Musings on uni ...

Well, I have nothing to do at the moment, I'm back in my family home, waiting for a job and a place to live to appear in Leeds, so I've been thinking about my time at uni, what I'll miss, what I've learned, what I regret.

I'll obviously miss my friends. There are people at uni who have really changed my life (you know who you are), and it's sad to think that I won't be able to them regularly anymore. And I'll miss seminars. I know you'll all think I'm a loon for saying that, but seminars in my final year especially were great - sitting around talking about theatre, history, politics and all sorts, I loved it. I'm sure when I start a job I'll miss lie-ins, and I'll definitely miss student discounts and long holidays!

What have I learned? Apart from a bunch of (probably useless) bits and pieces about theatre that is. I've learned not to judge a book by its cover; some of my best friends are people who, when I first met them, I thought I'd have nothing in common with. Equally, people who I thought I'd get on well with sometimes turned out to be the exact opposite. I wish I'd learned this simple fact much sooner, but then if I had I wouldn't be where I am today.

I've also learnt that I'm not exceptionally intelligent. I always subconsciously believed this, had this niggling feeling that I was something special, something different, so assumed this must be to do with my brains. Getting a 2:1, while it was a great result, did humble me and has made me see that, yes, I am different, but I'm equal to everyone else - no higher, no lower. From now on, 'Different but Equal' will be my motto.

Regrets? I've had a few! I regret not getting much arts experience for a start, and, connected to that, I wish I hadn't spent so much time doing 'Christian' things in an attempt to earn brownie points with God. It never occurred to me that, as long as it wasn't plain wrong, He'd value whatever work I did.

I especially regret not getting to know my coursemates better; yeah, I have different views to many of them, but in my final year it really dawned on me that I'd been put on a course with 37 other people, everyone one of them special. I made the decision early on, when I was struggling to make friends at uni, to focus on befriending other Christians - after all, then I was guaranteed to have one thing in common with them. This provided me with brilliant friends, but meant I cut myself off from most of my coursemates.

But, what's done is done, and if nothing else, uni has made me more open-minded, and I know myself far better now. Pity I couldn't have achieved that without running up a £10,000 debt!!