Freshers

At ten to nine I was already there, waiting in line for my turn to take the language placement test. The corridors were already crowded with students, the vast majority new freshers just about to get their first taste of university life and study.

I talked to a girl next to me, and she told me what a crazy week it has been, attending all the get-to-know-one-another events during the day, and getting "wasted" at night. All around me, young, bright-faced eighteen, nineteen year old boys and girls, chattering and laughing away, and exchanging phone numbers and information on where there is cheap booze and hot boys/girls to be had.

I felt out of place, a little uncomfortable, and felt 'old' having to tell people that I'm already a graduate student (and actually this is my second graduate degree....). I felt like I've been studying forever, on and off for a decade almost, and I'm still in university. There they were, inexperienced, young, perhaps naive, just about to start a new stage in their academic careers... they there were, wearing matching T-shirts and wristbands so that they can identify their own breed of freshers... seemingly carefree, enjoy the moment, meeting like-minded people and friends-to-be, bonding and mingling... and here I felt, having shuffled around the world from place to place, mundane, a little depressed, and unsure what I'm doing with my life. What a contrast it was...

Of course, there were the awkward and silent ones in the corner, staring at the bulletin board or trying to find something interesting to distract themselves from their (self-felt or self-imposed?) feeling of isolation. But, at one point I thought of just getting out of the place and escaping all that noise and people.

When almost three hours later I finally did my placement test (which was all for nothing, because there were no more places for graduate students....), I went outside and sat down on the lawn of our campus to have lunch.

Onto the next social meet, onto the next pub crawl, onto the next dance gig... All around me were hordes of youngsters, dressed in colourful shirts with markers and scribbles of names and telephone numbers on them, wearing wigs and sombreros, drinking, partying, having and enjoying the prime of their youth (little knowing that the weight of university will strike them down in a few weeks from now...). But that did not and does not matter, not in their states of drunkenness and/or debauchery, not when they are enjoying (probably for the first time) their newfound freedoms (most likely) far away from home and the ever watchful gaze of their parents. I can just imagine the sense of awe and excitement of a smalltown girl or prairie boy suddenly being exposed to the city, to student life, and letting themselves go...

What sense of exhilaration, somehow also romantic sense of discovery and of newness, that must feel like.

How I ever, in my SOASian years or years at Leiden, ever felt that way too?