Graduation

Yet I have to say goodbye to Scotland in two weeks and to the life of an undergraduate student. I will have to throw out a lot of things I’ve acquired over the years (somehow I have a TARDIS mug), move out and return my student ID. It won’t be easy; after all I have spent four years in Dundee, found great friends and learnt plenty.

It seems that one ceremony where I’m given my degree (during about three seconds along with hundreds of other students) is utterly inadequate given how much energy and effort those four years cost me. On the other hand getting a First is for life. Just like all the memories and things I’ve learnt. Especially the ability to ignore rain in any intensity and the skill to constantly complain about the weather.

My dissertation in its final form

But after I graduate in June I will start preparing for another era – Oxford. From October I will become a student at the University of Oxford where I will be studying Russian and East European Studies. I can’t even describe how much I’m looking forward to all the libraries and museums. I’m sure it will be more difficult than what I did until now, but then I believe that is the point.

Nevertheless, it will be a huge change after four years. The environment, the people around me, the course and even the language (yes Scotland, I’m looking at you). I’m starting to feel that I spend my whole life moving, travelling, settling in and then leaving again. It was the case with Open Gate, then with Dundee and now it will be Oxford. I seem to be flirting with scary changes (and just like Sheldon Cooper, I don’t like them) sometimes called the “panic zone”. That’s the terrifying feeling one gets the night before leaving for a completely unknown place. This feeling is growing day by day and yet somehow I am enjoying it and in a way I am looking forward to the pre-flight panic.

But it’s graduation first!