Home, Away...
The family and I arrived home yesterday, after 8 hours' drive from Caloundra, where we'd been staying on holiday for two weeks. It was a definite relief to find the simple comforts of my former life: my bed, my high-back leather chair, and my computer (and, by god, the window!). Of course, along with these came the other aspects of my life - the unfinished lists, the piles of books in the middle of my floor, the still-broken DVD drive and the stack of school books and other random information which I one day hope to assimilate into a user-friendly virtual database.
I also found six envelopes addressed to me, but one was a mobile phone bill and though it did provide distraction as I tried to figure out who all those numbers represented, the other five envelopes were a little more important.
The first was a letter from QTAC offering me a position in the Bachelor of Microelectronic Engineering at Griffith University, Nathan Campus, Brisbane.
The other four were from Griffith (I had accepted the offer online a few days before), drenching me with deadlines and a fresh wave of panic.
I've been tossing up between Electronics and Creative Arts for most of last year's haze, arguing back and forth about being constructive vs. doing something enjoyable that I have some previous experience in! This struggle is far from over as, from the moment I accepted the offer, I was already searching for the escape routes.
The headline for my headspace after that moment was: "I'm not making it easy for myself". Which I sure as hell am not! Not only will I be moving to a capital city where I know next to no-one, finding my own accomodation and dealing with all the insecurity that throws up, I'll also be taking a course I know nothing about and could absolutely loathe, at a university where I really don't know anyone. Whereas I could have chosen to go to QUT, where I do know a few former schoolmates, doing a course that my cousin is also joining; a course that I will almost definitely enjoy.
The flip side is that I can't write off my future as dismal. I could make many new friends, I could love the electronics course, and if I complete the course I will have the qualifications to join an under-staffed, high-paid industry where I will be doing challenging and productive work.
I also sound like a robot working on designing other robots. I hate that.
But there are escape routes, and I take comfort in that.
I move sometime in February, but I don't yet know where I'm heading. Best-case is probably getting a dorm room on-campus, but as I haven't even received an application form, let alone filled it out, that may not be terribly likely. There are also on-campus flats where I can actually cook my own food, but whether I can stand the same 4-7 people living with me would be the challenge. If it comes down to it, I can take up the spare room in my brother's share house, and hope I can survive him until he goes to Japan in April. I'd also have to learn to be on time for more than once in my life, or I'll be missing the bus.
I'm not suited to diving into uncertainty like this; the chaos in my head means that I need some semblance of stability outside my head in order to function.
But it turns out that stability is not something life advocates.
I also found six envelopes addressed to me, but one was a mobile phone bill and though it did provide distraction as I tried to figure out who all those numbers represented, the other five envelopes were a little more important.
The first was a letter from QTAC offering me a position in the Bachelor of Microelectronic Engineering at Griffith University, Nathan Campus, Brisbane.
The other four were from Griffith (I had accepted the offer online a few days before), drenching me with deadlines and a fresh wave of panic.
I've been tossing up between Electronics and Creative Arts for most of last year's haze, arguing back and forth about being constructive vs. doing something enjoyable that I have some previous experience in! This struggle is far from over as, from the moment I accepted the offer, I was already searching for the escape routes.
The headline for my headspace after that moment was: "I'm not making it easy for myself". Which I sure as hell am not! Not only will I be moving to a capital city where I know next to no-one, finding my own accomodation and dealing with all the insecurity that throws up, I'll also be taking a course I know nothing about and could absolutely loathe, at a university where I really don't know anyone. Whereas I could have chosen to go to QUT, where I do know a few former schoolmates, doing a course that my cousin is also joining; a course that I will almost definitely enjoy.
The flip side is that I can't write off my future as dismal. I could make many new friends, I could love the electronics course, and if I complete the course I will have the qualifications to join an under-staffed, high-paid industry where I will be doing challenging and productive work.
I also sound like a robot working on designing other robots. I hate that.
But there are escape routes, and I take comfort in that.
I move sometime in February, but I don't yet know where I'm heading. Best-case is probably getting a dorm room on-campus, but as I haven't even received an application form, let alone filled it out, that may not be terribly likely. There are also on-campus flats where I can actually cook my own food, but whether I can stand the same 4-7 people living with me would be the challenge. If it comes down to it, I can take up the spare room in my brother's share house, and hope I can survive him until he goes to Japan in April. I'd also have to learn to be on time for more than once in my life, or I'll be missing the bus.
I'm not suited to diving into uncertainty like this; the chaos in my head means that I need some semblance of stability outside my head in order to function.
But it turns out that stability is not something life advocates.
posted by Draic | 1:19 am
3 Comments:
I envy you for being good at two such different disciplines. Just go for whichever sounds best to you right now and know that you can always switch. Yes you can.
You can indeed switch later. I did a year of animation, took some programming subjects in second year and switched to multimedia in third. Two more years of that and I got out - hurrah! That was all at Griffith too. They had good hairdressers on campus.
Oh, Violet, you're sweet but I don't actually know whether I'm any good with electronics at all! But I'm going for it anyway and if anything goes horribly, I can switch back to the known and comfortable.
I'll keep an eye out for the hairdressers, Ben! lol. I like your choice of subjects, too. Multimedia was another possibility within Griffith. I could possibly worm my way around by switching to dual Microelectronic/IT, then drop the electronic and add Multimedia - then maybe drop the IT part as well! :-) I believe that's Plan C at the moment.
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