A couple of weeks ago I got home from a charity dance class and wrote a draft of this post which I had titled 'Endings'. Having re-read it, I decided that draft was a skewed view of the end of my university life; I had written it when I was quite emotional about things finishing. Instead of posting that, I scraped it completely and decided it would be better for me to write about the way things are changing for me.
The first draft largely consisted of me having really enjoyed this dance class I'd done and realising far too late into university that trying things was okay. I think I always had it in the back of my head that if I went to a society try out/meet and greet that I'd have to commit to them there and then. The dance class - though a one off and in street dance (a style I could never pull off) showed me that I probably would have been okay trying a couple of things out, and maybe even would have found something I'd have enjoyed doing. To be fair to myself, I did commute to a weekend job through my first and second year so it may have been hard to add something else to my timetable, but I'm also not going to pretend I don't regret my failure to try more, or to attend more things by myself.
That's something I'll have to make peace with - but also something to learn from. If I don't make the most out of every opportunity that presents itself, then I am the only one to blame. Don't get me wrong, I have loved my university experience, there is practically nothing I would change about it, but there are a couple of events, or class, or extra lectures that, had I attended, I might have learned from... Is it paradoxical to say that I don't want to change the past and at the same time talk about how I regret not trying more things?
It's been playing on my mind though, this whole finishing uni thing. I've still got 2 exams to sit in May, and an assignment due at the end of April, but that's it. No classes, no lectures, no meetings. As I write this, I don't even have a job lined up. It's certainly strange to be facing that nothingness without some sort of plan. So far in life, there's always been a next step there. Now, the world is my oyster, as they say. Thing is, I'm not really sure what you do with an oyster - eat it? I can't eat the world. I really enjoy planning, and obviously I enjoy making those plans a success, but a little direction usually helps me. If the world is my oyster, how do I know which part to try first? Which I'm going to like? Which I'm qualified to partake in? This metaphor doesn't really work as well as I'd hoped...
What I'm trying to say is that I've reached the point where I have to take a next step and I have to make the decision about which path I'm walking down. That's scary. That feels like a lot of responsibility. But if I want to stop thinking about missed opportunities, I've got to start somewhere, right? There's a million paths my life could take from this point, and many of them are likely to hold something wonderful somewhere along them, and hundreds of them will intersect and diverge from each other as they go, and going down some of them will mean I can never turn back and go down a different one. I don't think I'll ever feel certain about the choice I make, but I do feel ready to take that step, wherever it's leading.
So as I say goodbye to university, I'm going to acknowledge everything it has given me - everything I've learned, the ways I've grown, the wonderful people who have become a part of my life, the opportunities I took, and those I ignored. All of it has brought me to where I am now, and that's a pretty good place. I can't really ask for anything more than that.
