A Year in Words

Simon Balmuth

“I’m feeling rough; I’m feeling raw in the prime of my life”.
-A time to pretend, MGMT.

The end of the year approaches like some dark shadow cast by the setting sun, bringing with it the ominous presence of exams. As I sit above this vast chasm, I feel an underlying urge to reflect. To look back on a year, which has played host to a constant battering of the senses, through various avenues. Bottle after bottle, night after night, too comfortably numb to appreciate the enormity of it all.

I feel the year has only just begun, but here I stand in the twilight of my initial university expedition. As time has lurched on at it’s relentless pace, waiting for no man, I have lost myself in the depths of independence. Not without direction but treading a precarious road without the utmost certainty. The existence of the unknown is refreshing in the sense that it provides an alternative to the constraints of structure, which have governed life from the outset. University provides an outlet, a response to the years of the conformity of schooling.

A thrill ride, a theme park, this year has been about moving from one high to another. Chasing pleasure, the inexplicable dilation of the pupils, brief in it’s enjoyment but the motive behind hours of action. The year has been constructed out of moments not days, brief fleeting moments over in the blink of an eye. On a journey? Where do I get off? where do you get off? more importantly do we ever get off at all?. If these days are the first of the rest of your life, is this a sign of the madness to come? The train rumbles on while people stop and stare, some get off, few stay while my finger hovers precariously above the self destruct button.

Amongst this backdrop of intoxicating madness, one strives to better oneself through the pursuit of knowledge. The sum total of my academic endeavors, reams of paper countless pages of words each as convincing as the last. Late nights spent endlessly battering the keyboard seeking to construct something of depth, of purpose, something to stand up and be accounted for. As I rush from one task to the next, climbing an obstacle without sign of relief. This is what is to be a student, to truly study, a process which many go through but few question. It is accepted as a norm of society in order to better ourselves we study, to fill our heads with information ordained by a higher set of intellectuals. We accept this as a way of life a sacrifice to enter a higher set, the so called upper reaches of mankind. It was the path taken by generations before us, a well trodden one with a variety of destinations.

So where has the year gone? The time has been filtered into a variation of fields. From enlightenment to travesty, at times so disgustingly self righteous waiting for a slap in the face that never comes. 2008 has been a year for words. These are my words and this is my year.