No More Formula!

Our entire adolescence is signposted by educational hurdles, from nursery to primary school to senior school and finally to university. Then you’re spat out on the other side with what seems like 4 million options of where to go next?

If you mess it up then it’s your fault now!

While at University, I would watch the people in the years above me graduating and moving their belongings out of their student house for the very last time. Often feeling so much pity for these people and a great sense of relief that it wasn’t me putting my stuff in the car, it felt like I still had sooo much time. Time to put off the real ‘adult’ world, which I once believed just consisted of living in a tiny flat (it’s in London though so that makes it okay), staring at a computer for 30 years and then getting a divorce :)

I would imagine these newly graduated 20-something’s sitting in their childhood bedrooms while staring out the window in some depressing state of everlasting doom and self-loathing.

A text bubble over their head which reads “Time to become a corporate slave” or “Shit, the best days of my life are over.”

When the last months of uni began to creep up on me and my friends I felt increasingly uncomfortable that I was partaking in my daily activities maybe for the final time, saying brief goodbyes to people in the pub and realising that I will probably never see them again.

Part of the panic stems from the pre-university speeches we receive from our parents who tell us that “we should be so excited” and that they were the “best years of their life!”

We roll our eyes, yes yes okay…

But driving past Hyde Park on my way back home I was looking out the window and thinking if those really were the best days of my life? Reminiscing on the person I was three years ago when I first arrived in Leeds and everything was so new and frightening! The beginning brought so much tangible excitement, there was something so thrilling about not knowing who you would become friends with or what experiences you would share with these current strangers . Yet now the suspense is no longer there, because you’ve met everyone you were going to meet and maybe even fallen out with them also.

So now it’s all over, and sort of feels as though it never even happened? Each night out and evening spent in the garden has merged into one big compilation of smiley faces and forgotten conversation. I’ve been thinking lots about the famous “best years of my life” statement, maybe in some ways those years might have been some of our best, but not every aspect was positive.

Try not to get too nostalgic about the past or beat yourself up about the things you think you should have said or even what you shouldn’t have let others say to you. Because there is no point. There is comfort in knowing that everybody else is feeling the same as you during these strange few months, although it may look like they aren’t.

The future feels strange and blurry right now because there is no formula. No formula for the current trajectory of your life unlike before. The structure has disappeared which is abnormal but also refreshing, because you really can just do what you want!