First Generation Students UK: Mental Health Matters

Dear Ashley,

I want to start by saying how proud I am of you. Starting university is a big step for anyone, but for a first-generation student like yourself, it’s even more significant. I know you’re feeling anxious, especially with your starting a journey that no one in your family has embarked on before, and I know it’s very difficult. I am not promising you a rosy journey, but I want to let you know that you are not alone.

I was born into a very large family of 15 siblings, and out of this number, I was the first to make it to the university. Nobody in my family attained the height that I wanted to attain, and I was faced with a lot of challenges along the way, but one thing kept me going: I did not want to end up like most of the women in my community who could not live an independent life because they were not financially stable. Hence, I endured the challenges that came along with being a first-generation female student. In the end, I could proudly say my endurance is paying off.

I hope you have been inspired by my journey. Let me tell you something important: You don’t have to figure everything out at once. It’s okay to feel scared. It’s okay to ask for help.

I’d really recommend talking to Donna. She’s a mental health specialist who is also a first-generation student and genuinely cares, and I think you’d find comfort in her support. Sometimes just having someone to talk to, who listens without judgment, makes all the difference.

Finally, remember that being the first doesn’t mean being alone. There are others like us, first-gens, walking the same path. And there are people, like me, who are rooting for you every step of the way. You’ve already shown incredible strength by coming this far. You’re going to do great things. And whenever it feels like too much, know that there’s help, hope, and a whole community behind you.

Hugs!

REF: W-27062025-03

I have spent the past few days or should I say past couple of weeks reflecting on my life. The other day it marked a year since I submitted my dissertation for my Masters and finished my course. I remember crying my eyes out on the train home from Liverpool. I should have been relieved, I should have been proud but I wasn’t. I was filled with dread and disappointment, I had worked right up to the deadline. I ended up having a mini panic attack and crying uncontrollably in the library when I was submitting it, I was shaking that much I could barely use the computer mouse to click the submit button. I had been battling with so much anxiety and worry for months, I had gone through the worst few months of my life. Some days I just did not want to get out of bed in the morning. I was hardly sleeping due to worrying uncontrollably. I’d had counselling but in reality I needed more professional help with my mental health. Looking back at it now, I thought I was out of a bad place, but I wasn’t. I have only just really got out of that bad place now and we are a year on. I am not going to lie, it has been a hard year. I know it has been difficult for everyone, I mean we are in a pandemic and who knows when it is all going to end. But personally, it has been difficult too. I have been having high intensity Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) for over 6 months now and it has changed my life, for the better that is. I have learnt so much about CBT and most importantly it has allowed me to learn so much about myself, about where I stand and present myself in the world around me. I have learnt how to set boundaries and not be sorry for sticking to them. I have learnt what my core beliefs are and how you can unlearn these and alter them to be a more positive reflection of yourself. Most importantly, I have learnt how to be kind to myself. I will no longer settle. I will no longer diminish my achievements. I have put myself down for far too long. I am intelligent, I am strong and I am beautiful. This is what I have to tell myself every day. 

I have had countless issues over the past 18 months, issues with sleeping, worrying, body image as well as a range of symptoms of both anxiety and depression. A lot of this stems from events that have happened in my personal life that have caused me to have deep rooted issues with my self esteem. I feel like this is something I have most probably suffered with my whole life, it has always been there, deep under the surface and then last year when I went through a breakup, all of these issues just suddenly appeared and reared their ugly heads. I feel like it is something I will always struggle with but the most important thing is that now I have learnt to control it and that is because of therapy (I also must credit my amazing family and friends for everything they support me with, only a handful know the extent of my issues but I am so grateful for all that they do for me). 

I get it, the concept of therapy is scary. Having to just talk about yourself, your problems, telling your deepest darkest secrets and thoughts to a stranger is overwhelming in itself. It wasn’t so hard for me as I am such a chatterbox and really quite an open book. For some people though, it is their worst nightmare and they just cannot face it. For some it doesn’t seem to work and that is also okay. One thing I have learnt though is you have to give it time, you have to trust the process. It is by no means an overnight fix, not even a few weeks or months. Therapy is I suppose a life long commitment. It is a life long commitment to yourself and your wellbeing. It is a bit like a relationship in a way, it has its ups and downs, sometimes you make progress, sometimes you don’t. It is one of the most valuable relationships you will ever have though. It needs to be normalised, it needs to be encouraged and it needs to be more accessible. 

Having therapy is brave. So if you know someone who is accessing any kind of therapy/counselling, please don’t shame or belittle them for this. Having therapy is emotionally and physically draining. So don’t bombard them with questions straight away afterwards, give them time to recover and let them know you are there if they need anything. Having therapy is a normal thing to do.

All of this is only from my personal experience and no two peoples journey with therapy will be the same. Personally, I just want to be open and I want to be real because I still think therapy is something we keep a secret, something that we can be embarrassed about. Some people like their privacy and everyone is entitled to that. I know though that if therapy was normalised, the world would be a better place. If what I write here resonates with just one person then I will feel like I have accomplished something in the long road to helping normalise therapy. I am quite lucky as well as I have never had to be put on a waiting list really, I self referred myself and the process happened quite quickly but I know not everyone has this same positive experience. If you haven’t, keep going, keep fighting. You will get there. You can do it. Finally, if you are reading this and you can relate to any of my before therapy experiences then do it. Go to therapy. It might just save your life.

Thank you for listening.

Chlo x

(Written in October 2020 and published on my personal blog: https://chloelouiseh5.wixsite.com/website/blog/normalising-therapy)

REF: I-07082025-02

I used to think writing,
was a creative line,
drawn in the dark, in bed,
my nightly poetry spillage,
more heart than head.

Now it’s scraps,
held together with footnotes,
some citation half-remembered,
in the shower,
gone as fast as it entered.

I tell people I’m writing,
Even if it feels like stuff and fluff,
shredded cloth,
a head full of lint and filing,
uncatalogued.

I call it research,
I call it a project,
I call it something,
a working title,
and a deadline that tastes of metal.

Some days it’s almost a poem,
the shape of it,
a syllable here, a fragment that’s good,
tethered to my arguments,
the stuff I make understood.

There are hours,
when I’m as bright as a pin,
spine straight,
sentences unravelling,
like thread.

Other days I am all stuffing,
a soft hollow,
where a poet used to be,
trying to explain what I’m doing,
and why it matters.

I am still writing,
I tell myself,
just differently,
a thousand small pieces of fluff,
I am the seamstress of this stuff.

REF: I-29072025-0

for the girl who flew alone for the first time

You’ll never know
how long I paused before texting you “Good night,”
or how that silence held
a hundred unsent sentences,
each beginning with
“I miss you.”

You say I’m brilliant-
but I edit your praise inside my mind,
soften it, doubt it,
like trimming fabric that doesn’t feel like mine.
Afraid you’ve mistaken glow for gold,
afraid I’ll disappoint you
once the light fades.

You talk about your year in Florence,
how you learned to make coffee like the locals,
I smile and nod.
I don’t tell you
I tasted my first latte
the week my scholarship came through.

I carry a quiet pride-
for climbing hills no one mapped,
for speaking in rooms
no one prepared me for.
But beside you,
I worry my steps still echo too loud,
still sound unsure.

I’m not afraid of love.
I’m afraid of being
the girl you grow out of,
like a thrifted coat-
warm, reliable,
but never quite tailored.

When you reached for my hand,
I didn’t speak.
I was busy asking myself
if someone like you
would really wait
for someone like me
to catch up.

REF: W-17062025-06

I am writing to you from the future, first to say well done. You should be proud of yourself. You have worked hard to earn your place at university and that matters.

I know this journey can feel both exciting and overwhelming. You will learn a lot and grow in ways you never imagined, but yes, you may also struggle. You might have questions, feel confused or even feel like you don’t belong. At first, it can be especially overwhelming to navigate the university system, figuring out your assignments, making sense of grades and feedback, attending lectures, speaking to lecturers or even forming new connections and friendships. But I want you to know you are capable and brave. You have made every effort and deserve this place.

There’s a reason why you are in this space. You have already overcome so much to get to this point, Now it’s about settling in, reaching out when you need help and accessing the support available to you. It’s okay to feel scared or unsure. It is also okay to ask for help because you deserve to be supported. Just don’t let doubt take over. You belong here.

Acknowledge your worth, your strength and your intelligence. Your journey might look different from others, especially when you don’t have someone around to share their experience or guide you, but that doesn’t mean you are alone.

You have got this. One day, you will look back and be proud of how far you have come, just like I am proud of you now.

With warmth and belief,
A fellow first-gen student

REF: W-27062025-02

From high achieving to middle of the road
From celebrated to critiqued
Feeling out of place and out of sorts
Feeling like you don’t belong
Looking for your people
Looking over your shoulder
A community of one
Being on best behaviour
Biting your tongue
Oblivious to the unwritten rules
Unspoken expectations
Nothing ever being good enough
Perfection being the enemy of good

An imposter outside too
Nobody understands what you’re doing
Ideas above your station
Expectation upon expectation, piled on
To change the world
Blaze a trail
Achieve!
Carrying the weight of the world, the hopes of a family
An accent that is fair game to be mocked in there
But now you’re ‘talking all lah-de-dah’ out here
Who are you really?
Where is your identity?
Is it the victim of your success?

REF: W-27062025-01

You’ve made it here! To the terminal end of the ivory tower’s offerings, you have just started, or are about to start, a PhD. But you, my friend, are also about to learn much more than you’ve possibly bargained for in embarking on this terminal degree. As someone looking back (a privileged place to be), can I be indulgent and share one of the non-academic learnings from the PhD process with you?

PhDs are, by nature, very lonely places. You know something that potentially no one else in the whole world does. You definitely know something that looks like no one else has written down. This can be emancipation, vocational awe and terror all in one. What if you get it wrong? That’s a big question, especially since you’re a first-generation student too, it doesn’t feel comfortable to challenge the dogma and received knowledge that you’re the first to receive in your family.

But what if you get it right? What if you change how we work as a society? Or maybe you just make it incrementally, almost imperceptibly better or easier for the next person. I think that this is research, it’s almost always not big breakthroughs for a population (although this does happen). More often than not, your contribution will be a tiny sentence on the next page of the metaphorical book of all knowledge. But what won’t be seen is that sentence being backed up by probably 400 pages or more of thinking. Thinking that came from lost sleep, uncontrollable ennui, the anxiety, the paranoia. In the face of those forces, maybe one tiny sentence doesn’t feel enough of an output given the pressure to represent the body without organs, that is, the cohort of first-generation students at large. It took a long time to feel ok with this tiny sentence representing the achievement of all my “potential”.

Maybe, though, like most things in research, a bit of reframing and rearranging can soften the tone. Perhaps doing research and producing knowledge of all varieties is a bit like parenting. Most often, you’ll never live to see what it became. Did it live up to the potential you saw? How about what everyone else saw? If it didn’t, this is ok, all you can do is try to set it up for the best opportunities. But sometimes we all get it wrong, and being able to see why to do it differently next time makes sense. Just take care in attributing personal failures in the process.

So, fellow first-generation student, I’m afraid that, like all research, there are more questions than answers. How do you soften the tone? Is one sentence ever really enough? Why does the bar look so much higher? How does one remember all the names of the philosophers and what they thought anyway? Why must we write when it seems like we are in desperate need of a conversation instead of a drawn-out sparring match?

Yours in the best of faith,

A peer

REF: W-17062025-05

I planned the visits alone,
booked the trains,
walked the campuses
with questions I didn’t know how to ask.

My parents stayed at home,
not out of neglect,
just…
it never occurred to any of us,
that they would come.

Everyone was proud,
though they didn’t quite understand why,
watching me leave,
with “Her life is going somewhere good”,
shining on their faces.

Other families carried notebooks,
asked about libraries and laundry,
I carried myself,
my mental health,
and my achievement,
the heaviness leaving strap marks in my shoulders.

I folded my fear into my backpack,
shoved it down, right beside my notebook,
and under the resilience no one sees.

I was scared of getting lost,
no one I love had a map to give me,
and still, I went.

I could not, would not, complain.
I was lucky, I am lucky,
I was the first in line.

REF: W-17062025-04

I broke down in front of the library again. It’s silly, isn’t it?

I woke up, brushed my teeth, checked my calendar, shambled through my morning routine like a rousing zombie. I went to lectures, wrote down what I could, then rushed home to my part-time job. At the end of it, that left four hours for revision.

Three hours for the essays, deadlines and papers the faculty keeps setting us, and another hour for the exams at the end of university. If I got lucky, that left an hour where I was free. I should’ve been free. It only took until I went home, heaved my bag onto my bed, and collapsed into the pillows that I realised I hadn’t got the books I needed.

I couldn’t help but feel the violation that crossed through my body.

So there I was, bag lugged over my shoulder, the heavy weight a part of me as any other limb at this point, feet planted at the library door.

“Closed for renovations,” it said blithely. There was no mention of these shutdowns online.

I couldn’t help it. My heart overflowed.

I hadn’t realised I was crying until I felt a wet inkblot on my hands. I didn’t realise I was curled on the floor until a crowd gathered around me, a pack of vultures. A collection of hollow, smiling faces. Are you okay? Are you finding this hard? Don’t you want to leave? Are you not having fun? Are you good enough?

REF: W-17062025-03

It’s not easy being the first,
The first with GCSEs,
The first to go to college,
The first to go to university.

Your family doesn’t understand,
“Why would you want to do that?”
“Why go to university?”
“Isn’t it expensive, will you be in debt?”

And friends, well we all go our different paths,
“I might go to college or just get a job.”
“I might just get an apprenticeship.”
“I’m not going to university.”

So, you do this life changing decision, alone.
You submit the application, alone.
You pack your bags, alone.
And you finally make it to university, alone.

You make friends at university,
They’re nice and just as excited.
But there’s always a subtle divide between you,
They know how to ‘do’ university.

They know where the buildings are,
They know how to write essays,
They know how to apply for funding,
They know that you don’t.

And it feels like a mistake,
Maybe you shouldn’t have come,
You doubt your grades, your achievements,
Believing you can’t do this.

For how could you get into university in the first place?

Then the downward spiral begins,
You withdraw from your new friends,
Essays you were passing suddenly not reaching the mark,
Seminars no longer attended.

Little by little,
The ‘gifted and talented’,
First generation student,
Fails.

Perfectionism could only take you so far,
You must have known, university isn’t just about intelligence.
You have to fit in,
You have to have connections.

But you’re the first,
You’re the example,
You cannot fail,
For everyone else behind you.

Pick up those books,
Write those essays,
Go to that social you put off,
Attend the seminars.

And little by little,
You’ll pick yourself up.
Because it’s not about you, there will be more,
You’re just the first.

It’s not easy being the first,
The first to break the barrier,
The first to graduate from university,
The first to show the next that anything is possible.

REF: W-17062025-02