5th bloggiversary (oh, and Happy New Year)

I usually forget the anniversary of this blog. I think this is for a variety of reasons.

Firstly, at this time of year we usually have other festivities on our minds. Also this blog has two major anniversaries in my mind. Moving to doctorvee.co.uk was a watershed, and I am sometimes reluctant to even acknowledge what I did before. Yet my first blog post, back in the days when I used Blogger, was posted five years ago, on the 30^th of December 2002. What a thought.

Less than two years later I upped sticks, and the first post on this WordPress blog came on the 8^th of December 2004. Crazy stuff.

Even before I started posting on Blogger, I had a web presence (some rubbishy Geocities pages). The move to the blog was gradual, which is probably another reason why I often forget the bloggiversary. It’s amazing to see how the blog has evolved over the years from several pithy posts a day a few years ago to today’s much longer and more infrequent posts.

Happy New Year

By the time you read this the clock will have struck midnight and you might well be nursing a bad hangover. So Happy New Year to you. Have some coal.

I have a strange relationship with Hogmanay. I often think I prefer it to Christmas, although when it comes it is often a damp squib.

I think I grew up with different expectations to most people of what the new year was supposed to be like. I saw it as a time for family moreso than Christmas. You know, when I was younger Christmas was about the Sega MegaDrive and Hogmanay was when I got to stay up late with the family and drink some Irn Bru.

A few years ago I discovered that this attitude made me a heretic and that Hogmanay is for getting rat arsed with your friends. Friends I can live with. I like friends.

But the drink? I like a drink, but I never see the point in getting totally rat arsed, even at new year. A bad hangover isn’t any better just because it happens to fall on the 1^st of January. In fact, it might be worse to have a hangover on this day because I want to enjoy the big dinner my parents will be cooking!

I was working today which meant that I didn’t get any real input into the plans my friends were hatching. Needless to say — as I am sitting here writing this post with T minus 45 minutes until the bells — I baulked at the plans, which sound to me like an utter recipe for disaster. I am fragile and I like to sleep. I can make do without a bed, but preferably somewhere with people that I actually know, and failing that somewhere in the town where I actually live.

So I am now having a quiet night in, which is quite odd, but I’ve been getting stuff done which is good. Christmas Day itself was excellent, but the rest of the holidays have been such a massive disappointment — mostly because I have so much studying to do.

I have essays and a dissertation to write. They have been hanging over me the whole time and it’s been quite a bleak month — and it will be a bleak couple of months ahead as the big deadline looms. But I have allowed myself to take the 31^st and the 1^st off, which at least gets rid of the guilt I feel when I inevitably begin procrastinating.

Usually I don’t do new year’s resolutions. By my reckoning, if you were really that bothered about whatever vice you’re worried about, you would try to stop it regardless of whether it was the new year or not. That’s why new year’s resolutions are bound to fail.

Nevertheless, over the Christmas holiday I have become even more worried than normal about my sleeping patterns. It’s quite bad when you are routinely spending 13, 14 hours in bed — the first few trying to get to sleep, then around ten hours actually being asleep, dead to the world. At this time of the year, I miss entire days.

It’s okay to be like this when you are a student bum like me, but given that I am in my final year at university I won’t be able to get away with it for much longer. So now is the time to sort it out and to dedicate some real energy to finding a proper solution to my sleep problems.

I will also try to publish one blog post per day, although I have been trying to do that anyway!

I have never really got into student life. Despite the fact that I hate summer, I love the holiday aspect of it. This is not because I am a lazy bum, because in my opinion I have actually been quite busy this summer. And the busiest bit (two weeks in Cumbernauld) was the bit I enjoyed the most.

Ever since I started at university I have noticed a pattern. The first Christmas after starting university felt amazing. I couldn’t work out why, but I just went along with it. After all, you oughtn’t worry about feeling good. Then, between Christmas and New Year it hit me again: I realised that I would have to go back to university in a couple of weeks.

Since then, every university holiday has felt the same. It’s not just having time off. Like I said, I am just as busy when I am away from university, just doing different stuff. But just not having to be there is such a weight off my mind. I must really hate university.

At this time of year a lot of people ask me if I’m looking forward to going back to university. The answer, “Actually, I’m dreading it,” is mostly met with confusion. It’s a bit like the “how are you” conversations. You’re not actually allowed to say what you actually feel about university. Student life is meant to be amazing — the best years of your life. I have spent them depressively gazing at my feet.

Student life is way overrated if you ask me. Maybe part of it is down to the fact that I still live at home, so I don’t get to sample much in the way of student life. I don’t get the fun bits. I just get the work. Plus three hours of commuting hell every single day. I don’t get to do all the cool things students do, whatever they are.

But even if I lived in Edinburgh I doubt I would be into it much. Student culture is probably one of the biggest stains on humanity. When it doesn’t involve getting horrendously drunk for the most tenuous of reasons, it seems to be about “ironically” watching Neighbours, “ironically” saying “retrooo” at anything that is vaguely more old-fashioned than an iPod Touch and “ironically” being a total and utter twat.

Plus, for a section of society that is meant to be well-educated and open minded, students are an incredibly reactionary bunch. You meet extremists of all sorts — right- as well as left-wing. I find myself wandering around going, “Where are all the reasonable people?” I can’t remember the last time I heard a student say, “On the one hand… On the other hand.” [Insert obligatory dig at excessive bansturbators People & Planet here.]

All-in-all, it is enough to make me want to “ironically” reach for the nearest gun and “ironically” shoot myself so that I could go to “ironic” hell, because that might be a little bit more pleasant than a university campus.

This year, the dread came a bit earlier than previous years. It came over me like a massive black cloud on a visit to Edinburgh a month or so back. I used to quite like Edinburgh, but now it just reminds me of university dread. On top of all of the usual stuff, I have to contend with a couple of factors that are making me more scared of this year than usual.

First there is the dissertation. Because of my unexpectedly busy summer, I have not done as much preparation over the summer as I would have liked. The deadline is March, but still. I have not come much further forward since April. And next week I have to meet my Director of Studies who is the same person as my Dissertation Supervisor. Meep.

Then there is the fact that I have still not worked out what the hell I am going to do once I have finished university. Given that this is my final year, I had better think of something quickly.

The thing about careers is, you really need to have a good idea of what you want to do from a young age. If you haven’t worked it out by the time you’re about 15, I reckon you are screwed (like me). I used to say to people, “It’s a bit worrying, I don’t know what I’m going to do once I leave education.” Invariably people said, “It doesn’t matter. Nobody really knows what they want to do. You still have plenty of time to think of something.”

This is bullcrap. I found this out the hard way by actually believing it. The thing is, the advice stays like that until you reach the age of about 20. At which point the general advice becomes, “Well you should have decided before then, shouldn’t you!” True, but unhelpful. And then you are stuck with it, all set for a life spent wandering around like a headless chicken.

So given that I have to think up a profession quick-smart, I am going to have to attend every Careers Service event under the sun this year. To have this on top of the dissertation, I have a feeling it’s going to be a pretty tough year.

doctorvee

Archive: dissertation