March 27th: A place to keep excitement

I am coming to you today from underneath a ridiculous pile of paperwork, the weight of which is currently pushing me down into the ground. If you were to lift said paperwork off me, there I'd be, grinning up at you from a nice Molly-shaped hole in the mud - out of which I'd be unable to climb, of course, due to just how deep the paper had squished me in there.

You may have gathered from that little introduction that I am currently 'doing' some of my paperwork for studying abroad... well, actually, if you had gathered that you'd be wrong, because I'm here writing this blog post instead. And even now I keep going on Facebook and Twitter and Tumblr instead of writing; I'm procrastinating about procrastinating. I'm doomed.

Moving on.

My study abroad companions and I had a meeting last week with our Head of Programme about choosing the modules we can study in Spain... things are moving forward! Each module is worth less than they are here, which means that I have to take more subjects to make up for it and consequently next year will be a lot harder than this year, especially as next year our grades themselves will actually count (as opposed to only needing to pass a module). I'm quite annoyed that that's not the case this year because I've been getting firsts and 2:1s, but alas. At least I'm starting with a bang.

However, as this whole study abroad business becomes more and more real, questions keep arising, as one would expect. Questions like "Would choosing to study both Spanish and Catalan at the same time be a good idea, or would they be too similar?" and "Why the dicknipple does student finance have to be so ridiculously confusing?" and "Oh God what the hell am I doing?"

The last one being due to the fact that this is becoming real very, very quickly. After two years of "Yeah, I'd love to study abroad one day" and choosing York St John (along with its fabulous course, decent entry requirements and incredibly beautiful location) for its study abroad opportunities; after the "should I, shouldn't I?" debates with myself over sending the application in; after writing and sending the application, all the "I really, really, really hope I get in" and the long-awaited "Congratulations! We can offer you a place" email; after the extra-curricular Spanish lessons; after deciding and applying to extend my stay to a year instead of a semester... after all that, finally, this is happening. And it's far scarier than last year's application to university - but hey, you get out what you put in, right? I was already far too emotionally invested in the idea of going abroad not to do it - it has been something I've wanted to do for so long, and so even when I doubted it, I was never going to give up on the idea. As far as I'm concerned, this was always going to happen.

And I write this because I am under no illusions that this is going to be easy. It's going to be one of the most incredible experiences of my life, but it will be hard. I know that. I'm ready for that. But I know, because I've done it since moving here, that I will come back to this blog in the moments when it's hard and read what I wrote about how excited I was to be coming here, to be studying linguistics, to finally be standing on my own two feet - to a certain extent, at least. This is the reason I created this blog - so that I could remember how these years of my life felt and so that I could document all the experiences, expected and unexpected, that have and will come my way.

That's why I have to keep writing these boring little posts - because sometime in the future I will need them to remind me why I moved to Spain and how sure I was that it was going to be amazing. I hope I'll never need to recapture that excitement, but if I do, I need it here, so I know where to find it. This is the place I store my feelings; it is a place to keep excitement.

And to finish off, I shall leave you in the capable hands of this 'ere grammar joke:

What do you call Santa's children?

Dependent Clauses.

Such fun!

Molly x