Reflections of a finalist; The university bucket list

Michael Perry considers what’s been achieved (and what hasn’t been) at university.

When I first arrived on campus several Septembers ago, my mind was abuzz with a wealth of ambitions, prospects, and great expectations for how I would spend the next three years of my life.

Over the past eight-and-a-half terms, I’ve given my best shot in trying to attain as many of those goals as possible, but there are still a few accomplishments I’m yet to tick off the list. As much as I tried during first year, I never did get the hang of rock climbing. I still haven’t summoned up the courage to perform a couple of guitar covers at Unplucked (but then again, I do have a sickeningly tuneless voice). And I’m yet to visit the one and only Warwick Castle, much to the chagrin of countless relatives who are consistently eager to discuss trebuchets and medieval architecture.

The rub is that, all things considered, I’ve had more than enough free time over the last three years to fulfil all of these aspirations, and then some. There’s only a certain extent to which I can honestly blame essays and exams for sapping my freedom, because ultimately, I’m the one responsible for honing my procrastination abilities to an insane level. The worst part is that most of it wasn’t even procrastination you could justify as being “productive”: everybody else studying similar modules had the same amount of work to complete as I did, but apparently they all managed to burn through Game of Thrones long before I’d even made it to the pilot.

ultimately, I’m the one responsible for honing my procrastination abilities to an insane level.

So although I’m glad that exams are a thing of the past, there is still so much that I want to achieve with my remaining time as a student, and I’ve wasted no time already in ticking things off what I’ve deemed my “university bucket list”. From things as basic as attempting to host a gumbo party to reaching a grand total of 75 articles written for The Boar, the challenges I’ve set myself are of suitably diverse nature and difficulty that I probably won’t be able to waste a single second of my remaining time as a student if I want to complete them all.

More than anything else, the one thing I’d most like to accomplish is to orchestrate the most explosive water fight that Jephson Gardens has ever been host to. Even if the weather refuses to cooperate, I don’t think I’ll be able to feel fully satisfied with how I spent my time at university until we’ve staged a summer battle comparable in scale to Pelennor Fields. I want a whole armoury of supersoakers utilised, water balloons sailing in every direction, and total splashy anarchy to disrupt Leamington’s blissful idyll for a couple of hours.

In other words, I just want to relish the opportunity to act like a big kid for a while longer. I’d like to think university has made me more mature, but really, there are few kicks in life that can top a truly explosive water fight. Except maybe climbing the Koan, but that’s another story (and another number on the list). In the distant future, when we’re all recounting how we spent our salad years to our grandchildren / cats, we’re going to want a good roster of stories to draw on, and blasting through a university bucket list seems to be a great way of ensuring that there is no short supply of memories to draw on.