What's Happening?
Your child may have recently graduated from school to university after an exhausting final year. It's a time which is tiring, exciting and scary all at once. And not just for the young people!
Uni is different from school. It's much bigger for a start, there is less structure and a great deal of responsibility is handed to the students for their academic work, way of life, health, safety and recreation.
This coincides with the late adolescent stage of development in which all young people have to:
- take more responsibility for themselves
- work out who they are and where they fit in the world
- try to join the workforce or study for a future career
- develop more mature intimate relationships
- separate from parents as the first point of call for support and approval
So your first year uni student will be testing out new ways of being, and will be exposed to many new ideas, opportunities, people, experiences and ways of life. The extent to which a student tries out new ways is very individual, but it is normal to experiment.