The end of an era...

After three years, hundreds of thousands of words and more deadlines than I care to remember, that’s it. I have finished my degree.

Yesterday I submitted my dissertation; my very last piece of University work. Printed, bound and proof-read a ridiculous number of times, I popped it in the box and said goodbye to three years of Undergraduate study.

It’s a surreal feeling; there’s a mixture of excitement, pride, terror, nerves, relief and then pure happiness as friends congratulate you with the news that now you’re free! It’s almost as if Uni had us tied down in chains for the last few years…

But it does feel like a huge weight has been lifted. The deadlines are over, the stress has gone and there’s just a wait now to find out whether the hours spent in the library will pay off. In the meantime though, the fun can begin - I’ve begun to notice that University pretty much starts with a party, and ends with one too…

Muddled Thoughts

Tempting as it is to jump on the bandwagon and write something about the Kony 2012 campaign, which has been impossible to miss unless you’ve had your laptop off and your head in a hole for the last few days… I’m instead going to rather selfishly focus on a mini personal triumph.

I’ve done it. I’ve finally made a decision about my dissertation topic!
(*Cue loud applause and tears of joy!*)
Yet, whilst I’m relieved about putting weeks of indecisiveness to an end, I’m also slightly subdued.

It’s occurred to me that whilst I’ve finally picked something to focus on, I’ve also eliminated a whole world of literature. In comes sentimentalism and the social reform novels of Dickens and Gaskell, but out goes the propaganda voices of WW1; the social injustices of post-colonial Graceland; the racial prejudices of Benjamin Zephaniah, the love from the Romantics, and out goes the politics of George Orwell. 

During a conversation with one of my tutors, I realised that out of a whole world of literature, I’ve chosen to focus on novels from the nineteenth century. True, I’m focusing on the issues within that which I find extremely interesting & engaging; social reform & injustice, poverty, gender…yet look at how much I’m also neglecting!

Now, obviously I can’t write my dissertation on the entirety of literature, that’s just silly. But I suppose that it’s finally dawned on me quite how much you can find in literature that can grip you and draw you in to its world. When I discussed with the same tutor modules for next year, this really hit home. 

It seemed to me that specialising could also be coined limiting.

But I suppose that, on reflection, just because I’ve chosen to focus on one topic for my dissertation, there’s nothing to stop me pursuing my own directions and thriving off words from the likes of D.H.Lawrence, Shakespeare, Abani, Coetzee, Plath… it just won’t be critically assessed!
 I guess I just wanted to have my hand in every biscuit tin as it were…

I wonder if, alongside some of these writers that I’m so reluctant to forget about, anyone will ever be reluctant to forget this blog and these words in progress...