Student life and the stairway to ‘heaven’; a parody.

So I sat there with my phone full of messages all inviting me to exciting social events happening, none of which I could participate. I read a supermarket recipe catalogue and day dreamt of all the mindless tasks I could do without the anxiety of university (Oh the Netflix, the fishing, the secret guilt free conversations with friends that span hours into the night!). If I started daydreaming of travel I’d risk a coma of self-pity and fomo, so I watch a snap chat of someone chugging a ‘shoey’ at the pub instead.

While I played with my soup for one out of a can, stirring it like I stir my conscious everytime I wollow, I began to contemplate why I live like this just to get a qualification to be able to help those in need like some kind of urban Jesus in a Clinical Doctor of Psychology’s chair (it’s not as fancy as it sounds). I’d be a regular gypsie during university if the ghost of student loans past didn’t haunt me in my sleep.

Isolated, trapped, guilted into finishing my degree by those who seemingly hate the careers they landed in with their own degree but hey, nobody likes a quitter...
I’m so happy with myself but I hate my life at the same time.
"Well change it!", they scream.

You see here’s the thing, uprooting your life at 29 halfway through studies that you started in order to save people from being miserable, is in its own right, selfish and stupid, at least that’s what I tell myself that I’d feel if I quit. I’ve quit every relationship I ever tried or sport that I ever got good at but apparently, I can’t quit being miserable when it comes to my career, as that would make me a failure.

'Failure' (insert homer Simpson night terror screams here). That word, that anxiety-inducing, ego-threatening capitalist word. I should get over it, we all should right? Wrong.

One of the few things I’ve learnt from this degree is that we have fear for a reason. This comes from a little thing called the Amygdala (gather round everybody); the little peanut in our brains that recognises things like fear on peoples faces or how un-natural it is to stand at the edge of a bungee cord platform (seriously, are we trying to break the peanut?). This peanut of fear is the first reaction before what mostly follows if left unattended; misery.

Now I know you’re thinking: but wait, shouldn’t we overcome all of our fears in order to be sponsored by an energy drink in an extreme sport one day or to be the next Billionaire? You know, 'Conquer your fear! Conquer your life!' kind of theories? No, that’s not what I’m talking about (though ‘The Hunger Games’ may have been based on university life). I’m talking about a fear so deeply embedded within you that your gut starts to tell you to get out and in time, your physical and mental health does too.

I experimented with many regimes both good (exercise, green smoothies) and bad (no comment) for my wellbeing whilst studying at university and I came to the conclusion that if you are truly unhappy (like no meme on any student meme page can make you feel better kind of unhappy) then maybe being selfish, is better than being dead.

Did I quit after that share did you ask?
No. Because university itself is an ancient process of dying and being resurrected as a diety that the world seemingly looks to for answers (not). It too is a novel of misery designed to keep law and order by way of fear through the ghost of student loans past.

So make your own rules. Happy finals people, and may the odds be ever in your favour…