THE G WORD: THOUGHTS ON BEING IN THE FINAL SEMESTER OF UNIVERSITY

The G word. All final years are currently trying to avoid talking about what we are all facing, namely the prospect of next year and what may lie ahead after graduation. As I write this, Easter is two weeks away and with it comes a month off, followed by two final weeks of lectures, not to mention countless deadlines (I won’t go as far as to mention the D word in this article). 

Some plan to figure next year out as they go, while others have offers of jobs or postgraduate courses, but nobody is one hundred percent certain of what the future beyond university holds. For most, it will be the first time since they were a toddler that September doesn’t bring a ‘back to school’ of sorts. Whilst it might feel liberating to have finally escaped the shackles of the education system, it is also a disconcerting feeling — school for fourteen years followed by university for three or four feels like a path well-trodden. After that, however, there seems to be no clear path. To some extent, having the choice and the space to decide what lies ahead for us after graduation (of course cost of living allowing) is a massive privilege. Especially as women, the ability to choose our career is one that was not always granted to us and the freedom we have now, while overwhelming, is better than the alternative. Despite knowing this, and being at an objectively exciting stage in our lives, it does not change the fact that the uncertainty is completely terrifying, and whilst university is great in so many ways, at least speaking for myself, it has gone incredibly quickly, and even the Nura of a year ago thought that she would have more time to plan for later — but it seems that ‘later’ is quickly becoming now.

Something which I have been thinking about a lot lately as we race towards the last few months with those I have spent the last three years with is the friendships I have made throughout my time at university. The mythology surrounding university makes the social aspect often feel more important than anything else, and that’s often a good thing — I definitely feel I’ve grown in confidence whilst at university and met some amazing people. Yet sometimes that can feel daunting, as if you’re ‘doing uni wrong’ if you don’t find your people straight away or at all, or you’re not someone who loves socialising all the time, or you have one or two close friends rather than a massive group. This pressure to find all the people you will be friends with for life in these few years at uni is something I have felt myself, particularly at the start of my first year. However, it is one that has surfaced in the last couple of months as I entered my final semester.

Final year feels like there is constantly a ticking clock, and since Christmas it has felt more like an hourglass that is running out. I am so close with so many incredible people I have met here but recently I had a sudden fear that it wouldn’t last. I always knew it might be inevitable that once the graduation caps are thrown and tears are shed, despite all the modern technology in the world to keep people connected, we will drift as we go our separate ways in life. But it suddenly hit me that the nights out, 3am conversations and library all-nighters may soon become a distant memory, and I had the panic — much like school, when you remove the shared experience of us being at the same university, how many of these people will I really see regularly after leaving?

After speaking to my housemate, my mum and my friend who graduated last year (love you all) I realised I am far from alone in feeling this way. Although I definitely expect the grad panic (part 2) to hit in a big way this summer, they all said they also had/are having a moment at this point in their final year where they thought are me and my friends ever going to get closer than we are right now? And will they be a part of the next chapter of my life? 

But here’s the thing — this chapter is still part of the book. And every person that we let into our lives at every stage gives us something, whether it be a lesson or simply some brief shared moments of laughter. To clarify, I am absolutely not advocating for cutting your close friends from uni off, but simply not to feel overwhelmed by the idea of your friendships changing after uni, and inevitably drifting from some people you were less close with. As my mother very wisely said, if you have one or two really close friends (and maybe a couple more you see every so often) from every stage of your life, then that’s pretty amazing. After all, if you stay close with absolutely everyone from school or uni, you won’t have the space to meet anyone who you haven’t met yet, and isn’t that the most exciting part of life?