So it's been far too long since I wrote anything on here, even if I have been writing in other places. (Promise!)
Here's something I re-discovered today, and subsequently re-wrote which no longer has a specific home to go to, so I thought I would set it free to let it graze upon the pastures of your minds.
Fresh-Faced
As clichéd as it may be; we were all young once. Your first year at University can be a massive learning curve, and for me, the new influx of freshers just reminds me of how lucky I am to not be one anymore! Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely adored being a fresher, and all the challenges, new friends, and questionably legal mixtures of alcohol it threw at me, but having been at a university for that much longer you naturally become more comfortable in your surroundings, and can concentrate on other things besides staking your claim and asserting your independence.
Think back to your first year at University (assuming you’re not currently in it) and think of all the incredible, but also incredibly ridiculous things you encountered. (Maybe keep that thing to yourself)Who am I to try and deny these shiny, new undergraduates all these incredible experiences? It stands to reason that almost all of us, at one point in our university lives, have been that one person in a group of friends who has slightly overestimated the amount of alcohol our perhaps questionably nourished, and sleep-deprived bodies can handle, and subsequently behaved in a manner not entirely in-keeping with the standards to which we hold ourselves in our day-to-day lives: it happens. If it had never happened to me, there would be significantly fewer embarrassing memories for me to suppress, and my closest friends would be unable to relish in reciting the story of my drunken offer of First Aid to a poor, unsuspecting boy, just minding his own business sat on the pavement. (Don’t ask) It is this exploration of limits, and extremes of behaviour that ultimately help shape the person you become for not only the rest of your time at university, but also the person you will someday be out in the big, bad real world.
Finding friends who I know will be there for me at my most sober, and most “wobbly”, has in itself, also brought me the very same people who will support me through both those extremes emotionally, and has helped me find people who will undoubtedly be part of my life for the rest of my days, even if not necessarily physically.
For me, personally, as I’ve aged through university (I would use the word mature, but the two are most definitely mutually exclusive) and I think for others too, priorities have changed. I’ve never been a massive fan of going out to clubs, although it invariably has its place, but as someone nearing the end of their degree it has become more socially acceptable to stay in, drink wine, play board games, drink gin, and find that 4am is the perfect time to end a pseudo-philosophical discussion about music with the unanswerable cry of “Yeah, well, your mum likes Wagner.” (The dead, German one)
So, fellow non-first years; we should not pine, or judge, but instead continue to make our own fun and leave freshers to their own discoveries with perhaps the odd steadying hand should you encounter any particularly intoxicated ones. Someone said to me recently that as an older student I cut a Yoda-like figure in amongst the haze of ’11 leavers’ hoodies, and that’s the kind of distinguished, refined notion I think we should all strive to adhere to.
So until the next time, which I promise will be as soon as I've got my 8,000 word deadline out of the way, I bid you adieu. :)
