Editors’ Letters: ‘Truly Challenging Moments’

It’s funny how life works. It’s cogs move in ways which we can never quite fathom until something happens which makes us stop. Most of us enter a state of freefall during university; our future aims are relocated to the periphery whilst the blurred passing of experience takes centre stage.

Smack, Moo bar, Neon, essay, reading, societies, Smack, job applications, Neon, cheeky trip to Kasbah, home, reading, the next meal, essay.

We indulge our senses and live to satiate them. We are lightheaded, off-balance, stumbling, staggering and spinning from Kelsey’s to Vialli’s before sleeping it all off to continue the cycle once more. All of this is done under the guise of finding ourselves.
Every so often however, the cylinders of life churn out truly cruel, incomprehensible circumstances which eclipse our fun-loving cycles with this paralysing vomit.

We are genuinely pulled to a halt, and it is in these moments, which challenge and force you to question everything, that we learn about ourselves and those around us.

I sit here writing this, a third year student, too old to be called a boy yet too young to embrace the bitterness that can come with life and accept what society wants in a ‘real man’. However, if I have learned anything about life during these three years and, indeed, more recently this year, it is that you can only YOLO for so long.

However, if I have learned anything about life during these three years and, indeed, more recently this year, it is that you can only YOLO for so long.

No, but seriously, unfortunately for us, the annoying wise-guys who preach that you should take nothing for granted are right. We are coming to an age where, for better or worse, change is the norm. You may be staggered if you compare your life right now to that of one or two years ago; I know I am.

Even after writing this, I will no doubt fall back into the cycle of life which keeps us all ticking.

I will still go to Smack, do my essays, grapple with the concept of a career and, most importantly, get the extortionate £2.90 cheesy chips from Vialli’s. However, what’s certain is that I will never forget the moments which force us to stop.