Significance

I think it’s significant when you want to just be in the same room as someone. There’s no need for conversation, but contentment comes from an amicable silence.

I also think it’s significant that we relish in being bored at university, but it’s torture at home. At uni, everyone you want to talk to tends to be a maximum ten minute walk away. Either that, or varying stretches of a thin corridor; the parody of a trodden phone line.

The beauty of being surrounded by people whom you enjoy all the time is that you never have to be alone but if you do find yourself sitting in your room, listening to music on your tod, it’s because you have chosen to be so. Every choice I make here is as insignificant as it is significant, if that makes sense. The time I choose to eat, what I listen to and how I spend my time. These are luxuries in their simplest of forms and I am so glad of them.

I wonder at the number of naked or threadbare feet that have padded along these corridors, drinking tea, holding heads in cradling hands, or clutching favourite games, movies. A soothing union of hangovers, students and equals.

That’s the thing I appreciate most about uni. Everyone is so severely equal, it fits the cliché like a glove. It’s true, we look after each other. After all, friends are just the family you choose, or so they say.

They mock you without judgement.

They insult you without malice.

They watch over you like siblings in your every time of need.

No cruel opinions, no need for lies. All there is is love. We are allowed our secrets, not guilted or goaded into revealing the enemies from our past even if they occasionally trace routes down your face, painting lines for all to see, and for a select few to sweep away.

These are the ramblings of a student thrilled with her situation. I’ve worked hard to get here, to be solid in my own knowledge of the things around me and those things I have chosen to leave behind. Choice…such a minimal yet substantial comfort. The knowledge of choice helps to give you that slap around the face whenever you are feeling low or lazy.

It saddens me that this only seems to occur in the microcosm that is university, otherwise people wouldn’t always bang on about how they are the best days of your life. A peak for sure, but it can’t be all down hill from here. New life creates new challenges…but I think, for now, I’ll have a cuddle and a generalised, philostudental ponder.