The following post was written by Amy Palmer, BILT Digital Resources Officer.
In November 2018, I joined my first Dungeons and Dragons group. And now, three months later, I’m leaving.
It hasn’t been an easy decision to make, and it isn’t one I’ve taken lightly.
I’m writing this blog is because while I was making the decision to leave something occurred to me – my investment in D&D was minimal compared to a student who had started their course and, three months later, decided that it wasn’t for them.
So many difficult feelings must come into play, which I can only imagine from my flirtation with D&D, and I will attempt to translate them in the following paragraphs.
The overriding feeling I have is one of embarrassment – I didn’t fully grasp the game and its rules; each week I am finding it difficult to follow, while others in the group seems to be going from strength to strength. Not only is the game play (read for a student ‘content’) not what I expected, but it is also filled with skills I did not expect I would need. Further to this, it just doesn’t excite me in the way that it thought it would. The idea of it is so much more appealing the reality. This must be the case for so many students who decide that their course and, further to this, university, is not for them. Many Bristol students are used to being at the top of their class and upon arriving at Bristol find that they are amongst others who are just as intelligent as they are, which can be a huge blow to their self-confidence. Pair this with a lack of passion for the topic and a struggle to keep up and students can find themselves wondering if they’ve made the right decision.
The next is a concern – a worry – that I’m letting people down. Guilt. Human investment in my D&D experience consists of the group I play with and my husband having to listen to me retelling the events of each week’s session. But for a student, there are so many more people involved – their family, the friends and schoolfriends they’ve said goodbye to, the jobs they’ve left to start their new course. I’ve wondered about how I’ll break the news to my D&D group members but there are just 7 of them to tell – I can’t imagine how difficult it would be for a student to come back to their hometown or country and tell everyone it didn’t work out.
Another consideration is the financial implication of my decision. Luckily for me, I’d invested all of £7.99 into my D&D career (a lovely pink and blue set of dice), but for students who decide to leave three months into their course they have already sunk thousands in tuition fees and that’s without even considering the living costs incurred during that undoubtedly difficult and uneasy period.
Regardless of all of theses worries and concerns – I know I’m making the right choice. Why invest in something that I’m not passionate about? It’s a cliché, but life is too short to spend large amounts of time doing something that doesn’t make you happy. When it comes to getting a degree, it is not the only way to be a success in life, and their time would be much better spend doing something they get excited about.
What I hope to achieve by saying all of this is that next time a student on your course is considering leaving, be upfront about all of these concerns. Recognise the costs, the guilt, the embarrassment. But remind them how short term these issues are compared to another three/ four years of how they are feeling now. For most students in six months, it will be forgotten about and they will be happier. It is so easy to get stuck in the moment it is hard to look to the next few years. Perhaps we should reconnect with students who left the course and share their experiences with students who are thinking of leaving – or share our own anecdotes of leaving something in pursuit of something to make us happier.
It is possible that the student approaching you saying they need to leave the course actually just needs some additional support, but we need to be open to the idea that university isn’t for everyone and although it isn’t a decision to be taken lightly, it can sometimes be the right one.
One thing I can take away from my D&D experience (aside from a cool, but now useless, set of dice) is that I tried it, and although I found it isn’t for me, I have learnt more about myself in the process.