Graduation Day

Rewind five years ago. It's March 2017, and I'm in my room in The Courtyard at Hull University. I'm studying joint honours English Literature and Philosophy, and no one else but me knows that I am utterly failing the philosophy side of my course. And as I sat in that room, I wondered 'what if I had gone to Bristol, to UWE, like I was supposed to?' What if I made a mistake in choosing to go to Hull last minute, because the only reason I switched to Hull was to study joint honours, and I was failing half of my degree less than a year in. I sat in that room and I went back and forth, deliberating, wondering if I was a quitter for giving up this soon, if I'd be seen as a failure for leaving. And in the end, it came down to something very simple. Life was too short and the debt was too extreme to put myself through a course I didn't enjoy in a city I didn't like. That was the night I chose UWE Bristol for the second time.

I came to Bristol and to UWE feeling like a dropout, that this was my last chance at getting a degree. My parents moved me down South in the Autumn of 2017, five months after I'd dropped out of Hull, and I sat in the back of the car, squashed in with all of my belongings, nervous and scared that this time around wouldn't be any different. Thankfully, I couldn't have been more wrong. Instead, the next three years at UWE would be some of the best years of my life.

And five years on, two years later than planned, I finally got my graduation for my undergraduate degree. A week ago I returned to the city that I fell in love with all those years ago, that will probably always hold a little bit of my heart. I reunited with my best friend on its streets, who befriended me in our second year through mutual suffering in our 9am Romanticism lecture, and marveled that we'd actually done it. Against our almost permanent self-doubt and a freak pandemic, we had finished our degrees. I woke up to rain and grey clouds and thought 'typical Bristol', remembering dozens of other days I'd spent walking through the pouring rain in this city. I went to the stadium and met coursemates who I haven't seen since on our last 'normal' day of lectures before university went online and the country went into lockdown against Covid back in 2020. I donned the cap and gown and celebrated with my family and best friend. I saw my dissertation supervisor who stuck by me during lockdown and the final few difficult weeks of my degree and celebrated my success with me. 

I walked across that stage and I thought of my grandma, who died a few weeks before the end of my final year. I thought of the people I met and lived with while in Bristol, and how proud I was that we all made it together. I thought of nineteen year old Laura from 2017, who sat in her room at Hull and wondered if she could still choose Bristol, or if she was too late. And I thought about the university that gave me a second chance, who accepted me and played such a huge role in making me the person I am today. 

  
UWE Bristol, you were the best. Thank you for bringing out the best in me too. 


 
                                                

                                         




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