4:08pm Saturday 6th June 2009
By Elizabeth Norman
When I think back to the start of the year it seems really bizarre, so much of my university life has changed since September and mostly for the better. Yet it feels like just a couple of weeks ago I was moving into the house I share with two of my best friends, but now here I am a few days away from moving out and leaving that house for good. My friendship circle has changed significantly since last year, mostly growing to accommodate more people, but sadly seeing less of some of my first year companions. I’m socialising a lot more with people on my course and I cannot believe it took me so long to really bond with any of them, especially since now I find it hard imagine university life without them.
I’ve also thrown myself into other aspects of university life. I joined societies I was too shy and afraid to join in first year, particularly the philosophy and amnesty international societies. My fear seems almost stupid now and I’ve become more involved in them than I would have dreamed I’d be at the start of the year. I’m even going to be the President of the amnesty society next year, a role that fills me with both excitement and dread. My courses have also been far better than I could have hoped for. Not only have I had the chance to study subjects I love, such as political philosophy and philosophy of art, but I’ve achieved grades I would have thought impossible had someone told me about them in advance. Through my journalism course I was also offered the opportunity to write this blog, which is something I’m extremely grateful for.
Looking back though the funny thing is is that everything that has happened to me this year is everything I expected university to be from the offset. Before Christmas a friend and I took part in a philosophy focus group at the university, the question that stuck in my mind was ‘is there anything you wish anyone would have told you before you started university.’ The reason that stayed with me is because everyone who answered talked about the same thing, we all wished someone would have warned us university is not how it appears to be in the movies. You don’t get together in study groups, you do not all hang out in the library during the day and then party hard at night (although you do party hard as a student that is for sure), you don’t just get together and do something academic for fun. But after realising that university doesn’t automatically make these things happen my friend and I actually started making them happen. I think that day in the focus group sparked something within us and then we realised we had to go out and make university what we wanted it to be. We started socialising more with people on our course, we’d make time after lectures to go and sit somewhere relaxing and talk about what we’d just been learning about, we started attending the societies that most appealed to us – basically we went out and we did what we should have been doing from day one and the reward was fantastic. It might have taken over a year for me to reach where I wanted to be from the start of university but it was well worth the wait.
And now this year is drawing to a close and I’m starting to look to the future and imagine what my final year will be like. In some ways this year has been one of the most amazing of my life and I’m really excited to see where next year will take me, but on the other hand the thought of next year brings with it a sense of dread and finality. The fact that after my third year it will be time to move is always going to be hanging around somewhere in the background. Most of my friends in third year are already at that place, yet another reason why next year does not always seem so appeal – it’s sad to think that most the third years I know, even if not very well, will no longer be here.
I guess that is life, it surprises us, sometimes it turns out better than we can expect and in some sense it will always be overshadowed by the fact that nothing is permanent, at some point we all have to move on. So when I think about next year I do not want to dwell on the fact it is my final year, instead I’d rather think about how amazing this year has been and how much it has changed my whole university experience – and personally I cannot wait to see what life is going to throw at me next.
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