Yesterday was my last day of classes. So strange to think that this BA has finished, an unstopping circle line train below ground and above it, all coming back around to this.
I looked back for the blogposts from first year, the beginning. There’s this one where I’m unbelievably over ambitious and unreasonably nervous. And this one of my first actual day of lectures, that is a jarring awakening- I’ve begun to take this all for granted when exactly two years and six months ago I was calling it ‘everything I’d always wanted.’
So here are some updates-
I have definitely not worked 50 hours a week. It is possible that I have also not spent a single week actually working 50 hours. Maybe exam time in first year. I still don’t think so.
I have been able to blag my way through seminars. And meetings. And essays, to a lesser extent. And that is sad.
My education has forced me to drop my pretentious pseudo intellectualism, I think. I am very clear about not knowing enough about anything or even anything about many things at all.
How I felt when starting this BA is how I will feel again when starting the MA. I look forward to the déjà vu.
I ended up dropping AKC because turns out French was on Mondays and I couldn’t make it, so haven’t done that.
Art and Arch of Ancient Greece turned out to be my best grade in first year. And Worlds of the British Empire, the class I most enjoyed, was my worst. Learnt not to measure.
I had such a great last day of uni.
Starting with the Wall of BAME (this pun has been my crowning achievement of third year) and all the beautiful people and stories.
Meeting Adrian and being reassured that I’m not the worst student ever and that I’ll be able to pull it together and do this dissertation and having a cool idea for it in the meeting itself.
Lunch with Naadirah and discovering both a wonderful new person and also the wonderful Pizza Hut lunch buffets that I’ve gone this whole time not knowing about. All the poems and conversation and things in common and Chipotle and space and instagram and the texts that followed.
Last Diasporas class and making a film pitch in class and people laughing and reflecting on how much we’ve grown and learnt and discovering Gillian’s corporate accomplishments and reading the Five Measures of Expatriation and feeling it so much. Feeling like identity and the things we think within ourselves can be real, can be tangible, can be academic.
Trying to go to the Liberal Arts core module presentations and instead being intercepted by the group that was leaving and being taken by Owen onto the Somerset House balcony. Amalie and Rory got some prosecco, and I had my teatrapak orange juice, and Brita had a box of Lindor from a first year to whom she’d lent notes, and Gavin’s playlists echoing from the iPhone in the plastic sandwich box and laughing and chatting for hours and watching the skyline and the clouds that looked like oil paint from the same vantage point that we all came to see as freshers with our parents like “oh wow King’s overlooks the Thames” and then getting burritos with Arthur and sitting in Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese for hours with that one G&T (one G, two T, one pineapple piece, one lemon slice) and just feeling so relaxed and happy and all the hugs when we left.
So yeah, I haven’t learnt as much as I wanted because I didn’t put in the effort I should have, and I’ve been stressed and last minute about every assessment and not organised enough outside my diary and still feel a bit lost and uncertain but that’s what growing up is. So it’s okay. I’ve made good decisions I think, and met kind clever people and been part of communities I am proud of.
Maybe it’s not been for the reasons I expected, but this time really has been everything I’d always wanted.
