Sunday, October 23, 2011

competing with the ivy

To be twenty years old and leave your home town 200 miles behind you and go to university. To find yourself in a completely new world - university, big city, medieval buildings, weird people, independence. When this happens, you write something like this in your journal:

"... I'm scared and don't know how I'll ever manage university studies, it all seems so incredibly complicated. But still, can you believe it: I'm at university! 

I would like to complete lots of courses and learn so much now that I have the chance. Study opportunities like these may never come again. My flatmates, also freshmen, bemoan "the next six years" that we will spend here. The first day, standing on campus outside the large former factory building where we will have most of our lectures, one of them pointed out a small ivy plant creeping up the wall and said: 'That little green thing will have covered the whole building by the time we get out of here!' Both of them of course want to study but at the same time they long for it to be over and done with, and to move back home. 

I, on the other hand, never want to go back to Ostrobothnia - not that I don't love it, it will always be my home, but I long to see the world. And this is a little part of the world..."

1 comment:

Aruni RC said...

I'll be 23 when i write this. and if memory doesn't fail (which it shouldn't) then there shall be a blogpost which links back to this.

And hopefully a picture of that ivy. :)