Dropping out of Leeds was the best thing I ever did

Your mental health is more important than a degree


It was in second year that I really started to feel my health was going down hill. Within a couple of months of starting the term I was already behind by an entire module. Having doctors appointments every week to talk about the fact that I hated my life made me hate myself even more, but I carried on.

One thing that worried me was money, so I decided to get a part time job. I thought 16 hours a week or so would just help me out that little bit. It started off that way and I was happy, but slowly it slipped to 20, then 25 hours, and slowly even further. But the consequences for missing work were higher than the consequences for missing Uni, so I forced myself to go, and would then be so exhausted that I couldn’t go to Uni the next day.

I struggled on with my course until a little before Christmas, where my motivation dropped. I couldn’t do anything to drag myself out of bed and take myself to uni. I couldn’t bring myself to even get out of bed to do my uni work. I started to spend the days in bed to avoid going in and try my best to go out and drink to make myself feel better in the evenings.

The author on a night out

It was after Christmas that everything seemed to just crumble. I came back from my holidays visiting my family in Cornwall, and after a year and a half of moving away I finally started to feel homesick. I’d have given anything to get back on a Megabus for nine hours to just be back with my family. It was as if they’d stitched up the hole that my depression had drilled into me, and I had some motivation for a short while.

My motivation just disappeared

The motivation stayed until I got a letter in the post about my poor attendance, stating that it was 28.6 per cent and unacceptable. I was invited in for an attendance meeting. Ironically, I didn’t go to the meeting.

I didn’t go into uni for the first day of term, I just laid in bed wide awake the night before, and couldn’t face seeing anyone on that first day back. I then started slipping into the routine of missing lecture after lecture, and soon I was getting phone calls from the uni asking where I had been and saying they were going to need to issue an attendance warning if I didn’t start turning up for classes.

A&E is a difficult place to be when it comes to mental illness

By the end of January I had got so poorly that I was now seeing and hearing people that weren’t there. It was worrying my housemates and my work colleagues to the point where I had a meltdown on shift. The other staff member had to close for a few hours while they looked after the blubbering mess that I had turned into in the back of the shop. They ordered me a taxi to go into A&E.

Feeling like a pin cushion in A&E

The trip to A&E wasn’t fun at all, being poked at with needles and having everything they could think of checked upon. They then told me to stay in a separate waiting area so that I could sit and wait for the psychiatric team to turn up. What they estimated as a hour hour wait turned into a five hour wait, and it wasn’t until 5.15am that the Psychiatric team turned up to have a chat with me. After a short chat, they smiled, told me I was fine and sent me home.

After receiving a mark of 43 on one of my modules I rang my mum up crying, not knowing what to do, I made a final decision: uni wasn’t for me. If I can’t keep up with the work in second year, how on earth am I going to keep up with the work in third year?

Deciding to actually drop out was the best choice that I made

After making that decision and going into uni for the first time in well over a month to talk about it with my tutor, I then ended up leaving my job because – even without the stress of studies – I was still incredibly poorly and couldn’t cope with anything.

The fact that my boss wasn’t very supportive about my decision to leave didn’t help, and actually made me feel worse about my decision. After leaving I started to spiral again, back into the pattern of drinking, suicidal thoughts and hating myself.

Dressing up as a pirate and getting drunk felt a lot more important than admitting I was ill

Having a supportive Mum made everything better

It wasn’t until recently when I had a long talk with my mum that I decided finally what’s going to happen. I explained what had been going on and she offered for me to move back home. As much as thinking of the move made me feel like I’d failed, I was constantly reminded that I need to put myself first for once, and look after my health.

The main thing that I’ve learnt from my experience in Leeds and at uni while struggling with Depression and Anxiety is that you shouldn’t be afraid to give your health priority. There’s no need to feel like a failure if you encounter something that you can’t do.

If you can’t finish uni, you’re not alone

University isn’t for everyone, and it took a while to learn that. I’m starting to find comfort in being myself, and actually beginning to like myself again.