2005 me.

I believe it was seven years ago today that I would have been filling my parent’s car with everything I had ever begged, borrowed or stolen and headed off to Buckinghamshire to begin my adventures as a fully flung student. It’s a time of my life I am still very hung up upon, a point proven by my obsession with writing about fictional versions of myself getting into all kinds of hi-jinx on campus. The reason it is so at the forefront of my mind today is that this morning I was at my girlfriend’s as her youngest sister repeated the steps I took seven years ago. Everything was boxed up, everything was thought over and considered, and then they packed it all into the back of the car and headed off to Roehampton.

It was an interesting and emotional thing to watch, especially given the fact that Sarah is a twin, and while she goes off to University Holly has deferred for a year to try a different avenue first, testing the water as it were. It is the first time they have really been apart in nineteen years and it is going to be a hard adjustment for both of them to make. I can remember the thoughts I had in my first weeks away, how I would fantasise about what my family were doing, and how they could possibly cope in my absence, but once that all moved aside I began to realise that although I was tied to them, and that link would never break there was room to become myself in a lot more ways. The freedom afforded to me by University was one of the greatest life lessons I have encountered and as such I look back on it with firm fond memories. It is a time when you are going through so much physically and mentally, internally and externally, and you really start to work out who and where you are, what you want to be doing, and you get an awful lot of lessons along the way.

I would like to say good luck to anyone making those journeys this weekend, or in the coming weeks and remind you that it’s different and it is new but it is one of the best decisions you ever made, and it is well worth the debt.