I’m unsure how long it has been since I last blogged; life
just gets in the way doesn’t it. With this in mind, I thought it high time I
part those heavy curtains of life-stuff and commit a few of my recent
ponderings to paper. It may also be the
small fact that it’s been pretty much an entire year since I finished my course at University, after
four long years of dancing, thinking, making; and eighteen even longer years of
full time education.
I feel a noted point of reflection is required.
However, after only recently finishing working at the
University that I went to, being around campus is not so much a distant memory
as a clinging reality that I’ve only just been able to shake off. It will always mean a great deal to me, but I
wanted to expand, go elsewhere and keep those positive memories of student life
associated with the campus. Because, let’s face it, a campus environment, with
all its throngs of excitable student campaigners, midday bar-cralls, busy
student eateries, graduands; shiny and happy faced with the jubilant feeling
that you only get directly after you thrust your dissertation into the cold,
waiting hands of an administrator (along with your blood, sweat and tears), it’s
just not the same for a staff member. Firstly, all students are just SO LOUD.
They become annoying; they become the ‘other’ - “surely I wasn’t that immature when I was a student?” Truth is, yes I was, and yes, I still am. But
the campus experience is entirely different when your friends, course, and free
time have all been removed.
So, you can imagine the emotion stirred inside me when the
final years had their dissertation handing in celebrations. I’m sat at my desk pretending to be busy and
suddenly I’m back there, feeling the tingling excitement start in the base of
my stomach and the feeling of the year old knots in my shoulders loosen up as
my head floats upwards for the first time in what feels like an age… or… maybe
that was just the champagne.
Witnessing this turn of the year was like the world asking
me ‘so what exactly have you done since this happened to you?’ Seeing the
reality of this event; that it occurs year in year out, like clockwork, as the
University processes students through their short-lived studentships, made me
realise how quickly life goes by outside of the pre-determined structure of
institutional education. I feel like I’ve done quite a lot, and I’ve come a
long way since my dreary Summer blogs full of unemployed graduate woe. I’m
where I wanted to be a year on; it just doesn’t feel like I thought it would. I’m still learning to slow my life down. Being
goal driven can have its virtues, but one must be careful of wishing one’s life
away.
So yes, point of reflection noted, mind centred, positivity
reinstated. Now… what’s next?...
