Open question · First in family to university

You were the first in your family at university. What did nobody warn you about?

Nobody has answered this yet. It is kept here because the question itself is rarely written down, and a question that is written down can at least be found.

Why nothing on the web answers it

The guides cover money, accommodation and applications. The things that actually caught people out — not knowing how to use office hours, feeling like a fraud in seminars, the pull of home, the course chosen at seventeen — are described in student blogs written in the second week. Nobody asks the person who finished and has had five years to think about it.

Who could

Anyone who was first in their family to go to university, finished or didn't, and can say what mattered in the end.

What they would be asked

• What did you not know that everyone else seemed to?
• When did it stop feeling like you'd got in by mistake, if it did?
• What would you tell a sixteen-year-old in your position?
• What did it do to things at home?

There is no form on this page and no one to write to. If you are one of the people who could answer, the situation page says where people like you already gather. About this site.