Moving away to uni felt scary, but I wouldn’t change it for the world

Should you move to a different city for uni or your first job?

I was itching to leave the town I grew up in. I had a loving family, great friends, a beach within walking distance, and yet I was desperate to know how it felt to be on my own. I think I wanted life to start: To pull away my safety net and see if I could tightrope my way through life’s unsteadying moments.

I got my wish, in the form of a place at Charles Sturt University, Bathurst — three hours from my home on Sydney’s northern beaches.

Cayla Dengate and her besties from first year university in Bathurst (clockwise from bottom left) Mik, Michelle, Casey and Cayla.

The thought of a new start propelled me through those languid summer holidays after high school. I imagined myself, freshly independent, doing grown-up university things like drinking wine and talking philosophy with professors. So I was totally blindsided by the fear I felt the moment my parents said goodbye to me in the Bathurst residential carpark. They drove off, leaving me in this unfamiliar, sweltering bush environment, a dorm full of strangers unloading stuffed toys and cask wine in equal amounts into their tiny rooms.

Hiding tears, I hurried to my own little room and shut the door. I sat on the bed, half hyperventilating, and noticed a piece of vulgar graffiti telling the world what Lucy and Scott did in it circa 1999. I stood. I pulled out a pen to sketch but my hands shook. I grabbed my guitar and strummed a chord — anything to calm down.

It was a that point I realised my window was open, and a grinning face had popped his head through my curtains. This random guy had a devilish grin and farm boy stubble in a high school jersey with what looked like a tomato sauce stain.

“Play Jessie’s Girl” he said, gesturing to my guitar. I didn’t even know the song. How the hell was I going to fit in here?

The guy in question turned out to be a great buddy of mine. By third year, he would wander over to the house I shared with my three besties, and we’d nurse instant coffees, swapping uni bar stories from the night before.

“I found three other women who would become my best friends. My bridesmaids.” (From left) Cayla with her Bathurst uni mates Michelle, Kasey and Mik.

It’s funny to think of a time when he was a stranger. During that moment of panic, if I had wandered down the rabbit warren hallway of the dorm, I’d find three other women who were unpacking their own belongings, who would become my best friends. My bridesmaids. My guides through this world. The people I text when something funny happens; who I cry with when my world falls apart.

Moving away to study felt scary because I didn’t have my support network, but when you are vulnerable, you are open to making stronger friendships than you ever knew possible.

I think back to first term of first year of university as the wildest, happiest few months of my life. Tackling imposter syndrome in the lecture hall by day then learning to let go of (most of) my inhibitions at the uni bar at night. Forming tight friendships. Road trips to each other’s family houses. Group work that turned into dinner, drinks and dress-ups. Late night Maccas drive-through and the juiciest gossip you’ve ever heard.

That little room that Lucy and Scott once defaced became the site of endless hours of conversation, of pranks, of genuinely falling for someone who liked me back. Of tears and laughter and epiphanies and sure, there was probably some study in there, too.

I formed my own family in Bathurst. So when I was offered my first real job just shy of graduation – in a completely new city – I jumped at the chance to do it all again.

Knowing no one, my work team became my guides in this intimidating professional world. We were all a few years out of home, figuring out what we wanted in careers and life partners.

How different would those years be if I stayed on the northern beaches for uni and my first job? Sure, I would have eaten better, and washing machines would have mangled fewer of my clothes, but those endless hours — spent lazing on the village green before lectures, lining up to eat dinner at the dining hall, watching TV on a Tuesday night — none of that idle time would have happened.

I probably would have been friends with people just like me. Not “Halfie”, the sheep farmer’s son, or Michelle the sassy cool girl who pointed out on day one that she was the only Asian person in the whole dorm. I would never have sung Mariah Carey in Kasey’s beat-up old car, never curled up next to Marika to watch Sex and the City reruns. And if I didn’t have those intense friendships, I would have missed the beautiful, chaotic complexities of life.

Ironically, I now live within a block of the house I grew up in. That beach and family and friends I was so keen to move away from? I see it all every day, and I love it. The more I experienced, the more I realised how truly lucky I was to always be surrounded by the people I love. And that knowledge is the most valuable thing I learnt at uni.

Cayla Dengate is a writer and careers expert.

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