What I missed out on whilst too busy 'fulfilling my potential'

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Now that I’ve been home from my five week stint at university for six months, I’ve started to realise how much of daily life I missed out on whilst trying to be that ‘perfect girl’: 


Simple pleasures:


With my tightly packed schedule of studying and athletics training, I barely had time to breathe, let alone do anything vaguely relaxing. I assumed that a lazy Sunday breakfast listening to the radio and reading the newspaper was a luxury enjoyed only by the fictional characters in films. “How do they have time to do that?” was probably one of my most FAQs.  Although I was a little jealous, I always thought that I was the one doing it right; if I got my head down now, surely I could enjoy these simple pleasures later on, once I was successfully settled into my well-earned Good Life? Possibly, but why wait, when this might never happen? Of course, it’s important to find the balance between work and play, but if I’m honest, I think I’d rather have had one too many cups of tea in the garden over having every single piece of homework completed to perfection.   


Every-day tasks:


I’ve now found myself actually enjoying some potentially boring things that I never had time to do, such as doing the weekly supermarket shop with my mum on a Saturday morning, having the evening meal ready for my family when they get in and even emptying the dishwasher every morning after breakfast! So I guess in some ways, my previous lack of normal, everyday activities has worked in my favour, as I’ll never complain about having to do them again! (I’ll probably regret saying that in a couple of months…)


Life skills:


But as well as the simple pleasures and these rather unremarkable tasks, I also never really had the chance to learn how to be independent, which is something I touched upon in my first blog post. My dad sorted out my bank account, my phone contract and my cross-country fixtures, whilst my mum made my appointments and even booked me into the hairdressers.  Let me just make this very clear; I do not blame my parents for anything AT ALL. They were simply doing their best to make my life easier and to give me a bit of free time to myself. I would probably have done exactly the same thing for my child.  It’s only when I look back now and realise that I went off to university at the age of 18 with the life skills of a 10 year-old, that I see there may have been a problem. (I’m not even exaggerating- today when I was working on the till in Oxfam, a little girl came up and boldly asked whether we had any toy cats out the back. I was so surprised, until I remembered that it was only me who could barely even manage to order my own food in a restaurant until a couple of months ago!) 

So, why am I telling you all this? Well, I think everyone needs to be aware of the importance of the above things.  It’s so easy to take them for granted, or to push them aside as pointless, especially when you’re so focussed on achieving and succeeding. But I really do believe that anyone who lacks experience in (or exposure to) any of them, isn’t prepared for ‘life after school’.  Of course, there are plenty of other, more major things that prepare someone for university or the world of work, but these (especially the first two) aren’t so obvious.  Therefore, maybe just try and keep them in mind and make sure you’re allowing yourself time to develop in all areas of your life, not just those directly linked to academic success.

Harriet x

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