Almost a year...

I seem to jump to this crack in the internet every summer. Maybe it's the heatstroke or maybe it's the genuine dislike of the sun, but here I am yet again except this time I AM A GRADUATE.

I've taken the plunge. The inevitable decapitation from the academic world and I have to say I am left wanting. These past three years have been eye-opening yes, but academically? Maybe not. Maybe I was too young and definitely too naive to even think about how to be a University student. I started university at 17, already an Irish stereotype (I can out drink you! I'm Irish! I'm a knobhead!), and so so unprepared of the complete and high probability of losing yourself. Now hold that tongue of yours. I didn't go crazy and I didn't pick up the glamourous lifestyle of a drug addict, I just didn't drink responsibly and with that and the combination of me, word vomit was the oppressor every time I got drunk.

Now three years on I don't drink to get drunk. The entertainment in it faded a long time ago, I think even before I started university I had an aversion to drinking but there I was in my mid teens in Ireland surrounded by people that were not good for me at all so of course I brought this mentality with me. I do have the good whiskey here and then and I still cling onto the Irish stereotype of drinking a good pint of Guinness (emphasis on the good, none of that watery stuff) but I don't go out of my way to blur my vision and get inebriated.

I remember halfway through my third year of university I really had a think about whether or not I made a mistake heading straight into third level education. Should I have waited a year? Taken a pretentious gap year? But then I thought of the people I would not have met, friended, climbed walls with and wrapped them up in caution tape. And the fear of that alternative universe shook me to reality.

Using the stalkerish mechanics of Facebook I figured that I've met and really liked and carried on communicating with hundreds of people over the past three years. I've been given job opportunities through those people, I've been to amazing places, worked in amazing places, and seen a London that the alternative me probably would not even touch. So yes, I am thankful for the decisions that naive 17 year old me made. Thankful for my parents for helping me along the way and thankful that they taught me the value of money and budgeting (oh gawd, so much budgeting). Thankful that the university allocated my student halls room to a person who would become my flatmate and genuine great friend. Thankful for the tutors for actually guiding me so I could steer myself away from turning into a heap of stress.

I'm just so thankful for everything, and because I'm not an affectionate person I'll post all my thoughts on a semi-anonymous internet platform.

I'm moving back to Dublin in August and will hopefully (spleen and kidneys crossed) start an internship at the National Gallery. My goals have not been cemented yet. Maybe they never will be. And I am thankfully terrified of that, as a normal humanoid should be.

Hopefully I'll be back on this blog/not blog a lot more frequently.

I like this blogging thing.