For weeks I've been trying to figure out how to begin this thing. I know I didn't post one in the last week of school, three weeks ago, before I took my exam break. Well, my exams are over and hopefully this is the last set of exams I'll be doing at UWI. The next time I plan to be there is to collect my gown, then return it. Yep, it's all done: university, unemployment, irresponsibility.
I remember when we first went into university. We were small (some of us), naive (probably dumb) and excited to experience all that this new world would hold for us. Now look at us; we're all grown up (some more physically than mentally, others more mentally than physically), maybe even grown out and we have experienced close to all that this old world had to offer us.
A friend once said that we navigate university. It's not easy being a student and coming home every evening to cooked food and sapping the resources of your parents, far less being miles away from everything familiar. "Navigate" paints a better picture of what we go through because some things happen and we will never know why. And I'd like to credit my existence up to this point to God. Reminiscing on school life made me understand that I have too little control over too many things for me to believe I'm the who should be glorified. Papers get lost, teachers have lives which can affect marking and of course, we have lives which can affect our focus on the day of an exam. We are like ships in an ocean sailing from undergraduates to graduates.
But school's not the only thing that changed in my life. Remember how I was talking about not posting a blog in the last week of school? Well that's because I wasn't here, in Bim. There once was a guy I knew for all my life and folks tried to convince us that we were brothers. We bought into it and were so good at portraying it that sometimes people would look at us and say "you're brothers?...yeah I now see the resemblance." Well that guy got married. She doesn't really have the resemblance though (after all, I am the cute one, they're just my family).
I always knew this day would come. We had teased each other about it when we were small and when he went away to study it was only a matter of time. As they say, time told. Seeing him leave to get married brought more joy than sadness. The really sad part came one day while I was studying. His room is cool and has a soft chair and a nice desk that can host my clutter so I was using it to study. He was still single at that time but I was still using the stuff and as I sat in the empty room with the walls suffocating me, I thought back on the party we threw for him and how, in a very blunt way, he told one of his friends, "b I'm packing to leave." It only occurred to me then and that was pretty much the end to my night. It actually hasn't been bad at all. It's harder to incorporate my new sister and make her feel like family than it is to give my brother the boot.
There were other trivial stuff that happened over the last three weeks like when I sprained my ankle chasing my dream. In short (the full story is on Facebook called "Dream Chasers") I was running and slipped off a pavement because I didn't want to drag myself through the mud and jumping in puddles is actually not as exciting as it may look on television - driving through them...well that's a different story.
Trivial event number two is that my pen ran out of ink during the exam. I thought that was actually pretty cool because that was the only pen I wrote with in all of my exams. I was going to hold a funeral service for it but the invigilators didn't want to give any extra time so I threw it one side and wrote with, get this, black ink! Things have really changed over the past year.
So my exams have been done and I pray they are done. Differential Equations was one rough exam which left many people crying - well those who cared about it. It was 4 questions, 80 marks, 2 hours. I'll never forget UWI and after an exam like that I don't think I'll forget Dr. Sing either. It was interesting; half way through thet last question I paused to think about the answer and I was reminded of last year. Here I was doing the same course, going into the exam with the same course work mark, having the same first question as last year. And I wondered, "What makes this year any different? You still didn't know Laplace transforms (the theory part) well and here you are trying to figure out a chapter that you don't even have in your notes." I think that's the point where I started to feel like crying. But I never once tried to pull myself up by the bootstraps, psyching up myself and screaming "You can do it." I said Lord don't make me fail, and breathed deeply. I think I found the hook for the leviathan.
What's next after UWI? I don't know. I've worked hard for these three years and well I probably won't stop working hard, so I think it's time I work hard and get some money for it. Not some, nuff lol. I have a lot of plans like doing a masters, finding a job, going away on work for charities, and even learning how to fly planes. Maybe all of those things are next. I've learned that dreams don't have to die because we have a career. So my only choice really is what lies in store for me now and when I will do all of the above (and buy a bike).
A lot of people (if we use the population of my official followers) have been asking me if I'm closing the blog. I'm not sure what that means but yes I won't be writing in it anymore - this is the last entry. My Blog has served its purpose - to let readers know what's been going on in my school life. And as strange and addictive as it may have been, I've enjoyed writing it and I hope you have enjoyed reading it more than I do. I'm on to other things, some say bigger things but they're definitely better things. And for those who came in late I'll post the stuff I have sent as e-mails before the crossover to the blog so that there's the full experience written; but this will always be the first post you see when you enter the site. So that's it. No more rambling.
