What You Get Up To

Yes, it took a reminder e-mail to guilt-trip me into posting this.

But overall, I'd say we can apply the rule most parents use once their kids have flown the nest:
As long as we don't hear anything, we can safely assume everything is alright.
(I think I might even have called my father once and he was so shocked he asked me five minutes what was wrong.)

So - yes! Uni is great!
It get's harder the further the term progresses (yes, I know, who'd have thought) - but it also gets a lot more fun.

You finally manage to swipe your student ID and walk through the gates in one swift motion without spilling your coffee. When people ask you where they can find the reception, you don't have to get a panicked expression anymore but can smoothly say: "You've just passed it." And you just know that you have time to go to the loo, get a sandwich and take the stairs instead of the lift, even though your lecture technically ends the second your seminar starts.

And I guess if I hadn't left it until Reading Week, then I also wouldn't have to write two essays just now - but alas, there was so much to do!

Going to a concert. Going to a silent disco. Doing the 15 essential readings for my presentation. Far too many movie nights. Library meetings. Taking a stroll through Kensington Gardens despite freezing temperatures. Shivering on the way back home from the cinema. Smiling.

Can't really do enough of that last one, though :)

Making it worth your while

Not like we haven't always known that uni is soooooooooooo much more:
(a.k.a it's the last weekend of term so here finally have some photos I'm horrible I never take photos I fail at youth culture have fun)

Opportunities:




Me and my Appeal Caller Fundraising Team! Together we got people to donate £78,787 for our Alumni Fund!!
(never mind my face, though.)



Inspiration:


Classic College Nando's Fridge Poetry. (I did mention I'm on a creative campus, didn't I? *cough*)

New experiences:


Baking Halloween Pumpkin Cake only with borrowed appliances...

... and this is pretty much self-explanatory but also disgusting. #college

Truly funny lecturers:

Who encourage you to tweet during their lectures! Awesome.



And these weirdos you at some point just start calling your friends:

Fanks, sweeties.

You here more from me when this term is over! 

the why

+++ ALERT: This is not a post to fuel existentialistic philosophical debate. +++

That said, I decided to make a post why I chose to study in London in particular, a task rather closely link to my coursework for Advertising at the moment, which, behold, I am not going to ramble on about.

So. London.

First of all, it has always been a dream of mine. Whenever someone asked me "top ten things you want to do before you die?" or some equally generalised question, 'living in London for a certain amount of time', was always one of the top ranks on my list.

(Usually competing with 'learn to speak five languages fluently' and 'trick the world into thinking you possess magic'.)

Sounds like a legitimate reason, but I am aware that this doesn't make me anything close to unique or god forbid special, because this point is literally on every second teenager's bucket list.

But coming to London felt just like fulfilling a purpose to me:

English is my favourite language on this planet. (I haven't started learning Japanese yet.)

I have a soft spot for quirky traditionalism while at the same time craving a diverse environment.

I need people to open my eyes to new things. I need to feel small in front of old buildings sometimes. I need to feel special in a crowd from time to time. I really prefer to blend in mostly, though.

London was everything and nothing, it's modern while still holding the draw it had under the Empire.

There is no place like it.

I discover a new part of the city every week, but I could never say whether I would prefer Camden over Shoreditch, Mayfair over Belgravia, Kew over Southwark. It just all blends together in my head and makes for an all-encompassing picture that won't leave me so fast.

"It's so hard to leave - until you leave. And then it is the easiest goddamned thing in the world."

The first two weeks of September were filled with excitement. Or was it anxiety?

I can't really be sure, I just know that I had refused to worry about any Uni related scenarios all summer, partly because I still had to wait for my student finance letter, but quite actually more because I was working a near fulltime job with my friends and wanted to spend my summer with them.

So when I arrived back home on the first of September, reality started to kick in reaaaally slowly: "Oh. I'm leaving the country in 13 days. Should I panic?"

The answer to that was mostly "...nah.", but I can remember the days sitting in front of my laptop and refreshing my inbox because I was waiting for the guy from the translation company I had a sent a copy of my school certificate to to finish his lunch break and write me back.

I remember making last second visits to places in my hometown in the middle of the night, meeting again with friends, as if catching up before anyone leaves has ever done anybody any good, generally enjoying myself but also experiencing a weird feeling of displacement:

Being at home didn't really feel right, I was supposed to be out there, exploring the world, but leaving home seemed even worse sometimes. Why would I give up something that was so all-encompassingly comfortable?

Well, in the end it took me about a week to pack my suitcase, and when I finally pulled the zipper shut, it felt odd that my whole life should fit into roughly half a cubic metre.

I don't know how often I actually checked if my documents were all in the right place, but I had the worst nightmare the night before I actually had to leave:

I am at Frankfurt Main Central station, looking for a coffee to get somewhere, when I realised that I had left my bag (as in, the bag that contained my ticket, my passport, my enrolment forms, in short everything that identified me as a human being) on the train. So I start running towards the rail my train stopped on, hoping to miraculously find it to be still there, all the while dragging along my suitcase that keeps bumping into people and slowing me down.

I can't remember ever feeling so relieved to wake up.

On Saturday, September 13, everything is like it's supposed to be.

I like to think everyone experiences it like this, but I could be wrong:

Do you know, how in films or books, when a significant change or a long travel is going to happen to the protagonist, one they have planned for a long time to come, they always get up and do this one last meaningful thing, and if it is staring at their reflection in the mirror, thinking deep thoughts?

Well, none of this ever happens to me.

It's like some part of my brain knows that it should be excited or worried about this really crazy change that is supposed to happen in just two hours and oh my god you have wanted this for so long get excited already man, but I am generally just baffled how life is still about the mundane things like having breakfast and brushing your teeth, and nothing meaningful happens, just because it feels like it should. (At least a little.)

So my parents and my brother drive me to the station... Oh right, I forgot to tell you about this!

I am, apparently, always very intent to do things differently (at least that's what my father would claim and where he's probably very right) so I didn't opt for the easy and "mainstream" way of booking a flight to Heathrow, no, I decided to buy a Eurostar ticket three months in advance, because it was cheaper.

Well, it was cheaper.

But it also takes 12 hours.

And I will forever be grateful that my parents have not made one snide remark about it.

I like taking the train, it's a boarding school thing.

And it's only when I've found my seat, plug in my headphones with a startling realisation that my phone is not going to live for the whole duration of the ride, that my heart suddenly starts beating faster and the hormones in my head scream: This is it. You just flew the nest.

I'm not going to describe these 12 super uneventful hours of taking a train to London, and I wouldn't really recommend it to anybody, but in the end, I'm very glad that I did, because these 12 hours were "transitioning time", a time in which I was caught in a little bubble of freedom.

This feeling is - once again - very hard to describe, but I saved a diary entry from somewhere in Belgium, trying to make clear of my thoughts:

I sort of want to know where I am rather badly.

That’s what runs through my head half an hour after I’ve turned off the mobile data roaming of my phone and gaze outside the train window, overlooking small and sunny towns in the Belgian countryside. The men’s voice from the speaker has changed to French as well. Now Dutch.
I know I’m gifted with a vast knowledge in certain languages, but I stay comically oblivious to which station we’re arriving at next, due to my complete lack of understanding what he just announced.

Does that make me feel lonely know? Abandoned?

I guess it could. And some time ago, it definitely would have.
(I just realised I didn’t even send a good-bye text to everybody who might have wanted one when I still had the chance. Now I’m on my own.)

And knowing there’s a whole new world waiting for me on the other side of the Channel, I can’t even start to deny the queasy feeling starting to bloom in the region of my upper stomach, but it’s not anxiety.

It’s a revelation.

I’m a blank page at the moment.

There’s no going back from here, and what is about to happen is solely up to me. Every person I’m going to meet will have had no former impression of me, the image they are going to have of me is solely shaped by me. I’m at one of the few points in my life at which I’m able to completely redefine what that means – me.

And now I’m going to hop off the train and cherish it.

So at the lovely security check in Brussels, that is far to easy to pass as a harmless looking (white) girl, a guy helps me handle my suitcase, realising we're both German.

"So you're going on vacation as well?", he asks.

I duck my head and give an apologetic smile: "Nope. Off to uni, actually."

It's nice having somebody to talk to in this weird place, and I'm surprisingly not disappointed that it isn't in English - there will be a time for making friends in a different language, but today is not it.

Unfortunately, his seat is at the other end of the train, but I'm not sad for long, because next to me they have placed an old English gent, a history professor from the books he's reading, who starts pointing out London monuments to me once we enter the city.

To be honest, I didn't even realised we were crossing the channel at some point. Why? Because it's pitch black outside.

I keep my doubt about Downing Street being somewhere out there in the dark to myself, however, because he is nice and if he's mocking me, then it's in a nice way.

The dumb grin that starts to spread on my face, you know, the one that is usually reserved to pregnant women and boys with a crush, is real though. It's coming from somewhere deep inside.

And when I finally arrive in London at about half nine, the proper feeling of giddy excitement is still not quite there, just this slight buzz of contentment.

Which could steer from the rising level of exhaustion.

But I'm there. I made it.

People around me are talking English. Proper BBC English.

And I will take the tube, just like a proper Londoner.

And where? To my new home.

         

(Gifs from giphy, quote in the headline is from John Green's Paper Towns)

London Calling

Oh hi, you have found your way to my UCAS blog!

This is the place where I store all the little and bigger happenings occurring to me in my enticing life as a London student.
From that sentence alone it was probably deduceable that I'm doing a Bachelor in PR & Advertising, but I'm just saying it again.

I'm also very sorry that I can only start posting in September, but I took notes over the last month, so I will give you an insight into my full student experience, including the first few weeks, which are weird for everyone, let's face.

So tonight, just a few facts about me so you know who you'll have to deal with:
My name is Henriette, I'm nearly 19 years old (10 days to go!) and I moved from my hometown in Germany to London seven weeks ago.
English has always been my favourite subject in school, probably because of my weak spot for well-written drama and literature, so at some point I just decided to make my dream of spending at least some time of my life as an actual "Londoner" come true a bit sooner rather than later.
I went to a boarding school - great times - and will probably get a bit nostalgic from time to time when I compare college to it ;)
I like small everyday adventures, libraries, coffee, the smell of efficiency and deciding which earrings to put on in the morning. (I've got five holes for them in my ears.)
My favourite animal is the fox, I wish I was born left-handed, when I was younger I always wanted to be a TV presenter or a gynaecologist (I've no idea where that came from), I know not just one, but two dead languages (Latin AND Ancient Greek) and of course I'm in Slytherin. ;)

I hope that's enough for you to go on for now,

I will now let you go into the night on this lovely Halloween night (although we've only got half moon) with a classic Halloween song performed by Panic! At The Disco and promise to be back by Monday.

Enjoy!

Henriette x