Being a Fresher from a Working-Class Background at a Russell Group University
Tamsin’s Note: Hi everyone! Although the name and icon say I wrote this wonderful piece, it was really one of my best friends, and previous housemates (for those of you that read Belonging in Leeds), Emily Lawson. Emily is one of the best people I’ve ever met, and this story is one of the reasons why — she has such a wonderful way of talking about the world. She wrote this article to promote an event happening tonight, on Tuesday 11th December. We’re hosting a panel event around what it means to be Working Class at University — if you can make it, please come along down and get involved. If not, this article brilliantly encapsulates what I want to do with this panel. I hope you all enjoy it, and that it helps those of you that are also Working-Class at University feel less alone.
Being the first of my family to move away for university, I applied to the University of Leeds to experience independence, whilst still being close enough to my family home in Hull to visit on weekends. An hour’s drive down the M62 seemed like an acceptable distance to take my first steps into adulthood, but I hadn’t expected it to be such a culture shock.
Fresher’s week, a highly anticipated event in the student calendar, became a week of feeling home-sick and alone for me. Although I had expected to meet people from different social and cultural backgrounds, I was shocked by the lack of people in my halls with a working-class upbringing. After only a couple of fresher’s nights out, it became clear that I didn’t fit in with my flatmates or others in my block. Many had taken gap years and were able to bond over their travelling experiences; two of which had previously met whilst backpacking through Thailand. I, on the other hand, had only left the UK a handful of times and struggled to find things that I had in common with anyone.
Within days of meeting me, one of my flatmates had decided that I wasn’t someone that she wanted to be friends with. She made no effort to get to know me and surrounded herself with others who were middle-class and from London. At the time, I had not considered that this might be to do with me being working-class and from Hull.
My first month at university was far from what I expected: I felt isolated and struggled to adjust to university life. I lacked the confidence to join any societies and felt more comfortable on my own than with my flatmates. It wasn’t until I got to know the people on my course better that I began to feel like I belonged at the University of Leeds. The friends that I made on my course were like-minded and understood what it was like to grow up with little money. I wasn’t afraid of being judged for the clothes that I wore or because I didn’t own an iPhone. Without their support in this first semester I would probably have dropped out of university.
My second semester ran more smoothly but there were still moments where I felt as though I didn’t belong. On nights out I would get asked to say certain words because it sounded funny in my accent, which I quickly realised was not the ‘compliment’ people described it as. I distinctly remember one remark about how you wouldn’t expect me to be so intelligent from hearing my accent. As a result, I found myself softening my accent around certain people (something I had not anticipated having to do in another northern city).
I am now a graduate and have no regrets about choosing to study at the University of Leeds. I made life-long friends and it gave me some of the best years of my life but coming from a working-class background definitely came with added struggles. Although I never experienced sweeping discrimination, these small experiences can make an already overwhelming time even more difficult for a new student. Despite support being offered by university staff, very few of my lecturers (if any) were from a working-class background themselves, making it difficult to approach them about such problems. Whilst I managed to overcome the problems I faced, I am aware of other working-class students who have dropped out of university because of the isolation and prejudice they experienced.
Emily Lawson
