OP,
You daughter sounds pretty normal to me. She will probably be fine. But she may not be, and you need to provide watchful support. My DD coped with a pretty tough gap year, working in both France and the US, yet struggled when faced with the flat mates she was allocated. Looking at it in hindsight, it was probably one alpha character who took against DD, with none of the rest strong enough, or aware enough, to stand up for her.
Soooo:
- It was a mistake for her not to come home in her first term. She needed chances to be back in familiar surroundings to re-boot her self esteem and gain some perspective;
- She should have taken advice, from me, from her senior resident and from an older friend, to move flats. She had not really experienced bullying of this type before and believed she could win people over, so was unwilling to quit;
- I listened, a lot. She needed to offload her distress. I absorbed it. It was awful. It turned out that having offloaded on me she was able to keep up appearances at Uni, so sports friends had little idea of how unhappy she was, and the boys in her flat were pretty oblivious until they saw her packing to move out. I would gently try to suggest that things could not carry on, and that she needed to move, and about 4 months in, I phoned the accomodation office annonymously to find out what the process was. (She does not know this.) If this is over-involvement so be it.
- I discussed the problems with her elder brother. About 5 months in she was in real distress, and following a long conversation he had with her, he told me I needed to go down. I looked after her for a weekend, the senior resident stepped in and sorted out an emergency move, and one of her subject tutors (her course did not have personal tutors) went above and beyond.
She got through it, and there are no reasons why the problems of last year should repeat themselves. But that is because she is resilient, not because she is weak. And because I and others were ready to step in to support.
And yes, I am very aware of the standard MN line that you are a complete failure as a parent if your DC dont have a whizzy time at University. No, our DC are away from home, on a demanding course (DD was also on a more vocational course with lots of early starts and placements), sharing with 11 strangers, and sleep deprived as others will have turned nocturnal. Things will go wrong for some of them, socially, academically, financially or health-wise, and without established support networks at Uni, they will need to turn to existing networks from home.
Or a favourite. A friend's sociable and popular son had obviously overdone it at freshers week, and though he was the third to go to University, her instincts were that something was very wrong. In a phonecall he appeared to have lost all orientation, ie where he was, what day and time it was and so on. She got straight on a train, and stayed several days helping him reestablish sleeping and eating patterns. It is very out of character for her, but I think you should not question a mother's instincts. Its several years ago now, but he apparently was relieved to see her, and has clearly forgiven her if indeed there was anything to forgive.