Procrastination

Normally, after I'm done with essays and exams I breathe easy for a bit, the summer inevitably contains the half-hearted search for menial employment, which I won't find if I can help it. I've never been incredibly driven to make money, but that's because my student loan has always supported my not-so-expensive lifestyle (a lot of sitting, a little eating, maybe see a movie)

But this summer is different, because its the last summer that's ever going to be summer in the traditional sense. No longer will the year be divided into terms or quarters or semesters, with those brilliant and sometimes long breaks in between. So this week, which is normally a wind down from the stress of deadlines and revision (i.e. sleeping, drinking copiously, shopping for shorts) has mostly consisted of what I like to call 'life-denial'. This process includes browsing graduate websites with one eye closed (so that it is so blurry you cannot a) notice that there are not that many options, b) admit to yourself that you could have used the last few years to get experience that would prove you can "work in a team" and "communicate well with others"...damn this apathy).

Here's the problem with being a perpetual student until the last moment, you get used to apathy, especially if you pick a course that requires you to read a book, go to a film screening and then demands only 4 hours worth 'contact time'. I know thats not the case for most students, but is generally the case for those chose humanities subjects, who generally do so not for the love of knowledge (be it mostly pointless) but because it looked 'interesting'. Do these decisions you make idolly as a teenager come to effect your life and how you live it?

We'll see.

Hank Green's Wisdom

I've been following the vlogbrother's since July of Brotherhood 2.0. I've since introduced them to a few friends who now quote "best wishes" at every possible opportunity. If you stumble upon this and you haven't understood the last two sentences click the link and surrender a couple of days of your life, unless you hate nerds.

Hank posted this video a couple of days ago, which pretty much sums up the difference in the situation of my generation, that our world is different, dramatically so, to that of our parents (though isn't it always) and though we're better trained to adapt to the transformational power that technology has on our lives, we too are still figuring it out.

We'll see.

Introduction to my Dysfunction.

Here's the situation. I'm almost 22 and I'm graduating in July. I'm also diving into one of the worst graduate jobs markets ever. But that's not important, what is, is that I have no freakin' idea who I am, what I'm supposed to do, and the avoidance of these questions means that I'm spending this spare time (my bliss month, I'll explain later) when I should be proactive, when everybody is telling me to get on the job horse, struggling with the importance of these decisions.

That's the problem I suppose, with following the classic path. From a young age I never questioned the fact that I would go to university, get a higher education and then some career. Even though neither of my parents did, it was just expected that my generation of my family were going places. But at 18 I didn't think of me at 21, I just picked the easy route, something I would enjoy, nothing too challenging. But after all this time, this money, tonnes of paper and ink and thousands of words, I still don't have anything to offer to world.

So I'm looking, that's all I can do. Its all I can think about. Just reading biographies makes me edgy, because they can never convey how little that person knew about what lay ahead for them. And from the little of life I have truly experienced beyond my computer screen, none of it seems intentional or planned. Things, events, people, they all interact in ways we can't predict.

So here I stand, in more control (in a way) of my life than I will ever be again. On the verge of true adulthood and its not all bad. I'm excited, I'm terrified but I am not ready.

We'll see.