Such a lovely quotation from ‘Love Actually’

“Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion’s starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don’t see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often, it’s not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it’s always there - fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know, none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge - they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I’ve got a sneaking feeling you’ll find that love actually is all around.”

A year away...

For everyone my age, I am sure you can relate...

If I do go to university a year from now... I'll be travelling outside my comfort zone and what I know to be the normalities of life. These are: getting up at the same time each morning, going to sixth form, coming home to talk to my family and dinner with my family. Weekends - going to work, then seeing my family and perhaps friends. Life to me now is perfect as it is what I am used to, yes sixth form is hard, but what isn't in life? It scares me to know that just a year from now I could potentially be sitting in my own accommodation, or a library full of other students or even sitting in a cafe eating breakfast. And always on my mind I will be thinking with curiosity what the next lecture or seminar will be. That scares me. A year for me feels like a month. But I am scared that whilst I am there I will be feeling home sick, missing those who mean so much to me, and missing the random conversations with my friends, despite half of our talks not making sense, but to me they make total sense in my life. I'll miss my family's hugs and kisses and how they always tell me that I'm doing brilliantly and that I need more confidence, this is what kept me going.

But, I need to face it, we all need to. We are growing up now... Some of us eighteen already, others nearly. We need to step out of our comfort zone sooner or later, and earlier the better. The more comfortable we get, the more dependant we will become. So perhaps university is a positive thing not just in the case of a degree, but the experience of finding our own place in the world on our own. 

We still have time I suppose, it's a year from now. 

Time to get ready

Ever since year 9 I have worried about what the future will bring, however, I have come to realise that the future is unpredictable and only I can model my own future, no one else. I once read a quote by someone called Simone de Beauvoir:

“Change your life today. Don't gamble on the future, act now, without delay.”

By this I have come to the conclusion that what I do today will leave its impression on the rest of my life… whether positive or negative. I have been ‘umm-ing and arr-ing’ about whether to go to university due to the cost, the worry of accommodation and whether it will benefit me in the long run, but I have decided that I am not going to gamble not getting a degree when the option is now open to me. So I am going to “act now, without delay”. I know I need to, I know myself too well and I know if I don’t I will regret it in the long run.

I have considered many universities and I still need to research a little bit more, but time is quickly passing. The universities I have read up on sound really good, but the entry requirements are quite high being AAB/ABB… It will be so difficult to get those grades, and I highly doubt I will. I may put them down as the aspirational option, and put lower universities in terms of entry requirements as realistic. I have come to realise A2 won’t be easy, I knew that straight from the start, but now I know what I want to achieve and where I want to go, I will try my absolute best to aim high and hopefully receive the grades that reflect this. I am ready for a hard year ahead, anyway, I was expecting it.

Achievement in other’s eyes

I have always wondered about achievement and other’s opinions about these, in this case grades. I have come to realise that praise is put on those who achieve the highest grades instead of those who performed on their target grade or even over their target grade. Surely praise is about congratulating someone who performed very well due to the circumstances they’re in. It is fair that ‘clever geniuses’ are praised for getting straight As, however what about those who overachieved or even done better than they ever hoped? For some people learning comes naturally to them, therefore they tend to do better so surely their achievement is expected or at least hoped for. I personally feel sorry for those who have done well despite finding things hard and always worrying; I know many people who are in this position,  however I feel they aren’t being praised as much for good grades compared to those who did ‘brilliantly’. This ‘brilliance’ is apparently only for those who get high grades. I read the newspaper the other day and it said about great achievers, not surprisingly these were straight A students. To me, it is not fair that people only read about students who are always achieving, what about those who have learning difficulties and those who exceeded their ability or even those who did well for themselves? Does our personal pride not come before other’s opinions?