The A-level grades are in the bag, a university place is secured and so, some time this month, the innocents will be packed off to college. And innocent is the word I’d use to describe these young adults in the twilight of their teenage years. They may have attitude to burn, but beneath the bluster most are plainly half as wise as they think they are. And I don’t think we, as adults, are much good at preparing them for life away at university.
The six words I have said, and heard said, a thousand times to those facing this experience are as follows: You. Will. Have. A. Brilliant. Time. This comes from a good place, no doubt, but I don’t think this encouragement, part-command, part-prediction, is terribly helpful. We need to find a different form of words.
What they’re about to embark on is unlike anything else they’ve ever done, and anything they’ll ever again have to do in their lives. Never again will they be thrown in with a group of strangers with whom it is compulsory to have an enormous amount of fun. Yes, many freshers will have moved schools in their time, and in adult life we must break bread with new colleagues if we move jobs and make new friends if we relocate. But, in doing so, never will we be expected to have fabulous fun and games from day one.
The problem with being told you will have a brilliant time away at college is that if, two or three weeks in, you’re having a miserable time, or even just an OK time, you might well conclude there’s something wrong with you: you’re not cut out for it; you’re not as popular as you thought you were; and so on. Expectations have been set at such a dizzyingly high level – it will be brilliant – that it doesn’t take much for the experience to fall short of the promise. Your disappointment with your new life, or indeed disappointment in yourself, will be made all the worse by the sight and sound of everyone else – and it will seem like everyone – having a simply marvellous time. Boarding-school kids have an obvious advantage here, having been away from home before. But a friend of mine, a boarding-school girl from a very young age, told me that even she, as part of a braying crew of crazily exuberant freshers, was actually dying inside.
Over the past three years I have twice slipped into bathos in these pages oversharing my own emotional trauma as I waved my daughters off into their new lives. And it’s possible I’m projecting too many of my own silly sorrows on them and others like them. Having said that, soon after saying goodbye to my youngest this time last year, I happened to have a reunion with some of my fellow freshers of 1986. They all said that, overall, they had a wonderful time, but I was stunned to the extent they also confessed how dreadfully hard they found it at first, and long into the first year. And these were, then and now, among the most successful and outgoing people I know.
The trouble is, it’s not easy to come up with an alternative to: “You will have a brilliant time.” I’ve said it several times myself, having sworn I’d never do so again. Obviously, it would be equally unhelpful to issue dark warnings that what lies ahead, between now and Christmas, will be uniquely challenging and even traumatic. I think I’ll settle on telling them that I hope they make the most of it. And if it’s tough at first, not to worry because it’s tough for everyone, whether they show it or not. And don’t force the fun, because the fun will come.
Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster, writer and Guardian columnist
