Making memories and documenting your years at university

What memories do you have from secondary school? I was at my secondary school for five years which counts for over a quarter of my life. It was an inevitably significant time where I experienced the process of growing up and enjoying that first stage of independence but I have very little physically to document my time there.

Of course, some exercise books remain scattered around the house with the odd photo and award here and there, and occasionally the discovery of a programme about a play I appeared in. While I have internal memories, both good and bad, of my five years there, physical processes of documenting my experiences are sparse.

The picture is made even worse in regards to my time at sixth-form college. Granted, that only lasted two years but my view of sixth-form as a brief halfway house between secondary school and university meant that barely any memories aside from the work remain. I got the results I wanted but the experience outside of the classroom wasn’t the greatest. With university, creating memories and physical documenting them is so important. These are our years of freedom before the slog of a daily job with far less time for leisure and cultural activities.

These formative years are ones of flexibility

Few contact hours means that I have lots of free time so I want to engage in events that I’ll remember for decades to come. In a sense, these formative years are ones of flexibility. There is nobody policing our activities any more, making sure we are in school all the time or completing our reading. I will never forget experiencing a free period for the first time – the notion that there was time during the day when I didn’t have to be in lessons. University is all of that and more.

I am a writer. Writing is something I love and need to do. Naturally then, the first form of documenting memories that sprung to mind was blogging. Whether that would be posting musings or simply writing unpublished documents to read in years to come, recalling the experiences in written form is beneficial to me as a form of catharsis and something I know my future self will enjoy looking back on.

Social media can be wholly adequate for expressing experiences we enjoy

This doesn’t even need to be so formal. Social media can be effective for expressing experiences we enjoy at university. It is, of course, a filter of our true experiences but a wry tweet or amusing Instagram post can bring all the memories back of what life was once like. Even a simple diary entry detailing when and where something took place can be a powerful tool for recognising and remembering an event years after it took place.

I often start watching a TV series around exam season and this becomes a way of remembering periods of my life. You may think that is the perfect recipe to ensure academic failure but so far that hasn’t been the case. After working during the day, knowing I have another episode of Deutschland 83 to look forward to in the evening is a relief and an effective motivator for revision. I notice that different TV series often frame parts of my life.

During my A-levels it was Line of Duty and straight after, it was Years and Years. The same is often the case at the start of every year – new year, new TV series. At the start of 2018, I watched Wolf Hall, 2019 had Upstart Crow while 2020 entertained me with the vintage BBC series Bodies. Remembering these shows is about far more than what happens each episode, it’s more about how they reflect different parts of my life –  my education, prospects, moods and memories.

Memories have to be experienced if they are going to be reflected upon in the future

University should be about throwing yourself into different activities and I have done my best to achieve this. There is only a finite amount of time before that ends and we all have to step into the real world – many students will be undertaking this in just a couple of months. However, there is nothing wrong with living in the moment and focusing on the present.

Memories have to be experienced if they are going to be reflected upon in the future. Enjoying something without documenting it is just as important as preserving other memories. I have always seen university through the prism of managing two spheres –  the academic and the personal. The trick is balancing the two to allow for a wholehearted celebration of the present and future.