MOVING ON
I didn’t want to go to university, I remember that explicitly.
Almost two years ago to the day, I was submitting applications to three universities just in case I changed my mind about going. I didn’t want to go to university — I’d struggled through eighteen years of formal education and I thought that was enough; I’d sat at enough tables on uncomfortable chairs and asked to go to the bathroom one too many times. I thought it was unfair that I was expected to go any more; it was unfair that great jobs would only want me if I had a degree in a subject I didn’t want to learn.
I was also heavily depressed at the time; probably the most depressed I’ve ever been in my life. Sixth form was the worst for me and the future felt bleak and impossible. I didn’t enjoy any of the subjects I was studying and I couldn’t imagine a subject I’d want to take for three years and still retain interest in by the end. There was no dream job floating around my head; I loved the idea of so many but I didn’t want to take the degrees to get there.
But I applied in case I changed my mind; applied to three Creative Writing degrees, because if there was one thing I could do and would entertain me for at least a year, it was writing.
The reason I went to university in the end?
I didn’t want to get a job.
On the day my parents drove me to Canterbury, we entered the city in a throng of new students and a never ending line of traffic and I asked them to turn around and take me home. I didn’t want to move out, I didn’t want to live on my own, I didn’t want to attend university.
The future still felt clouded in a dark smog that I didn’t want to approach.
I’m currently in my second year of my degree. Last year was quite possibly the happiest I’ve ever been in my life; the summer before I’d told a friend about how bad I was feeling, and nine months later when he visited Canterbury, I told him about how those feelings had mostly dissipated. They came back, of course, they always do — but being out on my own and taking control of my life was how I told them to fuck off.
Sure, this school year isn’t as good as the last, but it’s so much better than where I was two years ago — it took me moving on from that place to get better, just as it took moving on from horrible classes to find that I’m still able to enjoy some things.
Moving on isn’t a choice, I’ve found — it’s an inevitability. It’s the dark smog at the end of the tunnel that was actually a light all along; I was just looking at it upside down. Moving on isn’t optional but forced upon us, and whilst it’s to be feared, at least a little, it’s not a bad thing — just a new one.
Eventually, I’m going to have to move on from university. I’m going to move on from this house and this degree, probably to another house (hopefully nicer) and another degree (hopefully a Masters), and that’s just how life works.
I’m going to get a Masters because education is nothing bad, but a gift, and getting to have it for twenty-one years is exactly twenty-one better than a good percentage of the planet. And maybe I’ll get it in Art History, where my interests actually lie, rather than another amusement to pass the time. And maybe I’ll move on from the current bout of darkness to a lighter one in the future.
And maybe I’ll get a job one day, but I don’t want to, so maybe I’ll move on to a PhD instead.
With thanks to Florentina Mitrache
