365

A year from today, I will be finished with my undergraduate degree.

This is quite a terrifying thought: it signifies onrushing adulthood, a looming crossroads and that there have been three years since I finished sixth form, which I cannot fathom.

Unusually, I can actually recall my last day at Shrewsbury; frollicking in the meadows, building human pyrids, my friends sneaking me drinks at weatherspoon's cos I'd forgotten my ID. I simply cannot comprehend that that happened three years ago. It makes no sense.

I am inordinately grateful that I took this year in Melbourne, for a multitude of reasons, but at the moment because it's given me an increased fervour for my subject. Before coming to Melbourne, I was seriously considering dropping out of uni, convinced that I'd made the wrong choice, that I had no future in my elected domain, that I was going to fail. I watched in envy as Becky and James and Sam took everything in their stride and I couldn't even manage a single step forward (or so it felt- I obviously made some advances in academia, else I wouldn't be here). I refuse to take all the blame for this melancholy- I truly feel that Edinburgh put some of their worst feet forward during second year (incidentally, this criticism is moot now because I was the last year to do my course): syntax, phonetics and globish all in one year? It's like they wanted us to stop caring. But, yes; I was dissatisfied and dreading honours. Now? I kinda wanna do post-grad; obviously, some of that comes from there being more choice in honours, but I think it also is due to Melbourne Uni's different approach to the tertiary educational experience and, most importantly, some of the professors I've had here. 

I'm trying very hard not to completely disregard Edinburgh; when skyping Daniel recently, he accused me of exaggerating my dissatisfaction there, and that's not at all what I'm aiming to do. But, I also feel I have to be honest (or else, what is the point of this blog?) and I really credit Melbourne with rejuvenating my appreciation of my course. 

Ask me in a year what I want to do and maybe the answer will be radically different, but currently further education is top of the list. 

...I kinda wish it was something less expensive.

And, to make this post not just words, here's a picture of Victoria and I molesting a giant Manta. And, no, there's no glass.

Educate good times, come on!

George returned yesterday, proving it's never too early to create a tag for someone. I also got another 'I no speak English', proving I defy the god of CATI*, whom I've deemed Katy, and am some sort of Telephone Marketing Research messiah.

I'm now done with tutorials for the year; take that, people from Uni back home (depressingly, I don't think that there are any Edinburgh students reading this- you don't count, Dr. Fowkes, being a staff member and all). I have one more week of lectures and then I am done with Uni 2012, which is kinda scary. Thinking back to January this year, and how absolutely awful I felt about my course, I couldn't have imagined I'd actually be interested in what I was studying- but, looking over my Language, Society and Culture text book today, in preparation for my upcoming test, I was actually genuinely piqued by the ideas inside. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: if I have a future in Linguistics, it's in Socio-**. Syntax continues to prove the bane of my very soul and the enemy of life itself, but I guess you can't have it all (and with Syntax, you really shouldn't have any).

I must say, I prefer the Australian school system- the idea of choosing modules (including some which aren't directly related to your major), and thus not feeling trapped into drawing upside-down trees for however bloody long, is much more condusive to work, if you ask me. If I ever have children, I'd want them to be in a university system like this (I believe the American system is similar), because it allows you to actually find out what you like, as opposed to the British system, which just tells you what to take, like it or lump it. And I lumped it. Of course, were I enrolled in Edinburgh this year (and when I eventually return), I would be given a degree of choice within my degree of choice, but I kind of see this as too little too late. Alack.

*Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing
**Fuck you, James Reid.

Dinosaurs on a spaceship, snakes on a plane, freshers on my turf

If my calculations are correct, which is by no means certain, Edinburgh Freshers' week began this weekend (a quick google confirms this).
I'm trying to work out what I'd be doing were I still in Edinburgh; no doubt part of me would be tempted to repeat my actions of the previous Freshers' week, where I tried to reinvent myself by attending all manner of different events, including, *shudder*, a bingo night, before returning, somewhat gingerly and with my tail firmly between my legs, to Bedlam.

You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.

Of course, it's impossible to know what I'd be doing, as I would've acted differently towards the end of last term if I'd thought for a second that I'd be coming back. I probably would've tried to put a play on during Freshers' week, and maybe auditioned for one of the plays already on, or maybe I would've even waited to put on TWWOO until this semester. I wouldn't have spoken to some people so frankly, and I also wouldn't have buried the hatchet with some people (I'm looking at you, Gem).
I'd have most likely spent the summer in Edinburgh, so maybe I would've suffered a relapse to the state I was in last July. Or maybe I would've risen triumphantly above the black dog like a phoenix (anyone else flashing back to Harry Potter?).

Above: my (hypothetical) summer.

I'd go and watch Becky perform stand-up and Daniel perform Blue Room (this is the thing I'm most sad about missing.)

Imagine this in a sex play.

I'd maybe staff at Bedlam a few times, try and get to know some of the newbies- there'd be numerous trips to Doctors, no doubt, and a bit of mythicising those who'd have departed (I've decided in this alternate reality that Esmond also didn't leave, so the whole ladies' man thing didn't come into play).

Dreammaker, heartbreaker.

I'd have fish pie at Teviot, and meet with Bammers and Henriette and talk about what we did all summer, and I'd hang with Luci and Bryn and feel awkward as they lit up and started getting all metaphysical. I'd have hot chocolate with Freya and discuss Lord knows what.
And then a black hole would open up over Edinburgh and everything I know would be consumed by the void. Because, after all, this is all postulation and furthermore, is completely useless because I'm not there, I'm in Melbourne and besides, Freshers are all mistakes. Filthy, nasty things. Glad I never was one.

Of course, I also can't help looking forward a year and trying to imagine how I'll act during my fourth (God, that's too many) Freshers' week. Maybe during final year I'll finally have figured it out and I'll be cool as Corbin, taking in the sights but not getting unnecessarily agitated over little things of no significance. Somehow, I doubt it.

How I'll meet your father

My parents met in South America. Both were university graduates, working in completely different fields, who just happened to be in Arrequipa simultaneously. My dad wasn’t even meant to stay for all that long- he was meant to fix a problem then leave; six weeks, no more.

It was two years when he finally returned.

I have no idea after what amount of time he met my mother, it may well have been within those first six weeks, but in my mind it was at least half a year in to his seemingly unending sojourn. I love the arbitrarity of it- how easily they could not have met, how close I came to never existing.

This is partly why I want to meet someone in Australia- I want a great story, like my parents. And, let’s be honest, even if I meet him at a bus spotting convention held in a public library, it’ll be a great story simply because it was filmed on location on the other side of the world to where all my previous anecdotes had transpired.         

And I REALLY want to meet someone. All my female friends are sure I will; the phrase ‘aussie hunk’ has been bandied around, no doubt fuelled by Neighbors and its endless parade of speedo clad beefcake. I won’t pretend I’d say ‘ no’ if I were offered. Let’s be honest, I’d gorge myself on that beefcake.

The problem is, I think I’m expecting to meet someone, as though it were a god-given right. Sadly, I felt the same coming to uni in Edinburgh, and look how that turned out. It’s not good because it means my year will probably be a disappointment in at least one aspect, because unless I literally meet the love of my life down there, it won’t match up to the portent I’ve granted it. And the whole thing of my story beginning in the Amazon (well, technically in Peru, but can’t I have a little dramatization?) because, now, in my head, that’s what my family does. We find love in the exotic locales of the world. Nevermind that my sister met her current squeeze in Nottingham, nor that my maternal grandparents found each other in the village where Balley Kiss Angel was set.

Alack.

Of course, another reason I’d love to meet someone in Australia is that it would blow my sister’s story out of the water and automatically make me the most interesting person in my family. And it would be so romantic because I’d have a lover on the other side of the world and we’d skype all the time in fourth year and it’d be a relief from all the studying and I’d get to say my antipodean paramour because I’m pretentious like that and then I’d move back to Oz once I’d graduated and we’d live together and have so many wild adventures and then we’d get adopt a baby which I’m not sure is legal over there and then we’d get married which I’m certain is not. But we wouldn’t just stay in Australia, oh no, we’d live all over the world and I’d visit Arrequipa and find that it wasn’t quite as romantic as the public library of Wangabanga and then when I died everyone would reflect on my life and be all ‘goddamn but that man was interesting’.

Is that so much to ask?