Hello! As per usual, I haven’t written anything down in a while. Fourth year of uni was hard but eye opening – had classic ups and downs, but the lows (mostly around October-December) felt extremely low. It’s only in the past couple of months, maybe beginning at the end of February, that things have started to look up emotionally again. Since that point, I’ve handed in my dissertation, finished submitted my last 2 essays and my last 3 exams (all in all – 27,000 words worth of work) and I’m SO indescribably happy to be done. It’s much more sweet than it is bitter, despite loving the whole uni experience and seeing friends every day and growing to be so at peace in all the different study spots. It just feels like a huge weight has been lifted, no longer living life according to deadlines I had no idea how I was going to meet, or working early shifts and going straight to the library for maybe 12 hours afterwards, no more feeling academically inadequate when I knew I had the potential to succeed but no passion or drive to work any harder than I was managing. Putting that partly down to studying something that was never the right fit for me, which is also a course where B’s and C’s (and D’s and E’s in first and second year) were the standard, and just becoming completely exhausted. In 2018, after the relatively famous 'suicide semester' at the end of second year in Law, any energy and genuine love I had left for studying died off – even with my grades improving steadily. Today is the first day I’ve had off in full since finishing the degree, and I spent it tearing spare paper out of old notebooks so I can tuck my notes away in boxes, and the contrast in presentation from the early days in high school/first year of uni and last week is shocking, and made me almost emotional. Education is something I’m so keen on, and proud of, and letting myself run dry hasn’t just tainted my perception of it, but has tainted a positive perception of myself that I clung to in my academic prime and let slip at the first sign of ‘failure’. Now – after 7 years of studying, and 56 exams – I’m left wondering who I am without it.

I’ve left the next year deliberately free to explore and grow even if that is just within my own city or learning how to appreciate living in my own mind and body in a way I've always struggled with (and blogged about previously). Travel plans are now out the window, as is moving out, so I’m left in the extremely privileged position of having a lot of free time to work with. Time I’ve already used to train myself into long distance running, and learn consequentially required recovery techniques for weak knees and ankles. It’s time to read fiction books again for the first time in two years. Time to paint and reminisce on past adventures. Time to start hand-writing letters to friends again. To continue baking and cooking. These are things that will extend long past the return of normality should we ever see it again, and it all seems wide and exciting and new but right now relative freedom and the complete unknown is scary. I'd just really like a cuddle but what else is new. We'll see how it goes eh