One month…

There’s this feeling in the pit of my stomach. A constant gnawing of excitement and fear. My head is in the clouds - rain clouds, this summer - full of scenes, acts and lines. And I play my part in my imagination. Girl meets life.

It keeps me up at night, like a kid on Christmas Eve, too full of anticipation to sleep. I lie on my stomach, hoping that if I sleep this way my stomach won’t remind me  as I try to distract my mind by listening to the steady rhythm of my heartbeat against my arm. It beats a countdown. 33…32…31…

One month, it says, ringing through my head, swirling my thoughts into a confusion of to do lists, bank drafts, airline tickets and new beginnings.

One month, my heart echoes. To say goodbyes, to share laughs, to eat at favourite restaurants. One month until I decorate a new apartment, explore a new city, meet new people, learn new things. Live.

One month until I leave behind everything I know. But one month until I get to start anew. How do you reconcile the opposite feelings?

Questions

I was fine until I started thinking.

This is a phrase that could sum up my life. I’m fine until I overthink things, turning them over and over in my mind like chewing a piece of gum so long that it disintegrates disgustingly in my mouth (happened to me once… traumatizing, really.)

I was sitting in front of the computer, looking up flights. “Do I want to leave from Ottawa or Montreal?” I asked myself, scrolling through the flight options. I tried to imagine. Sitting in the backseat of the car, two hours to Montreal, the comforting familiarity of Dorval Airport. Or driving the 20 minutes down streets I drive everyday to the Ottawa International Airport. I’ve flown through Montreal everytime I’ve gone to Europe, what would it be like to fly from Ottawa? Surely more convenient?

And then I started thinking.

I started picturing the drive, picturing the departure gate and saying goodbye to my parents. And then I thought, “Oh God. I’m going to leave the country in two months.”

And not just that. I’m leaving for an indefinite amount of time. When I went to Ireland I knew I was coming back in four months. I had a return ticket, I had a job and another two years of university awaiting me here.

The last few months since I found out I had been accepted to grad school, I’ve been living in the present with a very vague idea of some interesting future. First, I was thrilled. Blinded by the newness and excitement of it all, caught up in just saying the words out loud “I’m going to grad school. In England.” Then I was too busy making sure it really could happen, trying to graduate and get the money I needed to go. But none of it was real.

And Tuesday it hit me like a ton of bricks. I started freaking out.

I have no place to live, I don’t know a single person in Newcastle and everyone I love is going to be on the other side of an ocean.

I am excited. Beyond excited. But I’m also half terrified. There’s nothing for me here, no reason for me to stay. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy to step outside of this comfort zone - the city I’ve lived my whole life, where I know directions and people and have favourite places. Where I went to school, where I worked, where all of my connections are.

There are so many questions running around in my head. What’s Newcastle like? Will I like my program? Will I be good at my program? How am I going to find a job when it’s over? What am I going to do? Did I make the right choice?

I wish I had a switch to turn off my brain right now, so I would stop overthinking this and let myself enjoy it for what it is - an adventure.

“Two roads diverged in a wood and I - I took the road less travelled by and that has made all the difference.” - Robert Frost

Unconditional

Wrapped in an embossed dark red folder with a shiny gold sticker was my degree. A little piece of paper that took four years and a fair amount of tears, late nights, phone calls and deadlines. Tucked just behind it was a printout of my final transcript on copy-proof paper.  Four sheets of paper in all, wouldn’t last more than a few seconds in a rainstorm or a shredder or even a new puppy.

The first thing I did when I got home was stick them all on my scanner. Thanking my installation of Acrobat Pro from earlier this year, I quickly pdfed the files. I opened my email and attached them to an email. When you’re an international student, you don’t send paper copies. Thank God for the world of email.

Two days later, I got an email back.

“Congratulations on your unconditional offer to study at Newcastle University.”

Included was the official letter which includes my passport number, the university’s sponsor code and the statement of my tuition fees.

It’s done. They can’t take it back anymore. This (knock on wood) is it. Next, I’ll get my visa. Last night, I was looking for apartments (or I guess I should call them flats now?) After all that happened in the last couple of months, I was afraid that somehow they’d reject me. Maybe they’d made a mistake. Maybe I’d grossly miscalculated my GPA.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I am going to the University of Newcastle.

I know this is hardly news but having that letter lifted a huge weight from my shoulders.

It remains to be seen if those four pieces of paper were worth their effort, but they have already proved pretty useful, if only to get me this next more important piece of paper.

This is the first of  many posts about Newcastle, pets. My life is about to get a whole lot more exciting!

$20,000 and all I got was a BJ

I think we can all agree that I look damn fine in that grad cap. Not something easily accomplished. However, you’ll notice my “you’re an idiot, take the picture” smirk as well. You should have seen the first few shots.

So as of today have a Bachelor of Journalism in Journalism and Greek and Roman Studies. That’s right, I can now be “Heather Montgomery, BJ.”

I’m the only one who’s actually excited to go to graduation. This is probably entirely because up until about two weeks ago I didn’t know if it was going to happen. The last three months have been hell - Okay, honestly the last four years have been hell - but here I am. And I’m damn proud of myself so I’m going to take this chance to indulge a little and look back at what I’ve accomplished in the last four years, academically at least.

I went into Journalism for a number of reasons. I have always wanted to be a writer, it’s “my thing” - it’s what I have always done and always will do. It’s a part of me, I couldn’t stop writing anymore than I could stop breathing.

But I’m not the bravest person in the world. I tend to over think things and I’m far too logical to just decide to be a writer and live for that. I need to have something else, something more stable to fall back on. And so I applied to a number of schools and a number of different English and History programs. Journalism was my last choice on my application.

Then I got an early acceptance and a nice entrance scholarship to Carleton University’s School of Journalism. The minute I mentioned this program to anyone they were impressed. Carleton has arguably the best journalism program in the country and your high school grades have to be pretty high to get in. They also cut the class in half after first year, meaning that the 100 people with the lowest marks don’t get into the second year of the program.

So, I decided to go to Carleton for Journalism. I had dreams of being a great journalist, of changing the world like Seymour Hersch or Edward Murrow.

These dreams were very quickly crushed by the “sink or swim” style of J-School. I have to say that I have hated most of what I did for journalism, but that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate it.

I can’t do anything half-assed, I don’t know how. And so I decided to make the most out of my journalism degree if I was going to stick it out. I worked for a media monitoring company for a year (getting up at 4am is painful), I was on staff at the weekly university newspaper for two years as a photographer and the Photo Editor. I freelanced for multiple magazines and newspapers (and got paid too!) and I got a cushy little freelance gig for University Communications. I produced a TV news show, shot, edited and wrote several TV pieces, anchored a radio show, produced a documentary and wrote countless news stories, features and sidebars. I am a decent journalist - how can I not be after four years in one of the hardest programs? It’s just that I don’t really like it.

But I’ve learned so much from it. If I look back to the person I was four years ago, I barely recognize her. That girl could never cold call the government or stand in front of a TV camera. I was shy. Painfully so. Never a public speaker, I tended to be happy to fade into the background.

Journalism forced me to step outside of that comfort zone. Perhaps that’s why I hated it so much. But it made me into a much stronger, more confident person.

It got me my museum job. A  journalism degree is proof that I can communicate - I can talk to people and convey information in a way that people actually understand. I can research - our teachers always joked that a journalist’s job was to become an expert on any subject in a matter of minutes, or at least to pretend they were.

It taught me so much about writing. Before university, I could ramble wordily with the best of them - a degree in English would have just kept me in that academic comfort zone. But journalism taught me the value of each word.  That words should be chosen carefully for the exact effect, not cheapened by overuse.  It taught me that the point of writing, of communicating, is for other people to understand. It taught me to write at a Grade 3 level, and I resented it every step of the way. But now I look at my writing and I know that I’m better for it.

The trade off for my suffering through journalism was that I declared my double major in Greek and Roman Studies. There was never any doubt in my mind that I would love my history classes. This way I got to revel in the half of my course load I loved while bearing with my journalism classes.

I’m glad I didn’t just do a degree in Classics. Now I have something that I think is more valuable and certainly more unique. I have a history degree and the ability to communicate, which is so often lacking in academia. I have a knowledge of the world and how it works - our world, not just 2000 years ago.

That being said, I’m thrilled to be done journalism and to move into what I now know I truly love - history.

And I’m graduating with High Honours, too.

There is no reason and the truth is plain to see

Driving down the highway, the pavement disappears beneath me and I have the extraordinary sense of going somewhere. The street lights sparkle against the night sky, I streak past the few other cars, always going just a little bit too fast. There is a moment of silence as the song switches on my playlist. The first chords of A Whiter Shade of Pale float through the air and I smile to myself.

My head is full of imaginary scenarios. Me rolling all my clothes into small bundles and boarding a plane. The first time I set foot in Newcastle, lost, confused and slightly stressed, but so full of the future. Buying sheets for my bed, decorating a small but cute one bedroom apartment. Stepping into my first class, nervous but excited, meeting all of the other MA students. Walking along the river, watching fall turn into my first English winter and actually missing the snow. I see a favourite pub, with dim lights and Newcastle Brown on tap. I imagine my favourite cafe, with brownies for bad days and lattés for early mornings.

I picture myself on my first excavation, sweaty with the dust sticking to me, but smiling. I imagine finding that one thing that catches my attention on a random day in class - my thesis in the making. I see the Colisseum, the Parthenon, the Pantheon, the Acropolis.

I imagine what it will be like to be doing something I love everyday, for the first time in my life. What it will be like to be unemployed, to devote my time only to my studies.

And I smile.