asked me to stick it out till Christmas, which I did - but I left in February.

My parents were supportive but clear. 'If you leave, you've got to get a job." Fair enough. I did. I was fortunate to get a job in the industry that my subject would have led to anyway. I felt I had three years' head start on life.

And, forty-five years later, I've been successful in my career, despite not having a degree.

If you're expecting to go into a profession for which a degree is essential - medicine, engineering, that kind of thing - then you've absolutely got to persevere. But if you're looking at the arts, anything creative, most Humanities, then experience in the job is as important as a qualification. So there's not much to be gained by being unhappy for three years.

I think the question I asked myself back then was 'what am I at university for?' And if the answer to that is 'because only a degree will lead me to the life I want', then you have to stay. But if that's not the answer, there may be other ways forward.

Sorry to hear that your son is struggling, that is very common in the first few weeks of uni even for students who are living in England before uni starts.

Things will probably improve as the term goes on - the social side calms down a bit and people concentrate on their course and course mates more.

Having said that, an unhappy teenager shouldn't be left to feel there is no escape route. I would be advising him to give it until Christmas say - or at least until the end of October - & if he still feels unhappy then, to drop out of the course, come home and reapply to a different uni starting September 2026.

And the accent thing? My daughter is English but went to a uni very "up north" (Lancaster) and she was gently teased a lot for having a southern accent.

She just laughed it off - there was no malice intended and it is just the UK sense of humour in most cases.

Please be kind

This is bad advice. He needs to check the fee cut off at his specific university. It was 5 weeks at my old university.

I think this is good advice for an older, independent adult with a bit of life experience under their belt who knows themselves, what they are good at, and what they want in life. After you have worked in a few jobs it is possible to make confident decisions like this very quickly.

But it’s not applicable in the same way to an eighteen-year-old who may never have lived away from home before, is very young and unsettled by his new environment, who doesn’t really know what to expect, has academic worries related to language, and on top of that is suffering from culture shock.

In the latter circumstances, it’s perfectly natural to feel miserable at first and take your time to find your feet. And it’s perfectly reasonable as a parent to encourage them to try and stick it out for a bit, while they assimilate. Feeling uncomfortable is not always a bad thing! We have to
exp discomfort sometimes in order to grow and develop competence and independence.

He should be able to watch lectures again they are usually recorded. If he needs help academically there may be support re study skills or extra maths. I’d definitely encourage him to access international students events.
The quieter flatmate sounds a possible friend.
Part of uni is learning to live with different people from different backgrounds and countries.

I do not condone any xenophobic behaviour, but pragmatically were I in OP's position I'd be loathe to send my son to a UK university at the moment.
The UK is very much on the side of Ukraine, Russia is seen as an aggressor and there are large numbers of accusations and reports of Russian spying and interference In UK politics and on social media.
To be clear I am obviously not suggesting that OP's son is a spy or a tool of the Russian state, but there will be many people who might think that he is, and there are likely to be fellow students who will behave differently around him based on his background.
As an aside my son is studying in Estonia at the moment (and loving it). Russian and Belarusian students have recently been banned from studying there.