While my monthly column is not meant be akin to a journal, I do want to pick up where I left off from last time with regard to my experience at university.
I’m currently five weeks into my final year, and yet again I’m experiencing a host of emotions – some familiar and tired, some entirely new. The reality of my ever-growing workload is strangely failing to panic me. At this stage in the game this would not be a problem, except that the semester is already a third of the way complete. I should be panicked, or at least operating with a bit of urgency. Not panicking is panicking me!
I do find comfort in the fact that there are many others experiencing exactly the same non-feeling. As you might guess, this phenomenon is the talk of the campus, and we’re fiercely trying to get to the bottom of it. This is done partly because, as students of sociology, it’s oh-so intriguing, and partly because it allows us to be ‘busy’ not doing our module work. Today a friend said “Maybe we’re all just getting the hang of it”, to which I replied: “I think if anything we’re getting the hang of ourselves.”
The university system is intense, rushed, crowded, and overwhelming. Did I mention bureaucratic? These things never change, simply by virtue of the system’s design. I’ve found that learning how to constantly adjust yourself is the key to achieving whatever level it is you want to reach. In other words, flexibility is paramount.
You will always have to cope with difficult situations and difficult people. For instance, just because lecturers might be aware of the full-time college workload doesn’t mean that each one won’t impose assignment standards and deadlines as if theirs is the only one that matters.
But university life has its perks, too. For one, it offers a welcome break to the daily nine-to-five grind. It’s also an opportunity to pursue different interests by way of clubs and societies. In your choice of study you can opt for drama, folklore, cybernetics, one of a number of different languages – the list is endless, and almost entirely up to you.
The point of it all, though, is to learn. It increases confidence. It opens doors. It teaches us multiple ways to see our changing world. It teaches us more about ourselves. And in knowing ourselves better, we’re better equipped to interact with our knowledge of the world more thoughtfully and objectively. Being armed with this artillery of knowledge and know-how can only enrich us, and contribute to us being the best we can be.
This may be similar to what I wrote here last time out, but I suppose it was meant to be. My intentions are never to preach or coach – I say this because I read some of what I’ve shared after it’s been published, and I do think to myself that I come off a little preachy.
I don’t know the best for anyone other than myself, and sometimes that’s even up for discussion. But I do firmly believe that as human beings we’re all made up of the same stuff. We have the same emotions, feelings, thoughts and urges, just at different points in time with different experiences. So it’s safe to assume that how I experience life parallels how others experience life. Therefore, what works for me may indeed work for others, and vice versa.
I do think that it’s important that we help each other to learn in whatever form that takes. Maybe this is it for me – or maybe not.
Tara Fannon is a Sociology student at UCD. Her column appears fortnightly in Metro Éireann
