Naomi’s story

Mature student, Naomi, had just started a five-year medical degree at the University of Exeter when she did a 1-day Grit workshop. A few years previously she had got a degree in Chemistry from another university.

I was seriously thinking of leaving. At my previous university I’d been at the centre of  student life. I had a great group of friends and I was never at home, always socialising or playing sport.  But Exeter was much larger. I had no friends, no social life. I wasn’t involved in anything. My timetable seemed empty and I was uninspired by the course.  I was nothing like as busy as I had expected to be. I had a lot of time on my hands. I spent much of my time isolated at home.

I felt removed from the other students on the course and I always seemed to be apologising for being older. As I said to a friend on one of my frequent visits home,  ‘I wear the wrong jeans. I don’t fit in on the course or the university.’ It was as if I was starting back at square one, as if I’d not moved on since I was 18.

Then, in the workshop, I realised that everyone else was struggling. I wasn’t the only one who didn’t have confidence in myself and my abilities. I wasn’t the only one who was struggling with suddenly not being the smartest person in the room. Medicine is full of high achievers and that was intimidating. But we’d all passed the exams and completed the interviews. We are all worthy of our place at Exeter, we all deserve to be here.

I wasn’t engaging with the course. I wasn’t in lectures 25 hours a week like before. I’d been waiting for someone to tell me what I should be doing – but that wasn’t going to happen here. I was expected to study independently. But now I saw it wasn’t just me thinking, “I’m not independent enough to do this”

After the workshop I went straight back home to my family. It was a very emotional weekend. The course fees and the accommodation fees were due so I had to choose, right now: do I stay or do I go? What is right for me in the long run? Am I the right person for this course?  And am I committed to doing what I need to do to make it work?

Grit made me start asking the right questions, had me reconnect with why I’d gone back to university in the first place. How I wasn’t actually back at square one, but instead had a whole set of experiences that would make me a better doctor, make me better able to deal with the stresses and the pressures of the course and of professional life.

I realised how I’d been comparing Exeter with my previous experience, comparing the final part of one university journey with the starting point of another. I was impatient to recreate my first experience, wanted to be farther along when I was  just at the start. Grit enabled me to focus on the present and the future rather than dwelling on the past.

What I needed to do now was appreciate the experiences as they come, appreciate the journey – making new friends, starting a social life, getting to grips with the course; going through the pain barriers of the anxiety this brings, enjoying the novelty and the discomfort.

I had to make the choice: to commit or not to commit to Exeter. And then commit to doing whatever it takes to make it work for me.

I came back to university and paid my fees straight away.  And I can tell you now, that was definitely the right choice.