FOMO on the uni experience
I'm studying mechanical engineering at ETH Zurich and I've contemplated writing on here for a while now. I've almost finished my first year and am feeling incredibly lost and somehow am hoping reddit will offer me some advice (that is, if anyone ever reads this).
When I decided where to go to uni, my instinct was the UK as I'm a very anglophone person. I've grown up in Switzerland, so the other plan was Swiss uni as it costs close to nothing. But when the decision approached, I felt I could never put my family under such financial pressure (especially as I already have a complicated family..) and decided it would be best to go to the cheaper, equally good school. But this year has sucked. We don't have dorms, I live pretty much alone, we don't have many clubs or societies, it's incredibly lonely and individual. Especially the first year at ETH, known as the "basic year", the uni does everything they can to prevent you from doing anything other than studying as you really need to do well on the theory. So my mind keeps going back to "what if I had applied to the UK?"
So here's where I am asking for advice. The main reason this year has sucked is because I have simply not found "my people", and so I feel alone at uni. And in my ideal world, if I had gone to a Uni in the UK, that wouldn't have happened as there's so much in place to make it a fun and social experience. I also feel that being surrounded by anglophones would have suited me better. Someone I was in love with and hurt me is going to Cambridge, and I feel so much jealously as to how much fun he'll have compared to the year I have had. As he is someone I adored and associate Cambridge to him, I feel I would have met so many people like him that could be "my people". But a part of this is probably delaying the problem, and maybe I also would have felt lonely anywhere else and this is just part of life.
So I don't know what to do with all this jealously and fear of missing out. Has anyone gone through something similar, and has advice on how to deal with it ? Of course, any place is what you make of it, but after a year of trying I haven't seemed to have met a single person I truly click with. A part of it too is that despite studying stem I get along better with people in the humanities, and there is none of that here.
In conclusion: I wish I had gone to Cambridge or an adjacent "uni experience-esque" UK school and it's too late. How do I stop thinking of how great my imaginary UK life would have been, when I have no idea if it would have been great?