Dear Sister: University Life, Friendships & Heartbreaks

This one is just me, writing a letter to every sister who is stepping into her university years, or maybe already in the middle of that unforgettable chaos. Because honestly, nobody sits you down and tells you how much you will change in those four or five years. We talk about degrees and grades, but what about the friendships, the heartbreaks, the tiny moments that end up shaping the woman you become?

I remember walking into my first day of university and feeling my entire world tilt. Until then, life had been a neat, uniform line. School, college, the same kind of people, the same rhythm. But university? It was a whole new universe. I was surrounded by individuals from completely different backgrounds, different cities, different ways of thinking. It was overwhelming. I used to think, ‘How am I going to fit in here?’ And the truth is, I didn’t. Not right away. That discomfort, though, that was the first real classroom. It forced me to see myself outside the bubble I had always known.

The people who show up in small ways

The friendships I made in university were not always the loud, obvious ones. They started quietly. A random seat next to someone in a lecture hall. A shared bhutta during a lunch break. A walk around the hostel at one in the morning because sleep was nowhere to be found. These little moments, the ones nobody posts about, built the strongest bonds. I learned that you do not need a hundred friends. You need a few who will sit with you on the hostel steps while you cry about a heartbreak you cannot explain. You need the ones who will tell you honestly when you are wrong, and still choose you.

When friendships break your heart

Then there were the friendships that did not survive. The ones that started with so much promise and slowly turned strange. Someone I trusted became distant, or started making jokes that stung a little too much. I remember feeling like I had done something wrong. In our culture, there is so much pressure to keep the peace, to adjust, to not make a scene. But some friendships simply break, and it hurts deeply. I had to learn that it wasn’t my fault. I also learned to stop being silent. Chup rehna, staying quiet, only made me lose myself more. I started speaking up, gently but firmly. ‘This doesn’t feel good to me.’ And that changed everything.

What the exams never taught me

University wasn’t just about assignments and exams. The real tests happened outside the classroom. I remember a phase when I wanted to quit. I sat at home one morning and cried and cried because it felt like everyone around me had life figured out while I was flailing. I told my mother, ‘I don’t think I can do this.’ And she, in her simple way, said something that stayed with me forever: ‘If you run away now, you’ll run from everything. Just stay.’ So I stayed. And in staying, I learned to sit with discomfort. I discovered that I could handle more than I ever imagined. The girl who was terrified of being alone slowly became someone who could walk into a room full of strangers and find her footing. Every awkward phase, every late-night panic before an exam, every moment of doubt, was quietly building a resilience I carry with me now.

A word to my sisters

If you are listening and you are right in the middle of it all, I want you to know this. The mess is not a sign that you are failing. It is a sign that you are growing. You will make mistakes, you will lose some friends, you will question everything. And you will also find pieces of yourself that you didn’t know existed. Give yourself grace. The heartbreaks will change you, but they will not break you if you let yourself feel them honestly. And remember, you do not have to be the perfect student or the perfect friend. You just have to be present for your own becoming.

So here is my hand, sister. However bumpy your university road is right now, you are walking it just right. Every chai at three in the morning, every small laugh in a boring lecture, every quiet moment where you chose yourself over a toxic situation, is adding up to something beautiful. I am right there with you.