Next Stop, The Real World

In the final stretch before I leave this place for pastures new, which conveniently happen to be a mere thirty-or-so miles away, I've been accounting for all that I've learned about life over the last 21 years, 2 months and 24 days. I've come to this simple conclusion.

School is rubbish.

My reasoning for this? Well, as much as a compulsory school education with set curricula and syllabi are great in an academic sense, I found that I've learned more about life from the three years I have not been taught under compulsory guidance. OK, sure, school is great and without it I wouldn't have the necessary skills in English and Maths and shit (I dropped Science in favour of the fast-becoming popular lessons in Shit) to be the knowledgeable young being I am today.

I also realise that during these school years, typical children get bored of school and begin to explore the big wide world for themselves. However, as a prime example of not being typical to the case in point, this has not always the case... in point...(?) Therefore, as a school pupil I've just breezed through knowing what I apparently need to know and being told that this is the way the world works.

Cue late 2007, I am no longer a school pupil. Next stop, the Real World.

I ended up enrolling in University at a site so close to home I couldn't move out but had a bitch of a commute every day to study a course I chose on a whim of thinking "it's alright" at the time, but as it turns out it didn't excite me as much as I'd previously thought or hoped. My living location contributed to my lack of friends, acquaintences and nights out for socialising, which (even though I wasn't much of the socialising type at the time) wore me down. The 50 minute commute (about 39 of which involved walking... in the winter) and the ever fun propect of Seasonal Depression (you know, with the days being shorter and perpetually dark) wore me down. Eventually I noticed the sadness and depression in me and realised I needed to cut out the crap from my life that was making me all sad and depressed in such a way.

Cue end of January 2008, withdrawal from University studies.

I was now no longer a student, and not working either. This made me everything I detest. A jobless bum living off other people. Luckily this did not last although not through choice. Through the whole month of February I tried finding work but to no avail until one night when my mother informed me that my next door neighbour happened to be the assistant manager of a local discount store... you know, like Poundland except cheaper. Reluctantly I went along to feign interest in a job vacancy, which I managed to fill. Still reluctant, I decided to go along with it for the time being, assuming I wouldn't stay longer than two and a half weeks. I stayed for two and a half years.

During my time working in retail, I learned more about talking to strangers all day every day, which kind of goes against what they told me when I was five. More than that, my co-workers and colleagues (both words, I'm pretty sure, mean exactly the same thing) are not the book covers they appear to be. The ladies in their mid-30s are not some stupid drones doing the bare minimum to get by but in fact hard working mothers trying to take care of their respective families the best way they can, getting on with it and having a laugh to at least make the best of a bad situation. Call me stupid, I knew about the whole "don't judge someone before you know them" but I guess something in the back of my head never believed it. That, along with "relax and be yourself".

One night during the summer of 2008, I don't even remember drinking, let alone being drunk, but for some reason I remember sitting in our local around a small table almost crying into the bottom of an empty pint glass wondering where my life was going. It was at this a few of my surrounding fellows around me advised to look into the local college.

Cue August 2008. I am interviewed at the local college and accepted onto a course I sort of thought was "alright" and prepared to be knocked down again after a couple of months.

Turns out in a reverse of the way University treated me, I hated it to begin with and ended up enjoying it shortly afterwards. People I met, who I wouldn't so much call my closest friends, but definately some good people I could get on with during a college course, became prominent figures in this next chapter of my life.

And now here we are (I say "we" because even though this is pretty much my life story, I'd like to thank you if you've managed to stick with it this far. It's like a fun and boring journey through someone's mundane stories... you know, like an old man talking about his days in the wars or and old lady talking about the day she saw a cat), staring into the abyss of unknown-y-ness and getting ready to write the next chapter of this book with... well you know, my face as the cover. What?! You gonna judge me on that?!

But the most important things I've learned are definitely how unpredictable life can be; how unpredictable situations could be, how difficult things are to handle, how fun things are to handle, how annoying people can be, how amazing people can be, and most importantly (even though I learnt it pretty quickly, it took me three years to actually fully understand and deal with it) everybody's life is individual... this is mine and this is how I choose to do it. These are the people I enjoy talking to, these are the places I like, these are the situations I'm comfortable with, these are the choices I'm making, these are the mistakes I'm learning from, and nobody can tell me otherwise.

They don't teach you that in school.