Well... what now?

So I finished my degrees. I finished multiple degrees. I did it and I didn't even stress over how difficult my last assignments were (probably because they weren't that difficult). See, a year ago I was completing the final practical element of my film degree and that was so utterly stressful and painful that, after 36 hours awake straight, I collapsed and became an inanimate object for quite some time. This time... not so much. There was no big hump to get over, no giant final hurdle to overcome. When you've got no other commitments and all you have to do is write essays then all there is really is the steady approach. It wasn't an end of semester sprint so much as a long distance jog.

See, that's some fancy metaphorical prose all up in this blog post thanks to my handy English and Creative Writing degree skillz yo. Word.

I did a first year unit in my fourth and final year and that probably contributed to my relaxed last semester ever. It was simple. 800-1000 word essays? Bite sized! I spent about a dozen hours studying for that final exam. It felt like some cruel twist of irony (read: not really irony but whatever) to be doing a unit for beginners to finish off. I stood in the abandoned ampitheatre next to the carpark afterwards and had a moment of preemptive longing for the place I would soon say goodbye to for potentially forever. It didn't seem like I had done enough there, like there was just something more I should do before my final farewell. This was it. I had grown accustomed to the idea that I simply was a student. I liked the feel of it. I liked the aesthetic of trousers, casual shoes, a satchel over shoulder, and the love of 11:30am starts. There was a structure and order to being a student but also (as long as it was the first 10 weeks of semester) a sense of freedom. I could do whatever I wanted as long as I got everything in on time and I did just that. It was a truly saddening feeling to look around speechless at the grass before me and marvel at it like it was somehow special to be there here and now for the last time. I decided to go on a little nostalgic walk around campus for a bit while the sun lowered in the sky just so I could see all the familiar sights again...

I stopped and sat in the back of the old Hill Lecture Theatre... the familiar lecture theatre for film students of all years. I remember sitting down there in my very first semester writing out notes on a notebook long before I invested in a handy laptop. So young, so ready to learn about what I needed to work in my dream job of film.

I looked at the tiny lecture theatre one last time, sighed, and left. I went home a new person, a non-student...

...of course then I came back two days later and the day after that because I had agreed to do film work. I will come back to film a few Second Chance Theatre plays. I actually will see Murdoch a few more times at least before graduation and probably will come back many times afterwards. I basically had this emotional farewell for nothing.

But now I am just a non-student. I am no longer blessed with the wonder of a structured life with a simple schedule. There's no need to be at a certain place at a certain time for X amount of hours because I don't have a job... all I have is a bunch of skills and memories...

And these two hands.

These two hands are all I need from my body and persistence and determination is all I need from my mind. I am a creative person. I do creative things and for quite a while things held me back; excuses I made up about being too busy with University so if I was working on projects then I wouldn't be working on assignments or doing my readings... so I just ended up not doing either a lot of the time. But now I don't have an excuse. There was no big stressful finish point to collapse over so there's no need to spend a few days doing nothing to recover. I am without reason nor hindrance to be better.

What do I now? Well, I make great things. I have been writing every day since I finished and I know that hasn't been long but I will make sure it is every day for quite some time to come. I want to get published. I want people to read my work and be entertained. I want you to fall in love with people who are not real and miss places you have never been to...

There are ideas in my mind, unfinished novels on the harddrives of my computers, thousands of words upon thousands of words describing complex people, stories that go fantastic places, stories that go nowhere but will after I put the effort in to make them work, and so much potential to be amazing.

I have two degrees. I will not let them go to waste, job or not.

Oh Uni, How Familiar

I have recently returned to University for my (potentially) last semester of my very long degree and it almost feels new again. Last semester I did not attend a single lecture (they were all too early in the morning) and did not find it necessary. This semester though, this final semester, in my fourth year of attending University.... I have decided to actually be the responsible organised student that I've been promising to be next semester each and every semester. It's going well so far. I attend lectures and those I can't (and some I legitimately can't) I listen to online. I read my textbooks and I finished an essay more than a week before it was due so I would have more than a week to work on another one. I'm doing so well.

And oh boy does it feel good to have it all sorted out for once. I'm doing a first year unit. An intro to the general idea of everything it seems called Ideas in Action. Different lecturers come in and say things about community vs autonomy and witch trials and all sorts of things. It's great because I walked in to this lecture theatre after not having been in a lecture since 2012 (and even then my lectures were all small theatres hidden in the humanities department building) but this... this theatre is huge. It's two stories tall at least and it is filled with hundreds of eager students with their ipads, laptops, pens, pencils, notepads, textbooks, highlighters, binders, and of course: that fresh faced look that says "I'm new here."

It is the iconic University experience. The massive theatre that's filled with a sea of faces that all look down at the tiny old professor talking about some subject that they find endlessly interesting whereas a lot of us are just learning about to pass this unit and go onto other, more interesting, subjects. It was both nostalgic and new all at once. It was the kind of lecture you see briefly in movies, not the kind of lectures I was used to where we would get told about the conventions and techniques of those movies. It feels great. It feels like I'm taking part in something.

Then I go to class for this 1st year unit and everything is just adorable. They've assigned us an 800-1000 word essay and oh gosh it's tiny. It's positively bite sized. All these first years are all so clueless. The tutor talks on and on about things and she is ever so helpful and understanding. She is really keen to make sure all those bright young first years are comfortable asking questions on things they're not sure about (and they are not sure about a lot of things) and it's all just so amusing to have put myself in such a relatively simple environment. While she was talking to the class about very basic essay related things like structure and choosing to express a single argument etc I was busy ignoring her and writing it anyway. I nearly finished it in class and would've had I not periodically interacted with the people around me/turned away to pretend to listen.

That may paint me in a bad light what with the whole not paying attention in class and being pretentious about it but I do actually aim to learn... just if you're going to spend half the class discussing the basics of essay writing then I don't need to really pay attention. I've been there, done that, repeat a dozen times over and then repeat again. Like I said, I'm actually being a responsible Uni student and doing work. I plan on evenly spacing everything out to minimise the rushed attempts to finish near crunch time that leads to being shut away in a room for hours on end with no distractions. I know I cannot do everything a week and a half in advance forever but that's OK because the more I get a headstart on now the less I'll need to do later.

Yes. I did it. I beat procrastination by simply just not procrastinating. I learned a valuable lesson last semester which was just that: do things sooner in advance and everything will be fine. Thankfully now I am doing only essay based units instead of film production units so I have this thing called "time". So much time and I know that if I don't waste my time I will enjoy my time a lot more.

Here's to a successful and slightly less stressful final semester!