I just finished my undergrad degree! Uni experiences | Part 1

A few weeks ago I hit a milestone in my life – I finished my English undergrad degree and in September I graduate! The past three years have been some of the best in my life so far, I’ve learnt so much and not only in an academic sense. I have grown into myself and embraced independence (more so than I ever thought I would). A huge part of becoming independent for me has, of course, been about learning to deal with my PKU on my own. I’ll admit that before university I was hugely reliant on my parents for most things concerning my diet, not just for cooking my meals but also for little things such as arranging prescriptions and supplement deliveries, making my bread and even sometimes doing my bloods. I have so much that I want to talk about concerning university that I’ve decided to split this post into two parts. For now, part 1 is mostly going to cover my first year, the initial adjustment and how I found things before my dietary circumstances changed (from classical PKU to mild).

When I first moved away to university, I found it slightly over- whelming because as well as adjusting to being in a new city away from my family and familiarity, I was also having to adjust to tackling my diet alone. Although I had experienced this in the past (when I went to France with school - see https://thepkulife.blogspot.com/2018/03/travel-experiences-and-taking-on-my.html), this was different because it was now a permanent thing. But like most things in life, it got easier with time and now it just feels like this is how things have always been.

I feel incredibly grateful that my dietary circumstances have changed over the past three years, which I think has made this adjustment slightly easier (but I realise this is not the case for everyone). Although I am now living with a much more relaxed diet, back when I first started university in 2015, things were very different for me. I was still on a much stricter diet, living as someone with ‘classical PKU’ and still taking the Cooler 15 three times a day. At this point I was still eating a large amount of low- protein foods, such as the Fate bread. One of the tasks I had to familiarise myself with when I moved away was making the bread (something which, again, I had always relied on my mum for!). However, with a few practise runs beforehand (which definitely helped) I soon got the hang of it. I actually felt a little embarrassed turning up to my student accommodation and my new flatmates with a bread- machine and a bunch of ‘strange’ food and I was nervous enough anyway, but more so because I knew I would have to face the inevitable questioning. After so many years though, I think I’ve developed a knack for my explanation. Besides this, my flatmates were very understanding of my PKU and they later told me how much they loved it when I made my bread because it filled the flat with the wonderful smell of home- made bread, which was reassuring.

I think in terms of cooking meals, for me this wasn’t any more of a struggle than what it would have been for a typical student trying to adjust to uni life. From a young age I have always been very aware of what I could and couldn’t eat and which foods needed to be consumed in measurements, and I am thankful to my parents for that. This meant that I felt quite confident in dealing with this aspect of my diet. It was the actual cooking of the food which I found most difficult at first. Like any uni student, I think my diet mostly consisted of pasta for that first year and I sometimes would make a vegetable stew. I also used to get the Mevalia pizza bases on prescription to make up my own pizza, which was useful for when my flatmates ordered take- out as this meant I didn’t have to miss out.

If you are someone with PKU or the parent of a child who is thinking of going to university and have a question on this subject or something that I have not yet written about, please feel free to leave a comment below or drop me a message and I will be more than happy to write up an answer in the second part of this post. I just want to make sure that what I am writing about is actually helpful - thanks.