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The Sense of an Ending

It was only apt that I wrote my last ever blog post as an undergraduate English student and titled it with a book title. Tomorrow I sit my final exam of my degree; after this I will be in a perpetually reading/drunken stupor for two weeks before I start working. Life is good.

Remembering back to finishing first and second year, this ending feels weird. Some people I'll never see again in person, and others I will cling to like limpets. Everyone seems to be blindly going forth into their own adventures (be they big or small) and I think that's incredible; we've all grown from these gawky English students to adults (ish) (pretending to be) (we're not adults, noooooooo) who have a voice.

If I think back to myself when I was a meek and mild barely-eighteen year old, I chuckle. I was so blissfully unaware, so clueless, and not all that happy. It's taken me three years but I think I'm finally at a place where I feel relatively less like a headless chicken and more like a chicken with one eye functioning okay. I have some idea what I'd like to do... sure, I do keep making mistakes but that's what life is about, right?

Compared to first year Claire, I'm so much more comfortable talking, though I still get stressed about talking too much. I still dress like an idiot, and spend way too much money on books; at least that hasn't changed. But I have some incredible people around me, I've read some amazing books and I feel so, so ready (but also terrified) to move over two hundred miles away from home.

To everyone on our course and our tutors (if anyone even reads this rant-y, babbling, nostalgic mess), thanks for putting up with me, thanks for the memories, the laughs, thank you for stressing with me, thank you for being there, thank you for challenging me, and thank you for making these three years a roller-coaster I will not forget.

Let's smash this exam and go get smashed in The Shed.

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