Sooo sorry I haven’t posted in like 12 days (I know it’s hard on you guys), but I have been crazy busy starting college and getting lost in bristol repeatedly and getting lost in college and basically just being very, very lost (figuratively and like, literally).

My first few days were kinda a mixture of confused-ness, alone-ness and desperation…ness. I think I imagined starting a new college (in a new city) as being a bit like Mean Girls.*

*Except less bitchiness and definitely no corpse bride costumes.

I thought I’d go into my lessons ‘The New Girl’ but walk out having found my niche, with a few new best friends, and basically fitting right in. Obviously that’s an exaggeration, but I genuinely did expect to find a friendship group in those first few days and instantly feel like I belonged.

Of course, that didn’t happen and instead, I spent a lot of time at breaks and between lessons walking aimlessly, trying to give the impression that I knew where I was going and, oh, my friends are just around the corner. I actually had to ask one girl if I could follow her. Yeah, you read that right. Follow her. As soon as I said it I knew that was the end of re-creating myself as an independent, confident Bristolian and the beginning of being known as ‘The Stalker Girl’. Luckily, I’d picked a forgiving, and hopefully deaf, victim for my word vomit and she seemed perfectly happy (but maybe she was too freaked out to say anything) to give me the job as her shadow for the day.

And that was only the second day.

I want to say that I turned it around, I now actually have got loads of friends, and I don’t get lost anymore, but if I did, I’d be lying.

I don’t know how long it’ll be before I can stop having a little nervous breakdown every lunchtime when I realise I have no-one to sit with, or when I feel like I’ve found people I know well enough to hang out with outside of college but until that day comes, I have my Kindle and a notebook full of sassy, feminist ranty songs.

I’d have to say one of the highlights of my week so far was getting free (veggie) burgers from a church near my college. When I heard about this, I thought there would be like a little room in the back of the church where me, and the 7 other lonely people, were sat on fold-out chairs eating soggy burgers while worship songs from the 1990s played through a CD player in the corner. It was nothing like that. I swear literally every single Post-16 (and uni) student was in the queue for these burgers. The queue looked like a crowd waiting to go into a concert at Rock City and the church looked like it was hosting a craft fair. Bunting and all.

I managed to tag along with groups when I went to get my burgers (of course I’ve been three times), just in case you think I stood eating my burger, ketchup stained and alone. I’m not sure if that image is less pathetic than the reality, which was me hobbling, failing miserably to balance my burger, ice lolly and squash, while the group I was with disappeared further and further into the horizon. Yeah, I still haven’t perfected the art of not being forgotten.

I’ll get it eventually.

I hope.

In other news, I have been added into a ‘Gender Equality Movement’ page on Facebook, which is equal parts flattering and terrifying. I’m not sure what these people are going to think of a randomer skipping in, waving a feminist flag and attempting to act casual.

I so, so, hope that in my next post (probably in another 12 days) I will be able to tell you about all my amazing friends I’ve made* and how much easier college is but I doubt it.

*I’ve met amazing people but I’m not sure they want to refer to me as a ‘friend’ yet.

Stay awesome and stay Mean Girls-loving.