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.

But transferring to another excellent institution will generally mean starting in first year, and a further year of expense. It made more sense when fees and rents were lower.

We think of it as three years but it's less. I don't know how history is structured in the final year, but the teaching in my subject had finished by Christmas. The rest was for revision.

Not true at Oxford from what I've heard - beginners rowing is open to everyone, and everyone is encouraged to give it a try.

I think she should join a club. I have a family member there and they do climbing. They go away for weekends sometimes which hell. Most of his Uni friends are from there that I can tell.

Stay off the socials too, tell her. Behind those photos will be a lot of people also having a shit time at times.

That’s brilliant that you did. It was the right environment for you, it sounds like. For me it wasn’t and just made me very unhappy.

I really feel for your daughter. I’m about three hundred and seventy (or I feel that way most days) and I went to a Cambridge college that was on the smaller side (St Catharine’s) and was desperately lonely for the first term or so before settling in. I came from a Northern Irish grammar and there were plenty from a similar background, including a girl in my year studying my subject who was also from a NI grammar. But it was all so alien and different and I just didn’t settle immediately. I also struggled to come to terms with not automatically being the cleverest any more!

I also hadn’t a bloody clue how to adult - had never done a load of laundry and couldn’t really cook! It was tough - but I made good friends in the end.

I would also recommend checking out societies as PPs have suggested. That way, she can build a network outside her subject and her college - meet people she actually clicks with.

Oxford’s bigger than Cambridge and I feel it has a really different vibe overall.

@Walkaround Most non sporty people would never ever swan into a group of rowers! Just people not on their planet! You really have to want to row and non sporty people simply don’t! Why would they find this even remotely of interest? My Dd would have not entertained it. Why not golf or badminton? Why rowing? If you are not sporty you avoid sport because you feel completely out of place and it makes you feel inadequate all over again. As you probably felt at school!

This DD needs to investigate how she can be friends with her journalist group and look at what she might do with them. My DD organised a ball at university. Great event apparently (shortlisted for student event of the year) and great for cv. Students need to analyse themselves in terms of what makes them tick and clearly for many, it’s not rowing!

RE all the rowing recs - she did it for a few years at school and after two incidents of falling into the Thames I think she might want to steer clear for now :))) She doesn't have much hope of making good friends within college anyways so not sure how good college sports etc would be - probs better to join uni-wide things

Would you be willing to say which college she is at?

It might be worth looking on WIWIKAU to see if there are any other students in the same position at their college. There is loads of good advice on there.

My child has found friends through an improv group, and dancing.

Not read the whole thread apologies if this is duplicate but oxford terms are very short, 8 weeks, so time maybe runs differently. A couple of terms is only 16 weeks, not long given all the work needed. So quicker to have these feelings than at other unis, and less time to settle. Another vote for drama, it can be brilliant, you can go out of college to do it and there's lots of opportunity to join different areas back stage, on technical side not jyst on the stage. Being part of a show can be very and immediately bonding. If you get good at eg technical side you will be very in demand! Everyone getting new skills as hardly anyone will have had opportunity for tech side before getting there.

Slightly random suggestion, but would she consider OTC / URNU / University Air Corps? They are all university-wide, involve at least weekly meetings (with a lot of socialising) and weekends away and tend to attract fairly outgoing, sociable types, including (from memory) some lovely people who hadn't really found their group in college. No real pressure at all to join the forces afterwards either. DH and I based a lot of our university socialising around a combination of these groups, and had some fantastic experiences. They generally recruit at the start of each academic year.
She has my sympathies - so much of the socialising at Oxbridge is done in-college that it can be really tricky if you haven't met people you click with there. Could she try some of the more unusual sports like ballroom dancing or trampolining? Or if she is at all musical, possibly try out for orchestras or jazz bands etc?

OP I read your original post but not the whole thread. I identified with how you described your daughter's experience. I was at Oxford 20 years ago and I was miserable until I left, although I did stick it out.

The thing that saved me was that I was doing a languages degree and I got to do a year abroad. That gave a different viewpoint and I realised that Oxford was an atypical student experience and it just wasn't for me. The students I met overseas and British students too were not having the Oxford experience and were enjoying their student lives.

If I could redo my time again, I would have left Oxford and either not bothered with a degree or started over somewhere else, like Durham (my second choice). Or Bristol, my third choice. I don't know if the latter would even have been possible.

Specifically, the parts I didn't like...

1. The lack of contact time. We were left to our own devices without much guidance. It was isolating.
2. The teaching was poor. I did a CELTA qualification after Oxford and I found the instructors talented and interested in students, unlike my tutors at Oxford who were probably talented scholars but not good teachers. I only encountered one teacher who I thought was very good (a translation teacher).
3. I didn't have a lot in common with my fellow students. I found students to be quite cliquey, grouped around particular private school backgrounds, I also found some of them to be very arrogant about the world and what they thought they knew about it at age 18. I didn't see much intellectual curiosity on display but I did see a lot of arrogance. I hope this doesn't offend anyone and I'm not saying the whole of Oxford is like that. I was at one of the most academic college, at the time.
4. There was a lot of pressure put on by us the head of the college to get the best possible results. We had one on one interviews with her individually where our results were examined and we were told basically to pull our socks up for anything less than a first. I felt that pressure all the time, I never felt good enough. I ended up doing well academically but there was a lot of correction and criticism, and almost no praise or credit.
5. I didn't like that terms were short and intense. I felt adrift in between term times. I was told by tutors under no circumstances am I to seek employment or do anything else in between terms except studying and reading. It was isolating. I did have a little entrepreneurial side business they didn't know about that funded some of my studies, and I enjoyed it a lot.

When I did my year abroad, I found that students were learning in less isolating and more collaborative ways, and having experiences outside the classroom that I was told at Oxford I'm not to have access to.

Oxford is not for everyone, and there's nothing wrong with throwing in the towel. For what it's worth, I've never used my degree professionally although I have used my languages in general because I've lived overseas.

I wish your daughter all the best.

The "rowers" I knew had to get up well before breakfast many days a week and were running in the dark etc., they had to work out loads. The "cox" had to be a certain tiny size and who knows if that added to her (very debilitating) anorexia. It didn't seem possible to cut corners or do it by halves, and not therefore fair to blame the standards on internal perfectionism. I wasn't a rower myself, I'd sit by myself and eat a calm breakfast in the garden where I went (weather permitting) which was one of the high points, trees and birdsong. Most people, those from working class backgrounds included, know you have to make an effort to make friends, of course, but it shouldn't mean having to join lots of odd societies and groups which can actually add more pressure overall. Staying with your feelings is better psychological advice than rushing out to sign up for chesssoc, dramasoc, three churches and a term of rowing!

I don't think joining societies is dysfunctional or pressuring.

I didn't do rowing, that doesn't appeal at all.

Something I really liked about Oxford was that you could really find your tribe, there was an obscure society for everyone and no one was telling you it was weird or that normal people didn't make friends like that.

@MeetMeOnTheCorner - I have already pointed out my ds is astonishingly bad at sport and avoids any other exercise besides walking where possible, but he loved being in the boat club and rowing, because he enjoyed the social side of it and the novelty of getting to try something that would never be so easily accessible in his life again. The OP has said her dd is at a big college and that means enough people to have an eight’s worth of unsporty, social rowers. That’s the best thing about rowing at Oxford - every college has a boat club and boats, meaning anyone can give it a try. You don’t even have to try it for that long to meet others and make friends, if that’s your main purpose. Lots of people do try, make friends then drop out after a term or two. In ds’s case, despite never being particularly good, he carried on doing it the whole time he was there, because he genuinely enjoyed it, had friends doing it (far better than him), and it was sociable.

I don’t know what the preoccupation is with rowing on this thread - it’s cold, wet, tiring and very dull. 😄

It is indeed! But, for someone who is desperate for friends, all that cold wet tiring dullness is very bonding.

I mean, personally I’d have chosen to spend three years entirely solo rather than row, but I’m not the OP’s daughter!

As far as I can see the OP’s daughter has pretty much everything she could want as a student. She isn’t friendless and isn’t sitting alone in her room all the time.

She’s just a bit young and not quite able to let go of her school-model ideal of student life.

I do also think, as a few others have mentioned, that a lack of maturity and resilience is a real part of this all for her...she is young for the year and did v tentatively float the idea of a gap year but was so overjoyed at having gotten into Oxford that it was never seriously considered, now im thinking it might have been good for her...I think what she is really struggling to accept is that her first year may just be rockier/less 'perfect' than everyone else's and the reality is her crowd may just not be in her college, which is difficult but not impossible.

Plenty of people find that their gang is outside their College, for whatever reason and next to no organised time can be unhelpful, as your D is finding.

I assume she is really reading English or similar but that could lead to university society involvement in newsletters, politics, drama, Oxford revue, Footlights (if she is actually at Cantab), activism, Oxford Union, so many lovely things that aren’t easily available in later life.

Also, what summer jobs is she applying for? She needs to be employed over the summer as otherwise boredom will set in and apathy or worse set in.

Also, the people who are seemingly successful socially now, may well hit difficult times when they leave and start the world of work without all their mates and strategies to cope with that.
It's just the nature of growing up and maturing and adulting. And adulting always has a number of difficult seasons for sure.
Of course your DD has no way of understanding that now.
You sound like a great listening ear OP.

I think if she really talks to some of her friends, she will find that their first years aren't super perfect either.

I thought that way about a school friend I was up with who seemed to have a great college circle. But when I talked to her in depth she confessed that she didn't really like them that much but didn't know how to find new friends.

It's great that she confides in you but I would really recommend she tries confiding in some of her friends as well and their suggestions are likely to be more on the money as they are in the same world

Well the social side of any uni sport is drinking to excess normally. No dc can row without upper body strength and wanting to do it. I cannot see why anyone would recommend it. You can drink without rowing! No one joins rowing clubs , as a women, without an interest and fitness. You just become a groupie.

I don't think that knowing which College it is would make any difference to the advice. And would be potentially quite identifying.

I agree with this. That’s why I suggested she could potentially take a year out, altho that may not be necessary. I knew quite a few people who took a year out for different reasons - financial, health, health of parent etc.

So she’s young for her year and she hasn’t taken a gap year. For comparison: I was old for mine, so was 18 early in the A level year, spent a gap year working in France, and went up to Cambridge at 20. That is a world away in terms of life experience.

I was 21 when I went up. And that was after a few difficult years academically and domestically. I felt a world away from my peers, and the 18/19 year olds universally ignored me. It was tough. Eventually spent all my free time with my Cambridge boyfriend in his distant home city.

Looking back I can see that having just one solo supervision per week (and very optional lectures) was pretty isolating. But then I changed to a more intensively taught subject and didn’t gel with anyone in group supervisions either!

Hopeless …

I loved Cambridge and loved being there - but I certainly never gathered a group of friends. Kept up with one or two people for a handful of years - but I have absolutely no contact with anyone from my undergraduate years now.