It was only this time last year I was a part of the mass high school student takeover of campus and yet it feels so immensely long ago.
Mostly because so much has happened.
A completely new chapter which turned how I view my life, upside down, on its head?
I was reflecting with a friend on the differences between high school and university.
My first article, in which I was preparing for these changes, I now reflect upon with a fondness and also a shake of my head.
We’re essentially halfway through the uni year (something which never fails to make us gape in disbelief), our lectures are wrapping up, labs and tutorials are practically finished, and exams are peeking out from around the corner.
My friend and I agreed unanimously that we feel less sure, less certain, than we did this time last year.
High school was scarily easy as compared to university.
We look back on our school years and wonder, genuinely, what we were so worried about.
We had everything presented to us, everything laid out and structured and yet we were still so stressed.
I feel as if I know significantly less now, at the year’s midpoint, than I did then.
It’s a strange feeling, sort of whiplash-inducing, having been at the end of the steady and straightforward journey of high school, to now — only just at the beginning of the next; unsure and often lost.
The recent graduations also made me reflect as I walked past everyone in their gowns, with a photographer and their family for their special day.
I wondered what each of them were thinking at that moment.
Were they reflecting upon their own experiences?
Or were they simply thinking, ‘‘thank goodness I’ve done it’’?
I sit and look at the walls of my room.
Which other people have they known?
What memories have they seen?
Who will be in this room next year?
The posters on the wall will change and the books on the shelf will disappear.
My view of the harbour will hopefully be valued just the same.
Right now, you can’t walk through the hall without hearing some group of friends talking about flatting.
No doubt, it’s stressful to hear such conversations.
With the first few flat viewings gone, again, I’m hit with a similar feeling to those graduations.
Which of these will be my home for the next year, or several?
How can it be the same place, but mean something completely different to each of us?
Which of the girls’ rooms, who were sitting in the living room as we looked around, critiquing and admiring, will I be taking over?
When we realise that we’re hitting these significant milestones, we look at each other with horror.
These past months have almost felt like a fever dream.
People I never even knew existed a year ago are now at the centre of my life.
I spend each day with them and they have changed my life in ways I never could have imagined.
It’s certainly a strange sentiment to make peace with.
But if there was one thing I feel I was right about in my first article, it’s that there is confidence, reassurance, to be found from those who have gone before us.
Those who I walk past in their graduation gowns will look upon me with nostalgia and perhaps a sympathetic nodding towards a certain level of naivety I carry with me right now.
The girls who sit, watching us view their flat, will be filled with the same feeling that I had when I bumped into friends from high school touring my future hall on open day.
“Remember when that was us?” they might be saying.
People are continuously moving through Otago.
These places around campus have seen everyone and everything.
Stress, happiness, heartbreak, but most of all: love.
Every day feels like we’re facing the unknown.
An unfamiliar situation where we can’t exactly plan or prepare for every situation.
All we can do is take it one day at a time — a perfectionist’s worst nightmare.
But we can rely upon those who have gone before us: they found a flat; they made it through exams; they even graduated on a sunny, autumn day.
We look at each other now and say, I can’t wait to graduate.
It’s an incentive to each of us.
It’s a promise spoken aloud to ourselves, with the unspoken meaning: we will make it through this.
• Eleanor Wong is a Dunedin first-year University of Otago student.
