Humans of UP: Everyone has a story

Pulling inspiration from Humans of New York, PDBY reaches out to UP students to hear about their lives as students. Check out Issue 2’s ‘Human of UP’ Tanatswa Dendere.

“I’m studying a BSc in Computer Science. When I was younger, I wanted to be a doctor, specifically a paediatrician. I love working with children. As I grew older though, the more I began to understand the realities of my dream, the less appealing it became to me. My IT teacher at school, was one of the best teachers I’ve ever had. She recognised how good I was at IT and that I have a really good problem-solving brain, and encouraged me to pursue a career in IT.

I was in first year in 2019, before the pandemic. I really struggled to make friends in first year. I think I had this idea of what my friendship group would look like: something straight out of Grownish. But that wasn’t the case. I never really struggled to make friends in school, so it was a bit of a shock and really hard to navigate. I think I was just so rigid about the idea I had of what my friend group would be like, and when I met them so close to O-Week I felt so lucky, that once I started to not feel so welcome, I
really struggled to separate from them. I faced a lot of misogynistic comments. I went to an all-girls school, and I had never really been in a friendship group with guys, so there was a lot of getting used to. Apparently, these misogynistic comments are quite common, even at school. I had no idea. That was something I guess I had to learn socially, even for the industry world going forward, so looking back I’m glad it happened. After that I didn’t necessarily put pressure on myself to find a group of friends. My friendships now are more individual connections that I have with certain people, which for me, is a lot more satisfying and easier to manage.

I was 50/50 about studying online. On the plus side, I really like being at home, I like spending time with my family and my brother, so that was nice. But I think what I’ve come to realise is that being alone and just being 3ft away from your bed and your desk and the place you take tests can take a really bad toll on your mental health. Rather than working from home, it started to feel like living at work. I’m in my third year, this year, but only for the first half of the year. Last year, I took a break and only really did school in the second semester. It was a mental health break that was incredibly needed. When the pandemic happened, I was fine for the most part, but I was always trying to do something, and I think I just became really burnt out. My mental health really took a knock and my family, and the rest of my support system advised me that yes, I want a degree but at what cost? So, apart from continuing the one-year module that I had, I took a break. I stopped waking up with an alarm, I did a lot of painting, nothing great, started playing the guitar again, listened to different artists and tried being more present with my friends and family, which was hard at times. When you’re in that space your instinct is just to kind of shut yourself off because you feel so unlike yourself. But I just forced myself to go out and be with my friends or even just call them. For me what was really big was just becoming grounded again.

One of my happiest moments at university was when I found out I got into Golden Key. I had been crying the night before about how bad my marks were looking, so it was such an amazing pick me-up. Funny enough, my real happiest moment also had a sad start. I was supposed to be going out with a guy, but he bailed on me. I was so sad, but my friends convinced me to go to a lip-syncing night at our residence. I went up there, and lip-synced ‘Baby’ by Justin Bieber. I completely got into the song, the dance moves. I was performing on that stage! The crowd was cheering so much. And I was just so happy! I really liked the guy, but in that moment, I completely forgot about him.

I think being in university, sometimes it’s a bubble, you can get so sucked up into going to lectures, doing assignments, doing all this stuff that the dream kind of fades. Something that I always go back to and try to live up to is something that my dad always used to tell me: Look. Listen. And desire.”