The academic year has officially ended.
Students are evacuating their slovenly flats and my room is blockaded by my flatmate's belongings; she's already jumped ship.
Most of my friends have finished with university or might be finished with university and are beginning to panic about joining the real world.
As I type, my other flatmate is picking through her clothes trying to find appropriate corporate attire.
Does tucking in your shirt make it more professional? We're not sure.
While everyone blusters about the future, I feel strangely concerned with the past. I find myself re-listening to bands I worshipped during my adolescence, and re-watching television shows I used to follow in the afternoons when I got home from school.
Quite probably this is some kind of perfectly normal denial process; if I still like My Chemical Romance then I won't have to commit to a proper life plan.
It was definitely embarrassing to like My Chemical Romance even when I was actually a teenager, but when does it become really, truly inappropriate to still be caught up in the inane or the absurdly angst-ridden?
I have enough dignity at this point in my life to keep my questionable interests at least partially hidden.
I haven't touched a hair straightener or black eyeshadow in years, and watching Gilmore Girls is a strictly solitary activity.
But is this a sign of regression?
Or is it simply that once one reaches a certain age one can accept that one has pretty consistent poor taste and that isn't likely to change?
There are people who honestly and openly embrace their childhood and adolescent interests well into their adult lives.
Some people are Goths up until retirement and maybe even after.
Some grown men are unabashedly attached to a children's television show about rainbow-coloured ponies and (possibly) still lead relatively normal lives.
People who collect comic books have a tendency to do so forever, and Star Wars fans just never give up.
I think it is, for the most part, brave to be so straight up about whatever makes you happy, pop culture or otherwise.
Personally, I don't have the stamina or self-confidence to properly embrace my guilty pleasures, and maybe this is why I find myself questioning them.
If I were really a Harry Potter fan wouldn't I wear a Ravenclaw scarf and carry a wand?
Is my lack of dedication simply an indication I am just paralysed by my fear of the future and the only way I can distract myself is by gazing into a pensieve in which the shiny silver stuff is exclusively made up of things I was interested in before I knew how to poach an egg?
One could even foolishly kid oneself into believing there's just nothing of interest being produced at this particular time by this particular generation.
One might take seriously the sad middle-aged men at gigs and on the radio that complain music just hasn't been the same since the '70s, and that it's nice to see these youngsters giving it a go but they'll never be geniuses like their heroes of yesteryear. (Evidently, Led Zeppelin used up all the genius in the world, just like the baby-boomers used up everything else.)
But this line of thinking wouldn't just be foolish, it would also be entirely untrue.
There's plenty of stuff to be interested in and I know deep down inside I do actually have interests relevant to my life in the here and now.
Apparently, it's just hard to access them when you're considering a future that involves leaving the house at 7.30am five days a week and 11 months every year.
-Millie Lovelock is a Dunedin student.
