People always claim that your time at Uni will be the ‘best years of your life’. When I first moved here, I felt as if time was passing by quicker than it ever has before. I wanted to hold onto each moment, each friendship I watched grow and each new decoration I added to my little room in halls. I wanted the future me I dreamed about in 5, 10, and 15 years to have something to look back on that was more than just filtered photos and Instagram stories of whatever meal out I’d enjoyed that day.
Soon after starting first year, I completely smashed my phone camera, so with this gap in my camera roll and nothing to document my experience with (the Apple Store is spenny!!!), I found the beautiful A6 notebook I had brought with me and began to document my days, my thoughts, and feelings in all sorts of forms; letters, sketches, notes, brain dumps, poems…
Now I’ve never been a diary person. The commitment of coming home from working and writing a bland sequence of events couldn’t have bored me more. That’s why I love the idea of journaling. I could start a new page, write whatever I desired for no reason whatsoever, and know that nobody would ever read it except me.
It’s a couple of months into second year now and my journal is bulky, the spine is cracked and you can see small tokens, receipts, tickets, photo booth photos and even a boarding pass peeking out of the pages. I have letters from my girlfriend stacked and stored in the back, causing the original book to have doubled in width where the extra papers are stacked inside. There are pressed flowers inside from parks I visited with friends last summer and a green feather that fell onto my lap when I sat front row at ‘Wicked’ the musical. There are manifestations written in gold gel pen from a year ago – some of which have already begun to come true. I’ve got a tally chart of scores from the monopoly deal league my friends and I bickered over last May, and spider diagrams of play ideas I’ve promised myself I’ll write one day. I’ve got each and every song lyric I’ve heard on shuffle that resonated with me. I’ve got the love letter I wrote to my little flat the night before I moved out of halls. I have pages upon pages of likes and dislikes from first year – whether it be foods, shops, bars, or TV shows we’ve binged. I’m sure you get the picture.
So, now it’s your turn. Grab that hardback notebook you’ve been too afraid to write in because it’s just too pretty. Start collecting little bits and pieces from the memories you make and tape them in as delicately (or as messily) as you like! Write about the emotions you’re feeling – because I know more than anybody how daunting first year is – especially when you’ve moved from a tiny town to a huge city where imposter syndrome is rife. Keeping track of each hurdle and doodling these little moments as they happen to allow you to keep your mind clean and organised, as well as have a beautiful collection of keepsakes all in one place. Buy a lovely new pen and romanticise your life – you’re only young once and I know that I’ll love looking back on this little book one day when I’m older and I happen to stumble across it at the back of a cupboard. Document your thoughts and your life in any which way you prefer – it’s your life, and the experiences you find yourself navigating deserve physical presence so you can enjoy it now and find nostalgia within it in the future.
Go on! Write something…
