Feeling Useless: Final Year Stress

   The final year of uni is a terrifying thought, and it's only just really hit me that I have 2 weeks left of official term time before the exam period. 2 weeks. Am I panicking? Perhaps a little. And how's my dissertation going? Well, I've hit a block.

   There comes a stage for every final year student when you have what I imagine to be the university equivalent of a mid-life crisis. You ask yourself all the questions that it is, quite frankly, too late to answer. Asking 'is this really what I want to do with my life, or should I quit and do something irrelevant?' is probably the dumbest question to ask oneself, yet it still happens. Eventually, most will come to the conclusion that unless you enjoy pointless debt, then yes, this is what you want to do. But what about after university?

   These past few weeks, I've noticed a significant rise in the amount of booked slots for the careers advisors. To most students, you have a number of choices: further study, internships/postgrad schemes, employment. For most, it's making this choice that is the first hurdle, which all contributes to the third year break down. Suddenly a question that seemed so simple when you were younger, 'what do you want to be when you grow up?', is more difficult to answer that being asked to single handedly create world peace; it would seem 'Angelina ballerina' is no longer an adequate response.

   On top of having to consider life after uni without that safety blanket of a regular loan, it's dissertation period for most students. After writing, scrapping, and re-writing thousands of words a few times, finishing seems like mission impossible. And it's always now that the library has decided to stock only one copy of the book everyone seems to need (cough cough How Fiction Works) so it's near impossible to get hold of. Unless you buy it, spending more money that, by now, you really don't have. But if, like myself, you miraculously do know what you want to do after graduation, there's the added stress of applications and interviews. Managing time becomes an enigma, and before you know it deadlines are catching up. 

   The main question is, should we be worried? Well, yes. This is real life. But at the same time, whether it feels like it or not, we'll all get there eventually. A full scale freak out is bound to happen to everyone at some point. I think it's important to think of it not as a break down, but as stress release - it'll seem better tomorrow.