My Mumbling Thoughts

I always say that I don't regret for one second deciding to come over here to study, and that even though it has been really tough for me, the life experiences that I've gained, the friends that I've made and the memories that I cherish are worth every other minute that I was sitting in my room on those low days sulking. These past three years have been... incredible, for lack of a better word. They have forever changed me as a person and I consider myself to be extremely lucky to even have had this experience.

However, the one thing that has always been a slight problem for me, but something that I tend not to think about because it upsets me so much, is the academic side of things. For all of this money that I've shelled out and that Momma has put forward, I don't feel like I received the greatest educational experience that I could have gotten. True, I didn't go to all of my lectures, and yes my attitude was pretty poor for most of the time, however, I don't blame myself entirely for it ending up that way.

Before I even stepped one foot onto our campus, I already had an image in my head of what it was going to be like. I had dreamt about what my lecturers were going to be like, what they would teach all of us young writers who were so eager and willing to plunge head first into a world of nothing but Writing All The Time. I'd be consumed with all of this creativity and university would be a safe environment where I could explore my different ideas and nurture soon-to-be fantastic, life changing projects. Everyone was going to drink hot tea in paper cups that they would buy from the local cafe and wear fingerless gloves, chain smoke and only wear cool, funky clothes that they would find in random charity shops.

I mean, it wasn't a "specific" picture, but you get what I mean...

So I got here, and that fantasy of mine was soon replaced with reality, which was less picturesque and more nightmarish. The lecturers turned out to be part-time, washed up writers that had mild success and thought that preaching to youngsters like myself would somehow gain them notoriety and massage their egos for not being the latest, greatest "thing". The modules that we had to take, the writing "exercises" that were designed for us, I had already done throughout high school and the enthusiasm that I was expecting from everyone was more like a chore that they were being forced to come to this place and try new things.

I was deflated. I was let down. I was saddened by the fact that my dream of an academic smorgasbord was more like a tortured jail cell and nobody else shared my conviction.

Of course there were other Life Things going on throughout the past years that distracted me from my work and brought me down, but the lack of warrant on the academic side of life didn't help boost me up either. How was I supposed to be motivated with my own work when our lecturers didn't even seem interested? How was I supposed to continue on doing what I love when they told us from the very beginning that most of us were going to fail? How was I supposed to stay focused, be a One Woman Cheerleader for myself and keep smiling every day when the work was lackluster, my peers were just as downtrodden and our lecturers were patronizing?

It sucked and I wasn't impressed.

So I developed a grudge. A really bad grudge against some of my lecturers and blamed them for my poor academia. According to me, it was because of them that I lost the will to write. I lost the passion to write. I lost the love to write. They took that from me, and I harbored some serious anger towards them.

I knew it wasn't completely their fault, but I decided it partially was. My university and my lecturers proper let me down, and I never really felt like I could go to them and talk about it. I just felt like another name on their list and resented them for shoving us all in the same category, for herding us around like mindless sheep, as if the last three years were a complete waste and the joke was on all of us. They should have been encouraging us to do better, to continue forward, to hold our heads up and never let the bad side of things get us down. But they didn't, and it was hurtful. At least it was to me.

So for the past couple of months, I was grieving and I didn't even know it. I was mourning the death of my academic life and carrying around this sadness in my chest, carrying this grudge, carrying this giant load of hate towards them and myself. Why did I do the full three years? Why didn't I just get out after the first year and decide to go somewhere else?

Because I couldn't. I wouldn't let myself do that. I just hoped that it would get better as time went on, and after all that bloody time and effort I spent years before trying to get over here in the first place! Hell no. I was going to finish even if it killed me.

Speaking with Maria helped me discover this. I said the things that I never allowed myself to think let alone say out loud. What if I made the wrong decision? What if all of this was a complete and utter waste of time and money? What if I was deluding myself into believing something that wasn't true?

As soon as those words left my mouth and touched the air, I cried.

And ever since that day, I've been smiling and being kind to myself.