Another ridiculous and brilliantly brutal episode of Home and Away plays in the background as I sit here trying to come to terms with the end of classes, and more or less the kinda end of my Masters degree (even if I do have to wait until January to officially graduate). I should be writing up my Features portfolio but instead I find myself asking why the Australian guy I recently went on a date with had no clue who Alf Stewart is? Nor did he possess an Australian accent, but that’s an article for another time.
The past seven months or so have flown by in a whirlwind of assignments, deadlines, alcohol-fuelled nights, horrifically hungover mornings, dates, breakups, group presentations, exams, late trains, crammed tubes, tears, laughter and Taylor Swift songs, naturally. Here I am now at the end of the course and the promise (and fear) of what comes next lying in front of me. There’s a sense of trepidation and nauseating excitement with the prospect of becoming an actual and relatively fully functioning adult, free from the limitations of being a student; though the student discount and student Oyster card will be sorely missed.
I guess it’s only when you take time to sit and reflect on the past that you realise just how far you’ve come in a short space of time. This time last year I, well I was in New York actually, but I was at a place where I really had no clue what to do with my life and there was significant burnout from graduating and hearing and seeing friends move on with plans and goals while I sat and wondered what the hell I’m supposed to do. If truth be told I was probably a little depressed. But, I persevered through it and, with a little help from the incomparable staff at University College Cork and my firmly unshakeable mother, I got accepted to university in London for an MA in Magazine Journalism. I packed up my belongings and boarded a ferry towards a new life. It was very much my famine ship moment as I looked back at Ireland fading in the distance.
Source: instagram.com/kevinlong_
It’s strange now to find myself at the other end so to speak, more or less 100% settled into London and the MA now becoming a thing of the past. So much has happened in the time I’ve been here, if you’ll allow me a moment of sappiness (essentially I am a sap though). I’ve made huge steps towards ‘finding myself’, I’ve grown much more self-aware, I’ve developed more self-confidence — so much so that the word ‘pricktease’ has been fired my direction in a dirty nightclub on more than one occasion, I’ve learned that it’s not always essential to burn bridges and even managed to mend one I didn’t think I’d ever cross again, I realised that trying to fix a broken relationship when drunk was probably not my finest hour, but on the other hand I’ve also recognised that I deserved far better in the first place (thanks, Lesley), I’ve rediscovered an identity for myself away from the place I had grown up, and I’ve accepted that wherever I end up, I know I’m at the place I’m supposed to be right now.
My time working at Synced has genuinely helped propel ‘Kevin 2.0’ as a certain friend has dubbed it. This time last year I would never have put myself out there in the way that I have over the past couple months, but, considering it more or less solidified work experience at a well established magazine brand, I don’t look back on it with an ounce of regret. I’ve met some wonderful people, and I’m confident that I’ve forged friendships that will last me the rest of my life, even if that is because they know too much at this stage. I’ll truly miss sitting in the production room at university spending far too long googling models, talking about the questionable things we’d do for money, blaring late 90s and early 00’s jams (damn that JoJo was good), bitching about the forces at university set against us, and throwing knowing looks across the room at each other behind lecturers’ backs.
Source: Pryzm Kingston
Before I sign off I want to take the time to thank each and every one of you who took the time to read and share my posts. I hope I’ve managed to entertain you, inform you, and inspire a laugh or two at the more dire circumstances of my time as a Masters student and my life in London. I’d like to share with you with this quote I stumbled across before I finish: “Never be afraid to fall apart because it is an opportunity to rebuild yourself the way you wish you had been all along”.
I took a life affirming Buzzfeed quiz a while back where the results told me “you live for the moment, because after everything else is gone — the memories stay with you forever”. Nice, huh? Anyway, I just want you to know that if you, like me, possess that rare and delicate ability of regularly making all the tables turn, it doesn’t always have to be a bad thing. And with that I shall leave you.
