Week 6 of first year at university, and why almost everybody hits it
It is the middle of November and it has gone flat. This is what that is.
By Ray Bickerstaff ·
Somewhere between week five and week eight of first year, a very large number of students have a bad fortnight. The pattern is consistent enough that university support services can predict the queue.
It is usually not dramatic and there is usually no single cause. It is flat, homesick, behind, and faintly pointless.
What has actually happened is arithmetic
- The novelty has gone.
- The provisional friendships from freshers' week have thinned and the real ones have not fully formed.
- The first real deadlines are close and the work is harder than school.
- The money that felt enormous in October is visibly finite.
- It gets dark at 4pm.
Five things landed in the same fortnight. That is not a character failure, and nearly everybody in the building is having some version of it while saying nothing, for exactly the reason you are saying nothing.
What actually helps, in order
- Go to the thing that repeats. Especially when you do not feel like it. This is worth more than everything else combined, and the weeks you least want to go are the weeks it does the most.
- Leave the room before midday. Cheap, unglamorous, works on almost everybody.
- Tell one person. A friend, a housemate, or home. It halves it, and hardly anybody does it, because everybody has concluded they are the only one.
- Do one piece of the work. Not all of it. One piece. Being behind is a much heavier feeling than being slightly less behind, and the weight is not proportional to the amount.
What does not help
Deciding you have chosen the wrong course. Going home every weekend. Waiting for it to pass on its own.
Nobody has ever chosen the wrong course in week 6. Week 6 chooses it for you. If the thought is still there at the end of January, that is a different conversation and worth having properly.
And the line
If it is not a fortnight but two months, or it has taken your sleep, your eating, or your interest in everything, that is a different thing and it is not something to wait out.
Your university has a support service. Find out what yours is called now, while nothing is wrong, so that on the day something is, finding it is not the obstacle. If you would rather text than talk, you can text the word SHOUT to 85258, free, at any hour.
Questions people ask about this
Is it normal to be unhappy in the first term at university?
A bad fortnight somewhere between week five and week eight is common enough that university support services expect it. It usually lifts without anything being solved. What is not the ordinary version is most of the day, most days, for more than two weeks, or losing your sleep, your appetite or your interest in everything.
Why do so many students feel low in November?
Several things arrive at once: the novelty ends, freshers' week friendships thin out before the real ones form, the first deadlines land, the money runs short, and it gets dark at 4pm. None of them alone would do it. Together they reliably do.
Should you change course if you are unhappy in first year?
Not in week 6. If the thought is still there at the end of January, go and ask your department what the actual deadline is, so it becomes a decision you are making rather than a bad fortnight making it for you.
This is one chapter of The Student Survival Guide. The rest of it is the same, at greater length, with the sources in the back.