Humans of Portsmouth - Connor's Story

So, I am kind of from Hampshire. My parents live in North Hampshire/Surrey. I grew up mainly in those areas but I did move around a bit as a kid. A weird mixture of factors brought me to Portsmouth. When I was doing my A levels, I was very much adamant - I was like: I don’t want to go to University, I am never going to do it. I used to work a part-time job at a local bar and after sixth form, I worked my way up to a manager. I thought that’s what I wanted to do, like own a pub. But, because of stuff that was going on in my life I started thinking - is this what I want to do long term? When I visited my friends that went to university, I thought: this looks kind of fun. But I didn’t want to base my decision on this alone. In a couple of months I decided to go to university and study psychology because I really enjoyed doing it at A levels and I had found the topic interesting. A regular from the pub I worked at had studied Forensic Psychology here [UoP] a few years before and they said the course, lecturers and the facilities were really good. I think that had a bit of influence in choosing here [UoP]. Also, I visited the campus and liked the vibe of Portsmouth compared to the other places I went to visit.

[Why did you choose to do psychology?] Going to university a couple of years after sixth form, I knew that I am not going to do this for a specific career path. I definitely had certain interests but I just didn’t want to go down one specific route and then have to change. Initially, I was interested in being a prison psychologist but I was also interested in mental health treatment. Pretty early into starting the course, I kind of combined that with another passion for research into alternative psycho pharmaceuticals, focusing on the use of traditionally illegal drugs for treatment resistant mental illnesses. That took me down a whole path throughout my university journey and ultimately informed my dissertation. But, I’ve never really gone like: Oh, I’m dead set on this specific career role. I just knew that I had a passion for the subject generally. Surely it's going to provide me a better career option than just, like, owning a pub, right?

I did a placement year; that was a thing I was quite sure of before I actually started university. I even looked at studying abroad so I applied to a university that offered to study in America but I didn’t like the campus much and what the course looked like. I wasn’t going to make that decision solely based on the chance of going to study in America for a semester (which I am glad I didn’t because it would have been impossible due to COVID). When I came to Portsmouth, on the open day I learned about the chance to learn a language for free as well as the opportunity to study abroad in countries like Germany and Spain. The lectures would be in English and at the time I really liked the idea but COVID would have interrupted that. But I still took the opportunity to learn British Sign Language. It's just funny how those little decisions that influenced me to come here, still ended up being something I used - just not necessarily in the way I anticipated.

[What has been your favourite time in Portsmouth?] I’ve been here for so long, I can almost break up my experience into before placement, during placement, final year, and masters. The placement year itself was very unique. First and second year were disrupted by COVID - so what can I say? There were so many experiences. But third year, getting more of the campus experience and being more involved in societies were really the highlight. Ironically, my introduction to the Students Union was during my placement because I worked part time in the shop. I think there is definitely a non-linear way of getting into these things. But I definitely had some really nice memories of making new friends through societies in third year and then it was quite cool to receive student staff member of the year for working in the shop.

There was a moment in second year in our employability module. Within that module, there was a project option called social enterprise and you had to plan and pitch a social enterprise. A lot of this was facilitated online and I got to meet a group of 4 people through Zoom. We all had an interest in the queer community, with some of us identifying as queer, and we ended up planning a queer coffee shop. It was aiming to provide a community space. A lot of the time, queer spaces and venues in Portsmouth are focused on night time economy and there’s not much for people who are sober or maybe want a different kind of environment for socialising that’s not just about partying. We’d never met each other before, but once restrictions were lifted we decided to meet up and it was really nice to meet them. We stayed friends for a good couple of years and this was all because of a chance that we met each other and shared the same interest.

A more recent experience would be last year during my master’s while I was holding a committee role for a society. I really enjoyed planning events alongside the other committee members. I organised the society’s first skate tour. We went around to different skateparks and it was really successful! It was one of those things where we had the idea at the beginning of the year, and you just think, is it going to ever happen? It seems like a huge task. Previous years tried to do it, and it never worked. But I ended up making it happen. It was really just nice to see how smooth it went and how much people enjoyed it.

[Biggest fear] Even deciding what to pick is almost like a fear, right? For a very long time, I think there is definitely a fear of what other people think about me and I can be really hyper-fixated on people’s perception of me in a certain environment. A lot of that can be because everyone holds their biases and sometimes a pretty mundane aspect of yourself can remind someone of a person they don't like. It's a judgment and not everyone can put those things together. Maybe related to that is a fear of the longevity of friendships and relationships. 

[Is it a fear of being judged for who you actually are or for people not seeing who you actually are?] I think both, actually. There’s definitely a level of people who will always judge you for who they think you are. But do they give you the opportunity to show them who you really are? And then, do you also do a good job at being authentic in that moment? There are many faces that we have for work, friends, different groups, friends, family, partners and ultimately yourself. We know a very different version of ourselves when compared to what we display to everyone else around us. Sometimes you try to be authentic to that person but you also have to understand that in different situations, who you are might slightly differ. Then if someone doesn’t like that version of me and then I show them my authentic self and they still don’t like me - that’s disheartening and there’s not a lot you can do to change that. 

The more authentic I've been to who I am has led to more genuine interactions with people. Maybe things about myself or an interest of mine that I've never particularly expressed outwardly in the past has then led to someone actually being into that and really appreciating that about me. And then you’re like: Oh, I've never realized that someone could appreciate that about me. Being authentic to yourself is going to make people like and dislike you - that’s how life is.

[Would you say you are quite empathetic?] I hate when people say: I'm an empath. Empathy and sympathy are such different things and people don’t always remember that. When people say that they are an empathetic person, they’re usually just experiencing sympathy for someone. The way I think of it, sympathy is feeling like: oh that’s really bad, while empathy is when you can put yourself in that person’s shoes and you can relate it to a personal experience or something adjacent. So that’s why I think people confuse empathy with sympathy. For example, you can’t necessarily have empathy for a queer person’s life experience if you’ve never been queer or part of a marginalised group. You can have sympathy for it, but you can’t necessarily have empathy. But I don’t completely agree with that, sometimes it really depends on the person and how they approach it, but I think often people get those two things confused. I would say that I try to be an empathetic person, but whether I truly can do that in all situations is the different question, right?

[What are the biggest challenges facing young people today, and how do you think they can be tackled?] Without being like super doom and gloom, I think that the general state of the world is the one of the biggest problems. That's quite vague, but you can look at things like the climate crisis which is a huge existential challenge among many others that we are now so aware of, we are bombarded with it on social media. Social media in itself is a huge challenge as it is such a tailored way of putting who you are and how you interpret others and sometimes people really down scale their view. 

It's so important to be aware of world events and do what you can to make a change there. Change starts right in your community. Without being cheesy, there is no point trying to change the world if you haven’t made a difference to the people immediately around you in the place where you live. That’s where it starts, it’s like a butterfly effect.

There's definitely a lot of pressure from social media and that constant stream of information to do something about this or have expectations for someone to do something. It’s this pressure to be the perfect activist or do everything that people say is the right thing to do. It really just starts with personal behaviours and influencing the community around you. And that community can be a handful of friends or your local place where you live like your neighbours, community centres, local charities and organisations.

More specifically for young people, finances is a huge problem. Most people would probably struggle to get their own house without some sort of privilege of inheriting money or having external support. Even to maintain owning a property, that’s not achievable on a single income anymore, which then I think it pressures young people to be in a long term serious relationship because there is no way to continue your life without dual income. Part of it relates to the knock off effect from COVID and we are going to continue to see generations who have missed key years of development and education affecting their social skills and ability to communicate and engage.