Days of identity crisis

Identity and crises are two words that seem to travel together a lot these days. Maybe they always did.

I struggle to think back to which identity I adopted or displayed when I was in my mid to late teens, and shrink a little from the knowledge of the people pleaser that I was then.

That set me wondering whether or not I went straight from school (which I hated) to university (which I mostly loved) because I wanted to go or because it was a first in my family and my father particularly was pleased that I was going.

No, it's too difficult. I can't catapult myself back far enough. I have to trust that university life was what I had to experience.

University, for me, was what school should have been. Within reason, here was this smorgasbord of lovely yummy subjects spread out in front of me, ready to be tasted and savoured. What bliss.

Of course, some subjects like Organic Chemistry, I just wasn't ready for. And the further you went up the course ladder the less likely you were to change your direction which was always a problem for me because I desired it all. Desperately. I loved all the subjects, hard and soft, big and small. I would have lived at University forever and been happy, but you're not supposed to do that unless you become one of the permanent denizens like lecturers or professors.

I hope young people will find university full of rich experience like a tasty fruit cake, but fear that life has moved on to colonise the dreaming spires with the performance management type of thinking that dominates almost everything these days. The hysteria about marks and competencies. The hours of form-filling. The rules. Oh, the rules.

Rules rule Brittania.

I wish we could wave the rules and have each of us just be great in our individual and personal way.