Bitten tongue
It wasn’t too long ago (June, actually, but seems like forever right now) that I would have gladly smacked anyone upside their head for saying things like, “Oh, I miss studying”, as one graduated friend moaned one day as I sat, pulling my hair out, trying desperately (in the same way someone caught in quicksand struggles, with much the same results) to understand (remembering was something I couldn’t even think about, for fear of degenerating into a gibbering mess) twelve weeks of lectures and tutorials, two textbooks, and many, many past year papers, gloriously white and untouched.
And then I graduated (sort of) too, and rejoiced that I’d never have to feel it again, the streaks of ice that shoot up and down you when you turn a page to realise that there’s a majorly important, morbidly obese, chapters-long topic you’d completely forgotten about, which means your ETA of four a.m. is now, oh, fifteen minutes before the exam begins.
(I joke, I joke? I kid, I kid? Not in the slightest bit.)
I welcomed working life, despite the mind- and bottom-numbing hours, and the long commute. I could read on my way to work and from, or stare out of the window, or listen to the radio, or simply nap, and had no cares other than what to cook for dinner, and which show to watch that night.
Work stayed at work, and never came home with me, and this was wonderful.
Then Saturday night found me walking a familiar walk to the computer lab on an errand for one exam-embroiled. Every step slipped me further into the past, and soon the report I was carrying was not a report, but one of my many lecture files, the jacket on my arm not a jacket but my faithful book bag, crammed with everything I’d need for an all-nighter (books, obviously, an extra sweater, stationery, snacks, and once, memorably, a head of lettuce). I still had the same mad hair and wonky glasses, dirt-stained sneakers that crunched on the same muddy pavement.
And so I went in through the same wrought-iron gates into a world ghostly-lit by large white globes of lampposts, and went up the stairs to look for my busy, busy friend. And it was all the same inside as well. The scuffed-smooth tiles, the smell of caffeine (and adrenaline too, I’ll bet), the endless clicking of keyboards and the smooth-sounding scratch of pens and pencils.
‘It all came back to me then’ would be a cliché, and erroneous, because there was nothing to come back. It was simply there. Everything I’d loved about uni – the buildings, the air, the feeling of the tens of thousands who had passed through the very same hallways, possibly thinking the very same thoughts, the late nights in the library, surrounded by a mix of frantic students and laid-back chillers, and cups and cups and cups of hot chocolate, coffee and tea.
Everything seemed so eternal, and it was – only the people changed.
Maybe that’s what I missed about it, the solidarity of being just another in a steady stream that poured through the corridors and in and out of classrooms, yet somehow uniquely all your own. You had a tiny, tiny bit part in a never-ending play, but you got to say your very own lines. Everyone around you, give or take a couple of years, was at the same level you were. Everything you worried about they worried about too. Grades and assignments and exams and balls were conversational staples; we spoke about the same things, if not always in the same language.
Now I’m on my own, and go where I choose, or feel compelled to choose. We’re all working, but in different places and in different fields, for different sums. Everything’s different now, and it’s lonely sometimes, knowing no one else around you feels quite the same.
I want to go back, sometimes, and yes, I think, I miss studying, too.
But don’t, like, tell anyone.
Wouldn’t want to get smacked now, would I?
[Is it just me, or do I seem overly-fond of hyphens?]
And then I graduated (sort of) too, and rejoiced that I’d never have to feel it again, the streaks of ice that shoot up and down you when you turn a page to realise that there’s a majorly important, morbidly obese, chapters-long topic you’d completely forgotten about, which means your ETA of four a.m. is now, oh, fifteen minutes before the exam begins.
(I joke, I joke? I kid, I kid? Not in the slightest bit.)
I welcomed working life, despite the mind- and bottom-numbing hours, and the long commute. I could read on my way to work and from, or stare out of the window, or listen to the radio, or simply nap, and had no cares other than what to cook for dinner, and which show to watch that night.
Work stayed at work, and never came home with me, and this was wonderful.
Then Saturday night found me walking a familiar walk to the computer lab on an errand for one exam-embroiled. Every step slipped me further into the past, and soon the report I was carrying was not a report, but one of my many lecture files, the jacket on my arm not a jacket but my faithful book bag, crammed with everything I’d need for an all-nighter (books, obviously, an extra sweater, stationery, snacks, and once, memorably, a head of lettuce). I still had the same mad hair and wonky glasses, dirt-stained sneakers that crunched on the same muddy pavement.
And so I went in through the same wrought-iron gates into a world ghostly-lit by large white globes of lampposts, and went up the stairs to look for my busy, busy friend. And it was all the same inside as well. The scuffed-smooth tiles, the smell of caffeine (and adrenaline too, I’ll bet), the endless clicking of keyboards and the smooth-sounding scratch of pens and pencils.
‘It all came back to me then’ would be a cliché, and erroneous, because there was nothing to come back. It was simply there. Everything I’d loved about uni – the buildings, the air, the feeling of the tens of thousands who had passed through the very same hallways, possibly thinking the very same thoughts, the late nights in the library, surrounded by a mix of frantic students and laid-back chillers, and cups and cups and cups of hot chocolate, coffee and tea.
Everything seemed so eternal, and it was – only the people changed.
Maybe that’s what I missed about it, the solidarity of being just another in a steady stream that poured through the corridors and in and out of classrooms, yet somehow uniquely all your own. You had a tiny, tiny bit part in a never-ending play, but you got to say your very own lines. Everyone around you, give or take a couple of years, was at the same level you were. Everything you worried about they worried about too. Grades and assignments and exams and balls were conversational staples; we spoke about the same things, if not always in the same language.
Now I’m on my own, and go where I choose, or feel compelled to choose. We’re all working, but in different places and in different fields, for different sums. Everything’s different now, and it’s lonely sometimes, knowing no one else around you feels quite the same.
I want to go back, sometimes, and yes, I think, I miss studying, too.
But don’t, like, tell anyone.
Wouldn’t want to get smacked now, would I?
[Is it just me, or do I seem overly-fond of hyphens?]
posted by me me me at
9:23 PM
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