Coming back to Durham (again)

For a lot of people (so much that it’s a pretty known stereotype) Durham is a second-choice university. We are proudly the home of the Oxbridge rejects. However, for me, coming to Durham at 18 as a naïve, never-been-properly-drunk, far-too-obsessed-with-her-A-levels fresher – Durham was the dream. I had my college preferences drafted months before they even got sent out (I still got my seventh choice, but oh well) and I was completely obsessed and incurably excited. It’s hard to know whether the speed at which I matured in my first year at Durham was down to the experiences I gained in a university environment, or simply a product of my age; but nonetheless the time I spent studying, not studying, going to SNK, crying in my best-friend’s room changed me a lot, in ways I didn’t see coming when I was a silly fresh.

I had to learn that for some people the secondary school meanness didn’t go away; I had to learn sometimes people just aren’t going to like me (and as a reforming people-pleaser, that still is a hard pill to swallow as an old, wise fourth year). But luckily, I also had a lot of amazing girls that made learning those lessons so much easier.

The absolute best things that came out of my first year were the friendships I’ve still got in fourth year.

Coming back as a second year

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Coming back in second year, into a shared house with my friends in the viaduct was different, but better than it was the year before. I had a great house; I loved my societies and coming back after a full summer felt like coming home. But with second year, came year abroad planning, and with year abroad planning came a sudden and wholly unexpected twinge of sadness.

Before I got to the second year of my Spanish degree, I was set on spending my year abroad in Latin America. Even before I applied to Durham, I had it planned out in my head. When I listened to my course-mates talk about their plans to travel in Spain, just a short flight away from home, I would think to myself how unadventurous that seemed in comparison to the prospect of crossing an ocean and living in a different continent. But later I realised quite bittersweetly that at that point, with the friends I had and the peace I felt, that I was the most content I had ever been in my life before. And as my heart warmed to that fact, it began to ache, knowing I would very soon have to catch a flight away from the only place I really wanted to be.

The year abroad

Thankfully, my fears were for nothing, and my year abroad was one of the best years of my life. I did stay for three months in Spain at the start, which meant my friends and my boyfriend got to come visit and try the churros I’d been raving about. But the next five months, I spent in Costa Rica. There were hard bits, of course. The time difference and the distance did make keeping in touch more difficult, but it also made it mean more when people made the effort to call (and even visit). Plus, it was all worth it to say I’ve climbed one of the highest mountains in Central America and I boarded down an active volcano.

Coming back for the last time

So now I’ve been gone from Durham for a whole year, I travelled most of Central America, I had an amazing time, I kept my friends and made some new ones and now it’s nearly time to come back. This time though, it’s going to be different. Most of my friends have graduated and moved away, my family suffered bereavement, my course is going to get harder – but Durham is still Durham. Every time I’ve come back to Durham there’s been a change and every time, I’ve ended the year better and smarter than I started.  I’ll join some new societies, go to all the events, and I’ll leave loving Durham more than I did when I left the last three times.