Today I completed my dissertation. Well, technically yesterday as it is now 01:24am and so technically it’s tomorrow, well… today. You get what I mean. The key point is that I finished the dissertation. Now yes I do still have three essays and an exam to do, but it feels strangely like the end at the moment. The dissertation is such an important part of a degree that to complete it and hand it in (later today), well that’s an important moment I believe, it signifies the end of what has been now almost sixteen years of education.
This end of what I have known well that brings about new concerns. I never again have to worry about homework, or trying to think of new reasons why I shouldn’t go to school or more recently, new reasons why I shouldn’t go to a lecture. No, now I need to worry about new things, things like bills, and taxes, and you know… the future.
So, what is the future going to hold? Well… who knows.
I want this blog to be one of my attempts at motivating, putting things in perspective, making people feel at ease. I am fairly sure in my mind that I am not alone, that you or at least some people you know are worried, unsure and uneasy about what may lay ahead in the very near future. But I am also fairly sure that there is only a very limited ability for a blog to put people at ease.
Have a read of this statement:
I want to live! I mean, who in their right mind in a choice between pancakes and living chooses pancakes?
There is a quote for you, it’s from the film Stranger than Fiction and raises that very important point, your life is whatever you make it, if you choose to you could do nothing with your life but eat pancakes. Some may not see that as a very good life, some may not like pancakes - but they key thing to remember is as follows, the response to that statement:
…if you pause to think, you’d realize that that answer is inextricably contingent upon the type of life being led… and, of course, the quality of the pancakes.
What the film is trying to say (Or at least, how I interpreted it) is that life is whatever you make it. Someone may choose to live the type of life where they eat pancakes, the key thing is that they are still living. They are making their life what they want it to be.
The same goes for us, our life is whatever we make of it.
I am uneasy about the future, I don’t know exactly what is going to happen. I don’t know if I’ll get a job (So far I have been far from successful) nor do I know where I will live. But that doesn’t mean I can’t look forward too it. I know it will work out alright in the end and I for one am very excited.
I am at a turning point, anyone who is finishing university or anyone else for that matter, is at a turning point. We are forever able to make choices, we can choose to do whatever we please with our lives and make of it as we will. At this point, at this turn in the road, the world is our oyster! Do you want to eat pancakes? Or maybe you prefer waffles? Maybe you just want a nice job, a family, a nice car, you know… traditional stuff. Either way, your life is what you decide it should be. It is as the film says, inextricably contingent upon the type of life being led.
So go out there! Do what you will with your lives and have fun!
