The social cost of being unbothered

Bristol has a reputation for being laid-back. It’s part of the city’s self-image and the university’s too. Students here are supposed to be relaxed, unbothered. Stress is something you’re supposed to joke about, not something you admit to. Caring too openly (about money, grades, life after graduation) feels faintly embarrassing.

But the culture of being “chill” isn’t neutral. It isn’t evenly available and, quietly, it maps onto class.

To be chill at university often means treating things as optional. Deadlines are flexible and plans are spontaneous. Work is something you “fit” into your tightly-packed social schedule. Anxiety is framed as humour you share with your friends over a couple of pints. You “didn’t revise much” for your timed assessment. You’re not really thinking about graduate jobs yet. Everything is fine, or at least, fine enough to laugh about.

For some students, this performance comes naturally. For others, it’s work.

Spontaneity, for example, is one of the most socially valued traits at Bristol. Last-minute £4 coffees, impromptu nights out, “let’s just see what happens”. But spontaneity assumes spare time from studies and spare money. It assumes you’re not checking your bank balance before agreeing to plans, or weighing up whether a shift at work is worth cancelling for the sake of being social. When social life is built around flexibility, those who need structure, because they’re working or budgeting, are quietly excluded.

Most Read

Why Elizabeth Smart’s mother Lois wasn’t in the Netflix documentary, and where she is now

These filthy videos of the identical twins who do OnlyFans together are actually too much

LSE student wins pay out over incorrect grade that made her miss Cambridge offer

The same goes for the way students talk about stress. There’s a specific tone that’s acceptable: Self-deprecating, ironic and, most importantly, brief. You can joke about being broke, but not actually talk about money. You can say you’re tired, but not that you’re overwhelmed. Seriousness lingers too long. It disrupts the fun “student” mood.

This matters because not all stress is equal. For some students, anxiety is abstract: Grades or vague future worries. For others, it’s material: Rent spikes, working hours that clash with lectures, the pressure to make university “worth it” because it’s a financial risk nobody in their family has made before. But Bristol’s culture can flatten these differences. Everyone is expected to look the same level of relaxed, like it’s easy.

There are spaces where this becomes especially visible. Wellness culture, for instance, often presents itself as inclusive and apolitical: Yoga, cold water swimming, mindfulness, “resetting”. But these practices require time and money, which some students just don’t have. Stress becomes something you’re supposed to manage privately, not something shaped by circumstance.

Similarly, there’s a tendency to downplay ambition. Wanting a stable, well-paid job can feel uncool if it’s said too plainly and blasé. You’re meant to “see where things go”, even when some students can afford uncertainty far more than others. For those without a financial cushion, the future can’t be an open-ended experiment. But saying that out loud risks sounding uptight or overly serious; the opposite of chill.

None of this is usually malicious. Most students aren’t consciously performing class comfort. If anything, Bristol culture often prides itself on rejecting obvious displays of privilege. But when ease is framed as personality rather than circumstance, inequality becomes harder to pinpoint. Struggle looks more like a personal failure to cope rather than a position we feel when we want to rinse our degrees for every penny.

Being chill isn’t a bad thing. No one is arguing that students should be constantly anxious in the ASS or hyper-competitive with one another in the quest for a grad job. But it’s worth asking who gets rewarded for looking relaxed and who pays the not-so-visible cost of maintaining that image. Because when calm becomes a social expectation, it stops being just a mood.

In a city that prides itself on openness, it might be time to recognise that not caring (or at least, not appearing to care) is often a privilege. That there’s nothing radical about pretending everything is fine, if only some people can afford to do so.