Merry Christmas, cereal fans! Yes, as quickly as it was over, it's come round again, December hit me like the sack of coal I probably deserve to find in my stocking this year. As I write this from the uni library, procrastinating and thinking about which wine will be the cheapest for my predrink tonight (told you I deserve coal) I can overhear the chatter of students talking about festive knitted jumpers.
Maybe it's because I am cold, hard hearted, numb to the pain of university life being a fourth year or I'm just mean, but I feel like Scrooge. Sat in a corner by a window scowling at the young'uns having a whale of a time, I am envious. Here I have sat, every day this week in this same library, working my little fingers to the bone, not really sure how they're managing to be so...HAPPY.
Yes I know, I know, I'm a final year, the words "EMPLOYMENT" and "MASTERS" hanging over my head like the ghosts of Marley and Marley. Don't you have work to do, first years? Don't you have a list of books on request from the British Library? Is your Christmas Pinterest board not filled with expensive hardback books on French propaganda?!
In fact, maybe I am not the Scrooge, but the Tiny Tim of this situation. Sniffling and shivering as I so often do in my cold student bedroom, wailing because I can't afford to buy a goose for Christmas dinner and hobbling around on my crutches. Okay, those last two are a lie, but I am conflicted in my feelings of festivity. On the one hand, ding dong merrily on high, it's almost Christmas - family, food, Mariah Carey and that coat I've been eyeing up from Topshop, mum? I can eat stuffing and trifle and parade around in a jumper that has ducks on wearing a paper hat, all in the name of the season! But then that sinking feeling creeps in. Work. It's always playing on the back of my mind, the words of my dissertation tutor ringing in my ears: "READREADREADREAD" and no, it's no coincidence that that looks like both "read" and "dread". I am fully aware of the extent of work I have to do this year in order to do well and not let my parents down. I totally get it, I do, but ruin my Christmas with writing 10,000 words on France, Nottingham Trent how dare you? If Hugh Grant was the Prime Minister like he is in Love Actually, he'd never stand for this.
Perhaps I am being dramatic. I have thrived in the library this week, an introvert's paradise. Books, my laptop and getting down to some serious working business, there's even a Starbucks on the ground floor! I will need to remember this as I continually traipse back and forth to Nottingham to renew books this festive season. I need all the encouragement I can get. I'll wear tacky jumpers, listen to Slade on the bus, paint my nails with glitter and wear reindeer antlers. I'll eat turkey sandwiches whilst I slave away over my research on World War Two and my goodness I shall make snowmen out of balled up paper at my desk.
This is getting too much. I need a mince pie. I don't even like mince pies.
Cheerio,
Hope x
