Which is more stressful, first or second semester?

As the excitement of the winter holiday period quickly fades away and we’re all left with months of cold, rainy, weather, it can be a massive wake-up call to realise that second semester isn’t actually as stress free as people suggest. But between the feverish first week of Freshers and the gruelling exam season in January, which semester is arguably the most stressful? 

The first semester is a massive slap to the face. You get to university to find that you’ve forgotten how to cook (again), every lecture you have is in a different building and you’ve spent an unspeakable amount of money on cheap Jägerbombs. It’s an exciting semester for about three weeks, until you realise that the essays you’ve been ignoring actually count towards your degree, and maybe you should wash the plates in your room that have been slowly building up over the past month. Then, once you finally feel like you’ve found your footing again after summer, the dreaded Freshers Flu hits and the rest of the semester is spent trying to find various cures for coughs, fever and hangovers. 

If the first semester was a riot on the senses, the second semester creeps up on you slowly. The winter break feels so long that you feel like you have more than enough time to revise for those exams until they actually happen and you feel like you’ve had no time to prepare. With the weather getting colder, you want to go outside less and end up drinking more to pass the time. Mundane tasks such as cooking become unbearable, especially since food shopping means spending more money, and the exhaustion from six months at university turns into more susceptibility to illness. That’s not to mention the run-up to the second set of exams in the Spring.

But all jokes aside, both semesters can be challenging for different reasons and it can be both physically and mentally challenging to keep going when it seems like the stress is too much. Whether you’re feeling overwhelmed or completely relaxed this semester, make sure you’re looking after yourself. Checking in with yourself is imperative to not letting the underlying pressure of academia ruin your semester, and staying on top of work allows you to focus on other things- like checking your bank account and wondering where all your money’s gone. That feeling of disappointment isn’t limited to just one semester!