A Salute to the Last Times.

 

So it just dawned on me that tomorrow is my last first day of term EVER.

 

But also, 2017 will now be filled with some of my first lasts in Leicester.

 

It. Is. Crazy.

 

How has my entire educational career boiled down to this? Just one term to go.

 

It has been an emotional week and I don’t think tomorrow will be any different. It only really hit me today that this will be the last time I’ll have had a break and will have to drag myself back into a normal routine in order to make it on time for 9am tomorrow.

 

I guess you never really appreciate the significance of these things until they’re not there anymore, so with the post I guess I’m trying to address that classic mentality.

 

I remember way back in first year when I had to adjust to lecture and tutorial teaching, instead of lessons. It was quite a lot to take in, really. And you know, I can’t even remember my last lesson at school! But I’m determined to remember this. This term. Every wonderful moment of it. It has been the best three years of my life so far and I don’t want to forget a single second.

 

(If that testimony doesn’t make you want to come to Leicester, I don’t know what will).

 

In my life I’ve been through quite a few last firsts – but has anything really changed?

 

I’ll start back in the days of secondary school where I looked like this…

 

 

Now that, right there, is my school photo from year 11. Adorable, right?

 

I look a little different now…

 

 

And quite a bit happier.

 

I suppose the major difference between my last term at school and my last term at uni is in terms of the way I look at life. I see everything in a very different way: even though things end, and bad times happen, I am grateful for all of that, too. When I was younger I didn’t have the experience of university to really challenge me as a person. I was challenged back then, don’t get me wrong, but I needed to go through a lot more for my mindset to mature.

 

One thing that hasn’t changed is my sentimental nature – as you can tell by my blogs. Some things never change.

 

But as I go into my first lasts of Leicester this term, I am filled with excitement. I’m also filled with dread of the four 9ams I have a week, but I am excited nonetheless. I now appreciate education so much more, and I do not take things for granted, because enough stuff has ended now to make me realise that things don’t last forever. You’ve got to appreciate it all now.

 

This week certain influences have inspired me to tap even more into my creative side. I used to draw a lot back in school, and now in the past 24 hours I’ve drawn and painted (a new skill I’m developing). I’m going back to my roots a little, you could say.

 

My point is, your life can be as different as you want to make it. University can change your life as much as you want to let it. By the time it ends, who you are and how much you’ve changed is totally up to you. I’m the same in many great ways, but in many bad ways too. There’s still a lot of growing that Leicester has to put me through in the final six months, and embrace it I shall.

 

A lot of people see a last term with the view of ‘oh well, it’s all over now, I’m set in my ways.’ NO. I am going to join more societies, and I’m going to make more new friends, and I’m going to make the most of it – as if it were my very first term. You can’t let something being the last or the first time, whether you know it’ll be that or not, affect you experiencing the situation to its greatest potential.

 

I’m sitting here writing this after the craziest week. The craziest of years, already, I think. And it isn’t my usual style of blogging but when emotional things in life keep happening and you have to leave your favourite place in the world in 6 months, and that end starts tomorrow, your mind shifts a little.

 

So this is what it’s like being a third year law student on the brink of her final term at Leicester University. I’m a mess of emotions, and proud.

 

My long-winded and convoluted point? Let’s make the most of this. All the first lasts, and the last firsts. Most of the time this term, especially with people leaving and everyone moving on with their lives, the most startling aspect of it is that you’ll never know when the last time will be the last time. You’ll never know when that will be the last pub trip. Whether that was the last meal at your favourite restaurant with your favourite people. Whether that was the last and only time you’ll get to hang out with a new friend.

 

But what really matters is treasuring those things, and everything in between too.

 

I am ready to treasure all of it. This has made me realise that it shouldn’t take it being the last time for a moment to matter. So that’s how I have lived this past few days, especially, and how I will enter my very last term at university – cherishing every single memory for no reason, because who even needs one? The experience of life, good or bad, is too glorious all on its own.

 

 

-Scarlett