Taking The Plunge

Most students that come to Rhodes University for the first time generally are fresh out of school. Basically they will forth go their first prolonged trip that they will undertake, away from the confines of their beloved parentals that have nurtured them from that most joyous time in their life when they were born. That scary good-bye when the parents drive away on what seems an endless road and then they are gone you could not think of a brighter day because this is the step into your future. This step is the one which your parents have no control over, they are not watching anymore and it is time to spread our wings into a path of unknown.

There is one slight problem when rolling onto your two feet into the unknown, which is you do not know where to step first. Going with the flow seems the first option and you start thriving on that point, the first step normally leads you to party because you have no limits now on what to do and by this point you let loose and go crazy. It all starts with that one little taste of pure ecstasy that is going out and then you are hooked, some seem to fight the addiction but some fail miserably. This addiction comes with the fact that university in first year is blow off and we are here to have the time of our lives and not everything is about work. This is where people start to lack in their work, which for most during the old school days we were on tip top shape when it came to keeping up to day and not leaving anything to the last moment. Then comes the whole down fall of being a night fiend in the local pub when you spend a full night scheming across the key board to try and finish a assignment for the ten o’clock due time, the result no sleep. The conclusion, well you are obliged to go to lectures so you stumble into the theatre, enter the back row where you may be oblivious to the droning lecturer who is blabbering on in gibberish, then in moment notice your eyes give in and counting sheep becomes your next activity. The lack of sleep is the price to pay but there is no care in the act, you are a first year and at that moment you are having all you need to do is pass and there is nothing more to it.

So with all the antics that a student in first year it seems the same for most to find a reason to avoid the dreaded task of studying for examples going to gym and you study later but later comes and you are hooked to your computer hacking Facebook or watching movies. Tic- Tac holds a good reason on the status on where I am coming from stating, “there are many reasons the sleep deprivation monster comes to claim you as his own. Aside from the usual staying up too late, people's favourite excuse is studying for exams (Note to self: start studying sometime soon!). Probably a little closer to the truth, now is the time people choose to start stocking up on wild party memories as with the rapid approach of swot week many social lives are about to hit a deadening halt (http://www.1styearspread.blogspot.com/)”.

In the end we have to stand up to the wrongs that we encompass and learn from mistakes because university is not just about academic learning, but learning and testing your boundaries and realising who you are and where you want to be in the years ahead of you. That is what it is all about, life takes you in one direction but you are in the driver’s seat where you hold the power to shape your future.