There is no way you can convince me that we are two weeks into Candlemas and a month into 2025. I have lived a different life for every week I've been here, and going back home over Christmas was almost an out of body experience. I didn't think I would be quite as different as I was before uni after only one semester, but I felt like I was following a close friend around their life rather than living my own one.
Evidently I’ve already become engulfed by the warm hug of the bubble.
In my head, last semester's academics are worthless. Martinmas 2024 taught me far more important things outside the classroom. I have had so many incredible opportunities to pursue passions I've never fully involved myself in before – heck, I can actually call myself a student journalist! High school me would be SCREAMING.
Credit: Nicole Egorova.
I learnt to manage the several overlapping blocks of colour on my calendar, and for the first time prioritise not only what would provide the biggest physical profit but what would bring the greatest emotional benefit. Needless to say, I've filled up a LOT of pages in my journal recently. With an incredibly busy schedule comes the mental work that has to be done, and the level of perseverance I've created for myself has surpassed what I ever thought my little brain would handle.
One saying springs to mind; “I get tired a lot, but I never get tired of it.” I hope I can bring this energy into the new semester with me.
On a far less selfish note I've learnt to be more patient with everything I encounter. “The bubble” really is the appropriate term for this tiny town, and walking along The Scores with friends to avoid work has led to some deep philosophical realisations that everyone here resides in their own personal bubble under the big one, and nobody really knows what anyone else is going through. Things might be difficult, people might be uncooperative, but the ability to take this graciously and be gentle with everything in the path ahead of you will get you far at a uni with as many cobblestones as this one.
I feel like for the first time I have had the space to become a whole person. For once, when someone asks me on my next birthday if I feel older, I can truthfully say yes. Yes, I go home every other weekend, but living without adults for the first time has meant that I have finally become the person younger me dreamed about.
Living in a hall and sharing a space with so many other people has helped me become even more considerate and taught me levels of responsibility for myself that I hadn't even considered before. I have even been grown up enough to find a place to live next year, and not have an excessive amount of breakdowns doing it. I can't wait to have a space to make my own and be excited to come back to after an anxiety-inducing day (I said excessive amount, not none at all.)
Most importantly, St Andrews has taught me how to find and retain hope. Even on a dreich and drizzly day, I still look for the stars at night, and if I can't find them then I trust that the streetlamps will guide me home. On a morning where nothing can go right, someone reaches out to have a Northpoint scone that afternoon.
Credit: Nicole Egorova.
The days I'm dreading my work shifts, one of my friends is on that shift too. A bad hair day means it's gone curly by the time I go out at night. The sky always ends up a gorgeous shade of blue, and the wind in your hair is counteracted by the sun in your eyes. St Andrews is terrifying, bitter and cold, but it's magical. I'm glad I came back.
I'm setting up my desk and desperately trying to find a place in my dorm room for all of the stuff I brought back with me, and after the slightly harrowing storm Eowyn the dusky St Andrews sky greets me with that perfect shade of gentle blue, as if peace was a colour.
Resting over the holidays was incredible and much needed, but arriving in St Andrews and giving my family the tour once my bags were hauled back up to my room gave me the feeling that a young child gets when showing off their most recent scribble. Maybe my time at St Andrews has been a bit of an incoherent mess so far (if you saw me fall over in front of the 400-person first year IR lecture – no you didn't), but I can definitely say that I'm already a Saint through and through.
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