The weird grief Glasgow students feel when uni starts again after the break

There’s a strange kind of grief that hits when you come back to uni after the break, and no one really warns you about it.

It’s not the dramatic, crying-on-the-floor kind of grief. It’s quieter than that. It’s the dull, heavy feeling that creeps in when your alarm goes off for a 9am lecture you forgot you were even enrolled in, when your suitcase is still half-unpacked, and when the flat that felt chaotic but comforting in December suddenly feels a bit… bleak.

Over the break, life slows down. Even if you were working, stressing about money, or dealing with family chaos, there’s still something fundamentally different about not being a student for a few weeks. You’re not constantly counting deadlines in your head. You’re not checking your emails in fear. You’re allowed to exist without your worth being measured by how productive you are.

Then you come back to uni, and it all snaps back into place far too quickly. Suddenly you’re expected to care deeply about lectures you haven’t attended in weeks, readings you definitely didn’t do over Christmas, and deadlines that feel aggressively close for a semester that’s only just started. Your inbox fills up overnight. Group chats revive with messages you ignored for a month. Moodle updates like it’s got a personal vendetta against you.

There’s also the grief of leaving home, or wherever you were over the break. Even if home isn’t perfect, there’s something about being somewhere familiar that makes life feel easier. You don’t have to decide what to eat. You don’t have to remember to buy toilet roll. You don’t have to be ‘on” all the time.

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Coming back to uni means returning to independence in its most exhausting form. Feeding yourself. Sorting your life out. Pretending you have a five-year plan when you’re just trying to survive the week. It’s no wonder it feels overwhelming.

And then there’s the emotional whiplash. One minute you’re surrounded by people, noise, family, comfort. The next, you’re back in your room, scrolling, unpacking, wondering why you feel so low when technically nothing is wrong.

That’s the weirdest part: the guilt. You think: Why am I sad? I’ve seen my friends. I’ve had time off. I should feel refreshed. Everyone else seems fine. But grief doesn’t always come from something bad happening, sometimes it comes from something good ending.

The break ends. The slower mornings end. The version of you that wasn’t constantly thinking about deadlines quietly disappears. And you’re allowed to mourn that, even if it feels silly.

Social media doesn’t help either. Everyone else seems to bounce back instantly. People are posting gym selfies, colour-coded planners, and “new year, new me” captions while you’re still emotionally attached to your duvet and questioning every life choice you’ve ever made.

But the truth is, a lot of us feel this way. We just don’t talk about it. We make jokes about January being depressing and carry on, because that’s easier than admitting we’re struggling to readjust.

So if coming back to uni feels heavier than you expected, you’re not broken. You’re not ungrateful. You’re human.

It’s okay if it takes a while to settle back in. It’s okay if you don’t feel motivated yet. It’s okay if your brain is still halfway through the break while your body is back in lectures.

You don’t need to reinvent yourself this semester. You don’t need to have everything figured out by week one. Sometimes, getting back to uni is less about thriving and more about gently letting yourself readjust.

And eventually – not straight away, but slowly – the grief softens. Your routine comes back. The campus feels familiar again. The break becomes a memory instead of something you’re actively missing.

Until then, be kind to yourself. Coming back is hard. And you’re not the only one who feels it.

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