I am writing this for anyone who’s had an atypical college experience, and for myself to release this reality onto paper. I am in my fifth year of a four-year undergraduate degree at Trinity, doing my sixth CAO choice that I got by sheer luck in the madness of 2020. I have not loved my course, and I won’t deny that taking five years to finish it in a college I don’t like attending has taken a toll on my life. I’m slightly ashamed to admit these facts, but I’m working on it. That being said, there is no reason for me, or those who relate to this experience, to be embarrassed.
Regardless of what my tutor, my doctor, my department or my lecturers assume, I am the only person who actually knows the reason I haven’t graduated yet: from not completely comprehending college rules and regulations, to my mental health, to simply not taking the big final year exams (and letting my vanity dictate a long time ago that I would get my shiny Trinity degree). I stuck with my degree because I have no semblance of a life where I do not graduate as soon as humanly possible. My family sacrificed a lot to get me here and I have worked relentlessly to get this degree, so I must see it through.
We are all very different from the people we were at the start of our undergraduate degrees. I was a STEM student who wanted to try medicine after completing my degree, but I have since decided that would be too much work. While there is still a lot of money to be made in the field of science, I have realised that the laboratory just isn’t for me. I still have absolutely no idea what I want to do after college.
So I must, at the very least, finish my degree — a mindset I share with many other disillusioned undergraduates. Why I didn’t just take the exams in order to complete this mission is my fault, but I have my reasons. I didn’t attempt those exams, those huge, hours-long papers I’d been prepping for four years, because I couldn’t.
I stopped attending lectures and studying after I submitted my thesis. Much like my fellow relieved thesis-writing Senior Sophisters, I was completely drained. So I replaced the soul-sucking project with a slight tobacco addiction and exhaustion in its purest form. I didn’t emerge from my self-induced comatose state until May. I knew I was too underprepared to sit those exams. I deferred them to August.
Summer came, and I spent it healing and pushing off studying. I encountered situations outside my control that left me a financial liability. I moved to Dublin officially, ending a long chain of summer at home, where I was not working too much while getting fed and housed for free and studying hard for my resits.
Last year I went home and moved back to Dublin two days later. I fashioned myself a real independent, with a box room in a big house a friend helped me secure. After ripping into my savings with rent, the deposit, and a lot of substances to soothe my growing pains, I finally got a job — one I really enjoyed too. The pay kept me afloat, supplementing it with my savings, my guilty dad’s pockets and my very generous partner.
“That summer, I planned on keeping my job and just surviving, doing okay on those exams and finally graduating. All of this while barely having time to study because surviving took up so much of my energy”
That summer, I planned on keeping my job and just surviving, doing okay on those exams and finally graduating. All of this while barely having time to study because surviving took up so much of my energy. I was trying to thrive under the pressure of paying my way through the summer and having a really hard time adjusting to how my life had suddenly changed. My mental health, as I expected, took a major blow, and I did everything in my power to keep myself okay. The exams took a backseat, except maybe a week of anxiety-induced library trips that ended in failure. Everything was hard and overwhelming, so I overindulged on life and coped. I spent the summer with my friends and my love in Dublin, having entirely too much fun.
My anxiety was not making my brain explode in the way I wanted it to; instead it imploded. I was used to the pressure eventually getting me into the library for 12 hour shifts just in time, so I could do relatively well in the exams. This time the anxiety crippled me. That day in early August I decided I wanted to take the year off books and sit my exams in 2025. I figured I had a case for a medical year off books. I had to accept that it had gotten that bad.
I researched. I made calls. I emailed and re-emailed my tutor, and finally found out that I had way too many credits to take a year off books. I tried to fight it, hoping that they’d make an exception for me, going on multiple trips to my negligent family doctor, my therapist, and the College Health Service, trying to build a case that the Senior Lecturer wouldn’t be able to reject. In the end, we didn’t even appeal it: I was only given the option of repeating, or leaving with whatever degree I would get from all the work I had already done. I chose the former, begrudgingly. I was inconsolable for weeks. I had to wander through administrative hell just to get registered for this year.
“Although last year I didn’t graduate and I was scared about how it would change the next year of my life, I came out pretty okay”
Although last year I didn’t graduate and I was scared about how it would change the next year of my life, I came out pretty okay. I don’t have to re-do a Capstone project or assignments, just do those pesky little exams. I’m attempting to study for them in a way that doesn’t involve overdosing on fear for the first time ever. The support I’ve received from college has been surprisingly helpful, and I’ve realised that when you need help and ask, there are a lot more resources out there than you would expect. I feel better about my learning than I ever have before.
However, I came to understand that socially, I was in a pickle. The first day of lectures, I sat in a hall I’m overly familiar with and immediately felt eyes looking in my direction. They may have just glanced at my new face, or not looked at me at all, I have no idea. I did the sensible thing of making no eye contact and running away.
Online, everyone graduated. Everyone. People I went to school with at home, a lot of my Dublin friends, all the people I started college with in 2020. Everyone’s LinkedIn profiles boasting firsts and 2.1s, masters and PhDs underway, new jobs, graduate programs, and honestly, I felt twinges of envy every time I opened the app — so I deleted it.
Not being able to graduate on time has made me challenge everything I thought I knew about myself. Am I not smart? Am I lazy? Am I not good enough to finish this degree at all? Is my academic transcript bad? Being insecure about my academic performance isn’t something I’m new to, but repeating forced me to look it in the face. I have to answer all these questions to move on with my life, and for most of them I have — with the help of loved ones and therapy — but for some of them I have to just wait and see what happens.
