success….??

So, a friend of mine has a blog, don’t we all, and her latest post is about her struggle with answering the following questions:

Tell us your best idea so far and how you learnt from it?
Tell us about your biggest success to date?
(These questions she proposed the opposite way round but for the sake of this blog I’ve swapped them and to be honest if that was the way they were presented I’ve got questions for the questioners.)

Answers she came up with entail: a delightful description of sunny outside reading accompanied by a cup of tea, and her success she proposes graduation in a begrudging, “I burst into tears at the ceremony when my name was called out, was entirely unsure how to even walk across the stage” [an amusing anecdote], followed by stating she was being “thrust into the world scroll in hand”.

Now, I have to say, knowing her as I do, which of course I assume to be quite well but really who knows, I already answered her question with graduation.
This is an enormous deal, not only for her but her family: the first to graduate in her family. The First. That’s gargantuan and magnificent, yet she does not deem it worthy, She cried for goodness sake, I truly don’t understand how it isn’t and to be honest am quite intrigued as to what she’ll say.

Mine, hm, now initially I was thinking not graduating as in its idyllic understanding, but rather everything it stood for for me: Getting over via enormous struggle depression to keep going (I know, i know, not a big deal, the amount of people diagnosed alone fills the world, but when you’re dealing with apathy on top of ADHD with NILL points of motivation it’s a marvel, especially with getting a First), Dealing with my inordinate RAGE at all things education and world- system in general… but what else?

Those are the things that consumed me during my undergraduate: depression and struggling to deal with the system I was sewn into, and thus the rage and apathy that followed. Accompanied, of course, by my general bemused humour. That’s all there is though.

Sure, I learnt how to Ski, Sail, Swim (I’m desperately now trying to keep it to sibilance because really, how wonderful) Play the Flute, tried out a multitude of other instruments and am sufficient at many, performed in plays and musicals, of which I was the lead in one…
What else was it I wrote in my CV? Ah, yes, volunteering: I was forced, it was for Church. It truly doesn’t count. Learnt to Dance Ballroom and Latin, an experience I actually loved until the tutor started using the properly hold, of which I was NOT a fan…
What else…

Now, you have to understand. It’s reached that point where I sort of need to be looking for some sort of Job, not a summer job or part-time, why not/ i need the money/ I might as well/ I need something that enables me to comprehend how time works and a consistent demand of my attention would do just that, but a ~graduate~ job. Note the party-poppers, streamers and fireworks and the very utterance of the word.

Here’s the deal though, to get a graduate Job, I need to have direction. Most people will have gone to University to equip them with those ‘further skills’ they need for their chosen route, that thing which is already seemingly there in the very understanding of their subject. Sure History and English are wishy-washy enough that it’s still uncertain and yeah, you can go into risk management after doing an intense engineering course, not to mention beginning a textile artist having studied chemistry and maths and being a Radiographer, but there’s nothing quite like a Liberal Arts education to make you completely beneficial and worthless at the same time.

This isn’t Liberal Arts in a Modern American College kind of way but a Modern Liberal Arts, as taught at Winchester University, that groundbreaking movement for breadth rather than depth, or as it’s known to those who study it: what the hell am I doing, besides literally everything as they reduce our ground to nothing and leave us no building blocks to produce our own.

A failure of the general system of the world is the demand for binaries, there have been no ‘successes’ in my life when measured yay/ nay because a qualitative experience cannot fundamentally be broken down into binary. Granted ‘fundamentally’ is the pre-requisite for ones and zeros, thus the irony, but still.

My life is a string that has been knotted at some things, both in memory and accomplishments. Some of these accomplishments are more general: such as graduating nowadays/ swimming, and some slightly rarer: such as graduating with a First/ being an olympic swimmer, and it seems a lot through my life i’ve managed to peak just a touch higher than the ‘rest’, but it fundamentally means nothing when I am incredibly uncertain as to what to do with my life, where I’ve accomplished the most or the highest achievement. I mean, I once won a prize for best millennium New Year card, I saw the mayor of my Town and everything. A big deal for a child who had literally just been told to sit in the front at assembly for kicking another child, an assurance that I feel entirely sums up my life.

None of these are great, none of these are exceptional, and I guess I’ve always been reaching for that ever-impossible exceptional and so I have no idea what I would say: being acknowledged in my Lecturer’s latest book? (along with the entirety of the class of 2014, I don’t think so.) (I haven’t been asked to apply for a phd either and it seems my focus is always resting entirely on where I am lacking, where I need to fill in the gap and for that it seems impossible to answer.

Your greatest achievement? An entire lack of satisfaction, regardless of accomplishments.

I have to wrap up because the battery on my laptop is becoming dire and I cannot charge it because it seems I left the charger at Uni, regardless of my packing it. Another occurrence that sums up my life but nonetheless, I guess I understand her trepidation now.