So I was sitting in the exam hall again today, my mind drifting off to unimportant things as per usual as the questions made less sense than if they'd been in esperanto. This led me to thinking, as I'm sure you can understand 'what the hell am I doing here?'. Its a question that has been asked with increased frequency over the past few years "what are you doing at university?". I'm still not entirely sure over the answer. I've always been able to give I suppose...adequate answers but they've never seemed right for me. On the one hand I guess I was following in the footsteps of my brother. I've often idolised him, I was 5 when he left home, he went to Oxford met his wife there, eventually used his degree to get a good career and now has the 4 bedroom london house wife+2 kids. I've always been compared with him, I look a lot like him, act like him etc etc, so theres some truth in this answer but not enough by itself.
Another answer is of course I was interested in Physics. This was definately true for a little while, for the first term and doing the first topic at 6th form was definately true, but it did seem to go downhill from there. After a while it wasn't about getting A's or 100%s or as close as I could, it was about doing enough. There's always been the excuse that I was diagnosed with diabetes during my AS level run-in and missed a bunch of coursework but to be fair I'm not entirely sure how much impact, if any, that really had on my studies. So again I suppose there was a little truth in this bit too.
Finally we come to what I've always felt has been as close to the real answer as I'll get. I was 18 when I left 6th form, having only spent 2 days in a job before quitting, youngest child of 3, only had one girlfriend in a long distance relationship which had recently ended and I was faced with 2 options - university or the real world and the rest of my life. I deferred entry to university not wanting to go straight across the country away from my parents, and not wanting to go straight from 13 years of schooling to what was going to be 4-5 years of a degree due to my need to complete a foundation year to gain access to the degree itself. So I did dip my toes in to the real world but in the comfort of my parents house.
Then of course I went to Uni here in Sussex, the first year went well and I flew through the foundation year, but towards the end I noticed some of the -just doing enough- attitude creeping back into my life, which annoyed me but has remained with me to this day. The second year, the first proper one of the degree started well, I was in a relationship that ate up a lot of my time and was partially responsible for sending me into a bit of a depression that in part remains with me, slumps I've found are hard to get out of. But I can't blame it on that, there were a lot of issues, and I finally got a job at the start of that year - my cinema one I still have, just about - which again ate up some time, but was frankly a relief to have especially when university got tough. At the end of the year though I squeezed through but knew I didn't know as much as I needed to and was still a bit...well, very out of sorts.
Then we come to the year I'm finally coming to the end of now due to resits, with tomorrow potentially my final day as a university student. I struggled with 2 of my courses in the first term, which obviously had a bit of a snowball effect and being the time of person who prefers to ignore problems rather than deal with them, it wasn't really till almost easter, 2/3rds of the way through the year that I realised just how much trouble I was in, and how much help I'd need. Help is always something I've had trouble asking for, after some therapy the prevailing theory is that I feel I shouldn't need it, that even if others do I should be able to plow through solo because I should be better than that. So to be honest I stopped trying, at least for the most part. I attended my lectures, attempted to hand at least something in for my assignments, knowing I was going to fail and hopefully get a chance to resit the entire year. Unfortunately this is the first year my university doesn't automatically allow you to resit, its done on a case by case basis and they may not deem me worthy of a second shot. Which is the position I find myself in now, I didn't get to do any of the studying I needed to over the summer as I needed to build up my plan B and well C to be fair, career etc.
So thats the position I'm in and to an extent what happens next is out of my hands. The fact is though I'm not even sure what I want, as I've said in a very lengthy way above, the reason I went to uni was because I was scared of the real world. University was a way for me to escape having to live a real life for a few years, and I've done that now. I sorta know what I might wanna do in the future, and I've taken steps towards that so in many ways university may have served its purpose. Don't get me wrong however, there are many things about the real world that scare the shit outta me, but I'm not so timid anymore that I can't face them.
On the other hand, I've already sunk £15k into university life, not to mention family loans, 'gifts' and naturally lost earnings through studying rather than working a full time job so its almost as if I'm committed at this point and 5500 characters in I'm still no clearer about which option I'd rather take. I suppose that means in many respects its a good thing the decision is to a large extent out of my hands, I just need to wait and see. 1 more exam tomorrow then I could be gone. £15k the price of fear eh?
That may go some way to explaining the 'potential drop out' comment in my intro...anyway thats all I have to say for now, I'm out.