DD Miserable at Oxford Uni

[MyPearlPoster]

So DD is in her first year studying history at Oxford. She has come from a very prestigious secondary in London, where she thrived and had lots of amazing close friends, some of whom are at Oxford now too. From the start she has found it all really challenging socially, calling or messaging in tears that she hasn't found her people and feels alone in her college which seems to be rather unsociable, unfriendly and 'nerdy'. Spending time with friends from home there helps, but she says everyone seems to have a core friend group within their college, where they've all found likeminded people to eat/hang out/study with - I think she feels somewhat like the odd one out for being lonely in hers. It doesn't help that her friends at other unis, many in the US, are having the time of their lives, calling with exciting stories and posting pictures of new friends - she really feels as though she is majorly falling behind. I have told her multiple times that it takes time and that she would regret leaving Oxford but it also kills me to see her so unhappy. Academically she is doing pretty well, but not thriving perhaps as she used to, and finding it difficult to concentrate and focus because of constant anxiety etc. She is speaking to a therapist and taking a low dosage of anxiety meds which have been recommended. I think part of it is the lack of structure of it all - she was used to having a big but very tight group of supportive friends who she felt very at home with, and as a family we are all very close too. With her humanities course she hardly has any contact hours and all people in her college seem to do is study...she keeps saying it's not that Oxford is wrong for her but her college specifically but there seems no chance of moving...I know people will say to get involved with extracurriculars and she does journalism which she enjoys but finds everyone there is more of a loose acquaintance network. Apart from this, she was never particularly sporty or into music and other than those activities everyone's social lives do seem to revolve around their colleges...she makes an effort with friends of friends etc but feels afloat generally and is often lonely.

@Walkaround They are not a super selective but are outstanding. They get some to Oxbridge every year. The stats are from the government web site. I guess they just don’t get the Sen dc there. From working in education years ago, I know most Sen dc are in the secondary moderns.

Hello everyone and thanks again so much for all the comments and advice. She has been doing a bit better I suppose over the last few weeks and now the end is well and truly in sight - just exams to go next week...it has definitely been such a difficult year bless her but she has a great summer to look forward to seeing lots of friends and very busy which should be good. She has kind of adopted a 'plough on and get through' attitude for the past few weeks and seems fine but I do slightly worry about as she does seem to have lost her sparky, confident excited self a little bit which for a mother is so sad to see. I have told her that she never knows who she might meet next year etc, and that it could all really look up, and she kind of acknowledges that as a possibility but seems pretty certain things will go on as they are. She does have a few 'friends' which is good but I was visiting the past weekend and walking around literally everyone in the town seemed so full of joy and happy in big groups having the best time- it kind of felt like stepping into her shoes and seeing how things really do seem to have just 'worked out' for everyone around her. I know she's old enough to get on with it, and as I say she is, and I should let her work it out but any advice for a mum who worries her daughter has just taken a bit of a hit by this all...

Well done her. I would just point out that, when you’re not in a group and it’s bothering you, all you notice is people in groups. They look like they’re deliriously happy and have everything sorted. It’s just not true. Some of them are venturing out in a group as a rare one-off. Some of them feel like hangers-on and are desperately hoping nobody notices. Some of them don’t like anybody in the group but feel they have to stay part of it or risk having nothing to do. Or the group might be a group of classmates moving from one venue to another, who don’t actually know each other that well. Or totally drunk people who picked each other up in a club and met for the first time that night. Your daughter herself may well have walked along the road as part of a group sometimes.

Yes, there will also be plenty of groups of good friends around (although even big friend groups have factions and fall-outs). But please don’t look at groups and endow them with perfect lives. Plenty of people in them will have their own unhappiness. All it does is make you more miserable and anxious. I would say your daughter needs to learn this lesson, but I don’t know if she herself is thinking these precise things. You do though. I’m surprised you haven’t learnt this yet, as you’re so much older. Haven’t you followed the many threads on Mumsnet about people feeling left out at the school gates, excluded by the “cliques”? Maybe you’ve always had a gaggle of friends around you and never felt left out. Well, I’m telling you, you’re surrounded by people who feel left out. Open your eyes to them, and you may feel less fatalistic about your daughter.

She is doing the right thing by ploughing on. The main thing is to keep optimistic and open to new opportunities. If she does that, this phase of her life will be just a blip. If, on the other hand, she brands herself as a loser who can’t make friends, and obsesses about happy groups who look like they’ve definitively cracked life (when, in fact, this is just a phase for them too), she will condemn herself to being stuck in a rut.

@Minglingpringle is right.

We all have a tendency to compare ourselves with the more popular and better-off - but there will always be someone in our social circle who has more friends and is more successful.

However - we rarely compare ourselves to the lonelier or worse-off, and think how fortunate we are.

We have to train ourselves to do this - to get a better sense of how our lives actually are.

It sounds as if you are accepting your daughter's version of reality, but it really, really isn't the whole picture!

She has won life's lottery - I don't just mean 'getting into Oxford' (blah blah blah), but having a first-class education, growing up in one of the world's best cities, being loved and cared for by her parents, having an excellent brain, having strong friendships at school and good friendships now... and she's now moving into the long summer break.

My young person, just a year or two older, has had life-changing health news recently and is grieving. It is hard, because it can't be changed, only come to terms with.

Sometimes life sucks, but other times we may have more than our fair share of good things (though funnily enough, we rarely think that that is unfair or unearned!)

It's so hard to help them, because they are adults now and some things just have to be learned, and sometimes things that aren't fixable just have to be borne.

But - what has worked for me, in my own life, is remembering that we have a 'duty of hope' to ourselves. If we forget that, we may fail to squeeze the most out of all the great things we do have.

She needs to trust that she will be fine. It may be hard, but she can do this, and she will be fine.

Some people are very good at the group mindset and just fit in to that very easily, it's second nature. Uni separates the wheat from the chaff on that - I was the chaff, sadly.

I'd exercise caution against the whole 'just seeing it out' approach. It can and does work but taken to extremes, it does mean you reach the end of uni and will not be in the present, as part of your life is given over to the future when it ends. If you shut off from life, you avoid the pain - but it is very very had to reengage with life because you can't go back and you are having to graft emotions on to numbness. There needs to be part of you still very much engaged with something in the current, rather than just sitting things out and biding your time.

@NewspaperTaxis I’m not quite sure about that. My DD had absolutely loads of friends at school - she boarded. Come university, there seemed to be loads of dc who already knew each other in terms of girls groups. She wasn’t asked to join her hall group for a house share in y2 as they invited dc they knew previously. She found more lasting friendships with some boys but, over years 1 and 2, the girls were more cliquey. Subsequently, apart from one girl from her y1 flat, her closer friends have remained the boys. Afterwards she did a law conversion course and the bar training course. Nearly all her vast number of friends, who are invited to her wedding later this year, are from school and her career post university. There’s a few from uni but a tiny minority. I don’t think my dd is incapable of making friends! Between her and DH to be, over 160 friends have been invited and they are all coming!

I think university can be quite odd in that when dc turn up with ready made friends, and they don’t need more, even the most gregarious person is on the sidelines! Definitely have to push through and @MyPearlPosterit doesn’t mean anything in terms of future friendships! A friendly happy person will make friends but it might not be at Oxford.

So another update - she has now been home for a few days. Her end of term exams were okay overall and she said she had a good time at the ball which is great but she has been so quiet and subdued since she has been back - REALLY unlike her normal self as she is such a chatterbox. Even at the beginning of uni when she was hating it she was very expressive about it all - would be very open and talk. Now whenever I ask her about it she brushes it off - often wells up when talking about it too much, changing the subject. She doesnt even seem to get the same joy out of seeing home friends as the conversation inevitably turns to how uni is going/new friends etc…The only thing that seems to help is reminding her there are only two years left but it’s just so sad that the whole thing has become more of a countdown…

Sad update.
does your D have a job or travel plans for the summer?

I’m sorry to hear she’s so subdued, but I don’t see why she’d write off the next 2 years on the basis of the first year. She’s in a city with 1000s of students, there’s still everything to play for.

I’d suggest some kind of regroup and strategy over the summer.

By way of example - many moons ago in my year out I went to Paris to get my French fluent. I signed on for an advanced French course & got a job in a cafe and spent some time thinking I’d made a terrible mistake. The people on my course were fine and we organised lots to do but they weren’t going to be close friends.

So I decided that the only option was to get a bf. I wasn’t meeting relevant men at the cafe so I sat down and made a list of every angle I could think of and finally got a job in a smart bookshop. I then chatted up every guy in my age bracket who came into the shop. Until I met my bf. Who was in his 2nd year at a grande école, had a big family & lots of friends. That changed everything.

In short, you can’t expect life to fall into your lap, sometimes you have to go out & make it happen. DD needs to strategise her social life in the same say she does her academic work.

OP, has your daughter had a bad breakup, unrequited love or something? It doesn't sound quite like not finding her tribe. Heartbreak is harder to get over quickly. Or is she struggling with eating?

Her presentation sounds worrying. I think you need to have the conversation to tell her it’s ok to drop out and start again when she’s ready or to try to take a year off. It’s not a failure and her health and happiness really is the most important thing.

wow I do like your style.

Please can you share any other examples of your cover problem solving. It's brilliant!

It seems like uni works for those who are good at small talk and making 'friends' ie hanging out in a nightlife setting, and also good for academics who don't have any hankering for friends like that and just swot, but not good for those in between. And that's the problem with your daughter perhaps, because school was very good for the inbetweeners, no wordplay intended.

And those friendships were as much about kicking against the system in my experience, it just doesn't work when you leave home and you feel on your own. It does work for public school types who are taught self-sufficiency.

There may also be a kind of grief associated with leaving school and school friends et al, it was very intense, those times. Like the line at the end of Stand By Me - 'I never had friends like I did at 11, but then does anyone?' Uni is just never going to compete with all that, its USP is completely different.

we have a 'duty of hope' to ourselves

I love this too, som great posts. feeling lonely and lost was also part of my life in the long distant past but I got through it. You do need to find your place and people though.

I don't think this is right at all. Given what OP has said about her daughter's schooling, she's had a similar experience to my DD and all her friends. They range from the massively swotty down to just interested in the nightlife and everything in between (sometimes both). Most of them are having a great time at university. The few who aren't are either doing the wrong course or have personal issues that mean they are struggling with becoming adults. That also doesn't sound much like OP's daughter unless she is struggling with being more independent.

Honestly she just needs to either woman up and make some friends however she can or leave and do something different. OP needs to get her to open up about what the issue actually is. I think something else apart from not having made great friends might be going on.

I was a bit like this. I expected to have great friends like at home. Didn’t get the right accomodation to meet kindred spirits. Felt a bit out of it all. I was saved by falling in love but uni wasn’t the amazing experience I thought it was going to be. Give your daughter permission to change if she wants to or to treat uni as a job with colleagues. It is only another 48 weeks (or so) actually being there so in time a year at most. It shouldn’t define her life. Live yourself first everything comes after…..

I agree with this. I think there must be more to this.

Her situation doesn't sound that bad - it sounds like she has some friends and she has some school friends at Oxford to fall back on too - just doesn't have the group dynamic she would ideally like. I don't think that would make a confident young woman like yours be like this?

I think there is something more/different going on.

Oxford do tonnes of bursaries and grants for travelling and to do fun stuff my dh and his mates thoroughly took advantage when at univ she should have a look into this.
Not what you want to hear but I was the same I just endured uni

I think she’s simply not enjoying Oxford University. It just might be the wrong place and not for her.

Well, yeah, it might be something you can explain like unrequited love or an eating disorder or sexual abuse or something - seems that apparently it couldn't possibly be anything wrong with a top-flight university, oh goodness me no.

There's a sort of cultism going on with unis, I've noticed.You better not take against it.

Check out some of the dodgy stuff going on at unis, they do come out from time to time, bullying amongst the academics, so on so forth. Not quite the lovely blissed out setting they like to depict.

I hated my time at uni, but it's hard to quit if someone tells you you've got the winning ticket. No eating issues, break ups, bullying or anything - just couldn't get on with it. Did okay in other contexts.

I wouldn't rule out just normal teething problems of adjusting to university. It kind of depends on her personality but if you have a happy home life and tend towards introversion, then being away from home without that security can be quite destabilising and being seriously homesick is very, VERY common - just that people hide it so they don't look uncool or a mommy's girl/boy.

You may find that things improve in the second year as she's got the lie of the land a bit more. Honestly, it's just about finding some friends you click with and you don't actually need that many. Best thing like I said before is to get involved in any regular meeting societies and clubs that interest her. She should go into her second year with that in mind and freshers week is an easy pit stop to find whats on.

Oh bless her heart, I just want to give her a hug!

It's such an amazing opportunity, but doesn't always pan out as expected. I also went to Oxford, and I also struggled to find my "tribe" for a long time - plenty of superficial friendships, but I always felt like I was on the outside looking in, particularly in the first year. Maybe she will never have the close-knit group she had at school, but that’s OK. As someone said upthread, don’t be fooled by the happy groups – not everyone is in one, and plenty have their own issues that you can’t see. It took a while, but by the time I left I had some true friends who I still see 40 years later.

It would be a shame if she abandons her degree, because Oxford really does open doors in the future, so hopefully she can look past the friendship issues and see Oxford for what it is - a great academic establishment with amazing history and some lovely surroundings too. Suggest she regroups over the summer, works out a strategy, resolves to get involved in a few clubs (not specifically sports) and college events….not specifically for the friendship opportunities, but they will follow as soon as she stops looking for them and focuses on enjoying a busy timetable and variety of life.

@CointreauVersial It only opens doors if you believe in unfair selection processes. These days plenty of Oxford dc are teaching and doing other jobs that many grads could do. Some Oxbridge grads I know have no jobs at all. It’s a huge mistake to think doors open without dc having a decent cv and ambition as well! Grads from other universities really can be just as good! Thousands every year were just pipped at getting in and are certainly not back numbers behind Oxford grads.

Just speaking from experience.... an Oxbridge degree still has that cachet, deserved or not. But yes, I agree, other attributes are very important.

@CointreauVersial With whom? The only thing I’ve noticed is that people you don’t know always drop it into the conversation as a mark of supposed superiority. Is that what you mean by cachet? Or the old boys network? Who you know in other words.