Dropping Out Of University

As I write this post, I sit in my cell of a student accommodation at the university where I was supposed to spend 'the best three years of my life.' If this is 'the best three years of my life', well you can just kill me now.

In August 2015, only 2 short months ago, I woke up and headed down to my college to open the results that I had spent 14 years in compulsory education working towards: my A-Levels. These little letters on a page would determine how I spend the next 3 years of my life...or so I thought.

You see, as soon as I started college, I had university shoved down my throat and with that came the one acronym every student winces at with coinciding flashbacks: UCAS. I spent months drafting the perfect personal statement to send off to potential universities around the country to receive back five conditional offers. I was ecstatic. With every new email notification saying I had an offer, I could feel the pieces of my life being pulled together for me to live a normal, society pleasing, consumerist life.

My first choice of university looked like an absolute dream. The premises were newly built, it boasted industry connections and to study Film, I only required the results, BBC, As results day came around, it looked like fate had ran its course as I opened my envelope to find BBC! I was going to my first choice!

Now, four Ikea trips later and with enough food to feed a family of 5 for a solid month, I was ready to move into my accommodation. My flat was brand new, had a stunning view of the city and was everything a new student leaving home for the first time could ask for. Over the course of the first week, my four flatmates gradually moved in and sooner than expected we all spread our separate ways to join different social groups. So much for hoping we'd be the next set of F.R.I.E.N.D.S...

Then lectures started...

I must have been extremely naive to hear the word 'lecture' and not realise that that was LITERALLY what one was. Someone reading from a book whilst you sit there for four hours whilst you struggle to keep your eyes open. I guess with studying film they weren't too bad as our lectures occasionally involved us watching the odd moving picture. For example, in my second lecture we watched Francis Ford Coppola's, Rumble Fish (review coming soon!) which soaked up most of the lecture time.

The lectures, although tediously dull in some places, were on occasion quite interesting! I was there to study my passion and learn more about film and that's definitely what happened. However, I could never see myself sat there for the next three years. That just wasn't where my heart was at.

Before I left for university, I'd been watching travel documentaries and subscribing to countless travel vloggers on YouTube. The more I watched, the more I learned just how simple it was to travel and see the world, even on the minimalist of budgets, I am only a student after all! Travel really excited me and was a totally different option than the normal route through a life, that route being something along the lines of:

1. Birth (hello, World, it's me!)
2. Primary School (Let's ace them numbers)
3. High School & Sixth Form (omg girls, boys, wtf is that growing down there, HELP I'M BLEEDING)
4. University (Gots to gets my degree or I'll be poor and jobless)
5. Career (I can finally earn me some pennies and spend those on a semi-detached house, family and a 2 week holiday in the Summer only to come home and start earning for next year's holiday)
6. Mid-Life Crisis (Holy shitballs I'm old)
7. DEATH.

I guess you can say that ended quite abruptly but I'm becoming more aware of the length of this post! Anyways, I've been thinking about this cycle of life a lot and how I see more and more people sticking to the routes planned out for them and not stepping outside of these lines because inside the lines are where it is 'safe.' And that is perfectly fine for some people, I just got bored with it which is why in a couple of days, I'll have left university permanently and have gone back to Mum and Dad with hopes of finding a job and saving enough money so I can comfortably travel without any worries!

The question I get the most when I tell people I plan to travel is, "Where are you going to go?" And to that I always say, "Everywhere!" I want to see everything and if that means having to go on my own or forking out every penny I have saved up, then so be it! My most difficult decision is just choosing where I will go to first!

I have never been so excited about my future as I am when I think about travelling the world and all the people just waiting out there for me to meet and share stories with! My goal is to leave for my first destination next Summer so until then, this blog will be where I will put my time and energy so look out for new posts coming soon! I could not be more excited to start this next chapter!

- Liv:)