"The perfect stepping stone between teenhood and adulthood"

The pandemic robbed her of the chance to sit A levels. But she ended up with three As and is now studying journalism at the University of Brighton (Eastbourne campus).

Here is her latest contribution.

"Today I turn nineteen, two years too old to qualify for ABBA’s idea of a ‘Dancing Queen’ but not quite the age to officially be in my twenties. If I am honest the day so far has gone down like a lead balloon (don’t worry, it’s only 10:30am), where after I finally mustered up the courage to pull myself out of bed and take a shower I discovered that the university’s water pump has burst. You don’t quite realise how vital water is to your everyday life until it’s taken away, and drinking yesterday’s bottle of stale water with my breakfast wasn’t quite the start to my birthday that I expected. With my parents coming to visit any moment now I really cannot complain, especially when considering that for most staying in university halls a visit from family at the moment is near impossible.

"I feel incredibly grateful to have a day to look forward to with of course my mum and dad but also later on some lovely friends that I have met in the past two weeks. Birthdays look very different now compared to how they used to. When I was turning eight or nine I’d be woken up to find balloons and presents and a special breakfast. By contrast, this morning I ate muesli in my pyjamas at the kitchen table with my flatmate, looking forward to a time when the tap begins to flow again. This is all part of getting older, and I really feel that I have been forced to mature recently.

"University seems to be the perfect stepping stone between teen hood and adulthood. Whereas I now of course am in complete charge of my own wellbeing, the option remains to leave errors like technical faults and issues to a member of staff in charge of my flat. Just yesterday I encountered two situations where I was terrified of setting the university alight, firstly with a tumble dryer I have never touched in my life and then when the cooker began to sound an incredibly shrill beeping, which I have since been reassured by many freshers seems to be a reoccurring situation for most. They say that taking this step in life is a case of trial and error, but if it ends in an error such as the flats going up in flames, I would rather live off cheese sandwiches.

"As philosophical as this may sound, life does seem to move very quickly even at my age. On Snapchat there is a feature that enables you to look back on photos you took so many years ago to the day, and even this morning an image from my eighteenth appeared that I genuinely would have guessed was taken two months ago. Before I know it I will be packing a suitcase to head home for Christmas, then Easter and then the summer and my first year in Eastbourne will be over. But first, I have work to do. And by the sounds of what we have heard in the introduction week, there’ll be a lot of it!"