I can vividly remember my first day at DCU. The fact that it started out with a large dose of self-inflicted embarrassment probably helps though. Sitting down in a lecture room full of new faces, every one of them strange and unknown, I had finally worked up the courage to introduce myself to the girl sitting next to me. It looked like she was going to vomit when I smiled at her and said, “Hi, I’m Beth”. Turns out I was sitting in on some European law lecture with a bunch of third-year law students.
After fleeing the room and profusely sweating at this stage I strongly considered walking out of the Henry Grattan, down past Albert College Park and getting back on the 9 and going home. For some reason I decided to stay, I found the room I was supposed to be in and gingerly took a seat at the back of the room, (reluctant to introduce myself to anyone as I’m sure you can understand), but I sat and so my college life began.
It’s safe to say I didn’t “throw” myself into the whole college experience as many of my peers did. Why didn’t I drop out, you ask? – I have no idea, I didn’t (and still don’t) like the idea of working full time, so maybe that. This might be a tad problematic now that I am in the final week of my degree.
There were numerous times over the three years that I strongly considered dropping out. In the first year far too many bus drivers saw me in quite a distressed emotional state for my liking. In second year I used to send fake emails to myself informing me that my lecture was cancelled so I didn’t have to go in. I spent a few days “attending” college in third year when I actually just went and sat in my wardrobe hiding from my parents and binge watched something on Netflix.
I appeased myself by telling myself that doing this three year degree was the quickest and easiest route to getting my dream job .A primary school teacher. I had the whole thing sussed. A masters in primary school teaching would mean that I would be a teacher at the age of twenty-three and my life could begin.
So when I didn’t get the grade needed in my Irish oral exam in order to apply to the masters, well you can imagine the hysterics. There followed about a fortnight of self-pitying, wallowing and general rage against the universe.
I had rushed through three years of my life, three years of freedom I had never had before, three years of experiences that I would never have again, and three years of going out every week and it being socially acceptable for it all just to be snatched away from me.
But then I thought. My college experience has taught me more than just the things that I have written manure worthy assignments on or cried over trying to cram into my head whilst sitting on a smelly bus before an exam. It’s taught me the importance of not taking life for granted, and that despite my constant need to, I can’t control everything and that’s okay.
They say that distance makes the heart grow fonder, and, perhaps reluctantly, I have to agree when I think of DCU. Covid-19 has robbed me, and many other students all over the word of their last few weeks at university. I now look at all the things I took for granted. That eccentric self portrait of the woman precariously perched on the carousel horse at the bottom of the stairs in the Henry Grattan, the corrosive first few gulps of a new can of Jack Slatts and dare I say it, the FuJo room in all its journalistic glory.
Going forward, I’ve no idea what’s in store for me. The primary school teaching dream is long dead and buried. I might move to Berlin for the year and take up tennis, who knows. To any of my friends reading this, prepare to be shocked, I might even give journalism a go.