So, as of next week, my university classes start again and given that the pandemic is worse than ever in the UK (when it comes to the number of cases, at least), I definitely have mixed feelings about it. Had this year gone ahead as expected, I would’ve been super excited to go back to uni but with all my anxiety about the pandemic, not to mention the state of my mental health in general, it feels like an almost impossible feat. I’m not sure how I’m going to manage it. But before I start thinking about that, I thought I’d document how I got to this point…

When the pandemic hit the UK and the lockdown went into effect, I only had two or three weeks of online classes to contend with before my final assignment, which was a piece of coursework. Once that was turned in, I was done, with only unstructured time ahead of me. As a part time student, I didn’t return to classes until late September so, although I’d planned to do a lot of things (I made a post about that here) in that time, I didn’t have to try and manage university alongside all of my anxiety about the pandemic. I didn’t have to think about university for a long time and since we didn’t know much about Covid-19 at the time, it seemed pointless to speculate. So I put those worries to the side and just tried to manage day to day (with varying levels of success).

When August rolled around, the anxiety about what I was going to do started to build. I’d thought about deferring but I really didn’t want to do that: I didn’t want to delay my education more than it already had been with years off to manage my mental health; I felt like I’d be at a real disadvantage in the second year modules, having potentially forgotten skills I’d learned in the first year; we don’t know how different things will be in a year anyway and I’d rather be working through the modules with people I know, whether that’s the case or not. So if I was going to do it, I had to figure out what felt safe and manageable.

Eventually I got an email from my university with some information about how they’d planned out the module, trying to balance safety and getting the best out of our education. My first module of the year was going to be 50% online and 50% onsite: the lectures would be via Microsoft Teams and the practical workshops – where we put the musical skills into practice – would be in person, although there were various different rules about whether anyone could actually perform what they’d written, depending on the number of students present. That all felt very uncertain and anxiety-provoking. Plus commuting to London (using trains and the underground) for only two hours of classes felt like a lot of risk (especially with the number of cases on the rise) – and that’s without considering the effects it would have on my energy levels and mental health and how that would affect my ability to complete the module – for not necessarily enough reward. It all felt very risky and scary.

I spoke to the head of the module, a tutor I’ve known for a really long time and have a really good relationship with. I wanted to get a bit more detail about what was happening, especially as it’s the module I’ve been most worried about: music theory has always been a struggle for me and even though it’s more about experimenting with those concepts in our writing, I’ve still worried about it from the beginning of the course. It’s the module I’ve always felt I’d need the most support and clarity in. Unfortunately, this trusted tutor will be running the online classes and not onsite at all – not that I’d want him to put himself at risk but that plus the fact that my two closest friends wouldn’t be there either only increased my anxiety. In what was obviously going to be a very stressful semester, I felt like I had very few people that I could go to if I needed help or something triggered a meltdown, for example. It was all feeling more and more overwhelming and difficult.

There was the potential to do the whole module online and at the beginning of lockdown, I’d refused to consider it, feeling that I wouldn’t get the education I had chosen and was paying for, if all the classes were online, especially when it’s such a practical course. But if I didn’t want to defer, my only options were to do the 50/50 approach or move entirely online. And after thinking about it a lot and talking to multiple members of my family, we decided that all the stress of going into uni felt like a significant cost compared to the benefit. So eventually I bit the bullet and decided to transfer to being a fully online student.

For a while, everything was fine – or as fine as it could be. But as we started building up to the new year, everything started to unravel. I always find the start of the new academic year stressful but this year has been a special level of hell. One example was ongoing complications with my timetable, which only exacerbated my already high anxiety and caused multiple meltdowns. I could probably rant for hours about the problems in education around mental health and neurodiversity but I won’t. At least not here.

The last week or so has probably been the worst, mental health wise, since the early days of lockdown: there has been constant anxiety, sickening drops into the depression that I’ve been carefully tiptoeing around since the pandemic reached the UK, and many meltdowns. I’ve also fought with Mum, which almost never happens. You know I’m in a bad place when that starts happening. My emotions have been very volatile; my anger has been particularly explosive. Anger’s not an emotion that I usually experience, especially not to this degree, so that’s been really hard to know what to do with. I’m really going through it at the moment.

It’s been suggested and even recommended that I defer, given the state of my mental health and my anxiety around the pandemic but I really, really don’t want to. I don’t want to defer and I don’t really want to do the module online – neither feel like great options, if I’m honest – but we have no idea what the situation next September will be and of the two, I’d rather be moving forward.

Today my group had our induction session, which was helpful. And it was really nice to see my course mates and tutors again; it was a little glimpse of normality, even if it was through a screen. I don’t know if I feel any better about the whole situation – I’m still terrified that the odds against me are just too high and I’ll fail everything – but I’d rather try than not. If get a couple of months in and it really is too much then I’ll reconsider but I have to try. I just can’t not try.