Saturday 25 April 2015

When it's all said and done



As my last few weeks of first year draw near, I wanted to take some time to reflect on the past nine months. It's been one hell of a year and to not write about it would be a wasted opportunity.

This blog certainly hasn't been one of my priorities since starting college and I can't say I regret putting it on the back burner. The past few months have been the most intense writing periods of my life. Usually when I write too much too often I start to suffer from writer's block, but not this semester. In fact, it has been the complete opposite.

Since February (which feels like a lifetime ago but was actually only two months) I have been contributing articles and pieces to various online websites and publications. These include Intrigue.ie, SpunOut.ie, College Times and most recently, Campus.ie. On top of that, I had to set up a whole new blog on Wordpress as part of a module assignment. Had it not been for that assignment, each post on Life of an LGBT would have been published right here.

Not only have I been contributing regularly to each of the above sites, I've also had a shitload (let me emphasize, a SHITLOAD) of assignments to do for college. The majority of my course is continuous assessment so I've always had some sort of work to do outside of college hours. The past few weeks in particular have certainly heightened my stress levels, with four major assignments for the same module all due in the same week. Poor planning if I may say so myself.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed every single task we were given. Obviously they were daunting at first because they all involved interviews which either had to be done on the phone or face-to-face. Finding sources and people actually willing to help in these assignments was probably the most stressful part; writing the article itself was pretty straightforward.

Despite all of the aforementioned work, I still managed to squeeze in a few, ahem, hours, AHEM, of down time. Most of which I spent in the company of fabulous people. *London Tipton style, clap clap clap clap* Yay me.

Reflecting on this year, I realise I've learnt a lot about myself. Things I would never had known had I not met the people I did.

First of all, I realised I'm an extremely impatient person. Not just in the "Come on, we're going to be late" kind of sense (even though that side of me really was amplified. Thanks, Áine.), but also in the "If you're going to be an asshole, goodbye" sense. I stopped waiting around, hoping people would change and instead I got on with my own life; even if that meant leaving some people out of it.

I also realised how important friendships are to me. The new friendships I made reminded me of how significant some of the old ones were, too. It took me this long to acknowledge the fact that I had been wearing blinkers in some aspects of my life and that maybe, just maybe that wasn't always the right approach.

Something I wasn't expecting to learn about myself this year was how much I miss playing sport, particularly soccer. I regret not joining the UL soccer team in the first semester but I guess I wanted to invest more of my time into developing and solidifying friendships, which is a good justification in my books. However, I have no excuse for not joining in the second semester.

Even though I've said it before on a few occasions, I mean it when I say I'm going back to soccer in September. It has been a passion of mine all my life and I can't let one big-ass motherfucking injury scar me forever. I have to accept that I'm not going to be the player I was three years ago but that doesn't mean I can't be a player at all.

Lastly, and possibly most importantly I realised this year that I am definitely pursuing the right career path. I doubted myself for a while before Christmas when I wasn't enjoying certain aspects of my modules, but the past few months have reassured me of my decision. I don't want to be a journalist but then again, that's not why I'm studying journalism. I'm studying journalism because I want to be a writer and there is no other course that can equip me better than this one can.

Hopefully I'll be able to update this blog more frequently once the semester ends but if I can't, rest assured I'm writing for bigger and better people than myself.

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