Since I get to know all this information about you, it's only fair you get to know a bit about me. I moved towns after I finished school. I lost the few friends I had and when I arrived where I am now studying, Rhodes University, I found difficulty in making new friends. At first I thought I was just shy, I wasn't sure what to say to people but I knew that wasn’t it. I’d been told that I’m a people’s person, yet I found complexity in adjusting, to suit people’s personalities.
I tried all sorts of tricks to hold conversations with the students, including watching rugby on a cold wet evening, just to have something to chip in in the next days talk. I remember during Orientation Week, pushing into a crowd of people whom I thought were waiting to be shown the varsity grounds, after a session of tea and biscuits and listening to conversations about the practicality of the Extended Studies Programme – which I knew nothing of, I realised I was with the wrong crowd. These people were government officials who’d…well I don’t know why they were here, and I don’t know why I hadn’t noticed the old faces. I know you laughing, and so am I. It was a ‘Kodak’ moment.
I thought I’d get here and find lots of friends who endeared in the same interests as me. This had never been a problem before. But this because I was confined to a certain group of friends I’d grown up with. We were one of the tightest circles of friends; never would you see any one of us as individuals. But it was time for us to part and go our separate ways.
Two weeks into the last semester, I realise, all I needed was time and settling in, I’ve made friends now, lots of them. This was a matter that wasn’t to be rushed. I now feel, I am the individual I should have been in high school.
I should sign off now, I feel as though I’ve said too much. Do maintain your current friendships and study hard to get into university. It’s an experience worth having.
Your Once Lonely Self
Uno
Friday, September 26, 2008
A Letter to My Younger Self
Dear School Hater
It’s the final stretch before university begins! I’m sure you are super-excited. I know how much you think going to class in high school sucks. Waking up at 6.30, ironing your school uniform and shoveling down the breakfast Mom cooked for you. You can’t wait for the day when you can go to class just when you feel like it, if at all. Life would just be so much more bearable, hey?
REALITY CHECK! You’re at university, no one has washed your clothes, and you overslept and missed breakfast. You are exhausted from only four hours of sleep because you were up late finishing an essay. You have the earliest lecture so you think you’ll just skip it… but the lecturer is going to be discussing the term assignment - you have to go! If I’ve learned one thing, it is to forget whatever you’ve seen in the movies. You know, when the girl flounces into class with perfect hair and a fresh face. Ask any student: bloodshot eyes and bedhead is the look most commonly sported at lectures!
I don’t mean to make it sound all bad. There have been too many funny and random incidents in lectures for me even to recall, from crazy lecturers to guys coming to class in dresses and having a dogfight go on right behind our chairs! If you can see the funny side of things, you’ll get through. But ultimately, and I hate to say it, lectures are there for you to learn from, not for you to try out your new look or to have your ears tickled.
Don’t be one of the deluded ones who fall behind just because they view lectures as “optional”. Be on time and make the effort. You will be at a serious disadvantage if you don’t. There’s no other way to say it: go to class!
Peace and love
Pinks
It’s the final stretch before university begins! I’m sure you are super-excited. I know how much you think going to class in high school sucks. Waking up at 6.30, ironing your school uniform and shoveling down the breakfast Mom cooked for you. You can’t wait for the day when you can go to class just when you feel like it, if at all. Life would just be so much more bearable, hey?
REALITY CHECK! You’re at university, no one has washed your clothes, and you overslept and missed breakfast. You are exhausted from only four hours of sleep because you were up late finishing an essay. You have the earliest lecture so you think you’ll just skip it… but the lecturer is going to be discussing the term assignment - you have to go! If I’ve learned one thing, it is to forget whatever you’ve seen in the movies. You know, when the girl flounces into class with perfect hair and a fresh face. Ask any student: bloodshot eyes and bedhead is the look most commonly sported at lectures!
I don’t mean to make it sound all bad. There have been too many funny and random incidents in lectures for me even to recall, from crazy lecturers to guys coming to class in dresses and having a dogfight go on right behind our chairs! If you can see the funny side of things, you’ll get through. But ultimately, and I hate to say it, lectures are there for you to learn from, not for you to try out your new look or to have your ears tickled.
Don’t be one of the deluded ones who fall behind just because they view lectures as “optional”. Be on time and make the effort. You will be at a serious disadvantage if you don’t. There’s no other way to say it: go to class!
Peace and love
Pinks
letter to younger self
Hello there,
I remember this time last year when the year was ending and I couldn’t wait to finish my final matric examinations and just get out of high school. All you can think about at this point in time is all the fun you’re going to have once you get to varsity. You think of the drinking and the endless partying you’re going to do once you get here, because you’re on your own and there are no parents to tell you what to do right?Well I wish there was someone who had told me that it’s not like that, in fact if someone had said to me that by the beginning of the second semester I wouldn’t want anything to do with alcohol or partying, I probably would have laughed in their face. I mean who ever gets tired of partying? You’re probably asking yourself how on earth it is possible for one to replace a good mix of Southern Comfort and lime at OLDE 65 with some other boring non-alcoholic drink in your room while reading a book. Well after failing your June exams because you were at OLDE 65 having SoCo and lime the night before you wrote an exam, or when you hear of a girl that got raped on her way back from a night out by male students she met at a club, you definitely find a way to do so.These are realities that students and especially first years face when they are at varsity, simply because you came having the mentality that you are going to get here and have fun, not thinking about the dangers or consequences about having a hectic social life. University is after all a place for learning amongst other things.Your girl,
Nonlie
I remember this time last year when the year was ending and I couldn’t wait to finish my final matric examinations and just get out of high school. All you can think about at this point in time is all the fun you’re going to have once you get to varsity. You think of the drinking and the endless partying you’re going to do once you get here, because you’re on your own and there are no parents to tell you what to do right?Well I wish there was someone who had told me that it’s not like that, in fact if someone had said to me that by the beginning of the second semester I wouldn’t want anything to do with alcohol or partying, I probably would have laughed in their face. I mean who ever gets tired of partying? You’re probably asking yourself how on earth it is possible for one to replace a good mix of Southern Comfort and lime at OLDE 65 with some other boring non-alcoholic drink in your room while reading a book. Well after failing your June exams because you were at OLDE 65 having SoCo and lime the night before you wrote an exam, or when you hear of a girl that got raped on her way back from a night out by male students she met at a club, you definitely find a way to do so.These are realities that students and especially first years face when they are at varsity, simply because you came having the mentality that you are going to get here and have fun, not thinking about the dangers or consequences about having a hectic social life. University is after all a place for learning amongst other things.Your girl,
Nonlie
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