Beauty of the End

'...so it stays with me forever, the beauty of the end...'

Photo by Joshua Hoehne on Unsplash

The title and tagline of this may or may not sound familiar to you, but in case it doesn’t it’s the name and a lyric of Paloma Faith’s song called ‘Beauty of the End’. But I find the timing of the song playing through my headphones ironic. As I write, I just finished sending off a bunch of assignments and tomorrow will mark the beginning of my final week of my college course before I start exams.

Then comes the summertime. A period of excitement for people having a break from education until it begins again, but for me, I can’t help but feel anxious. You see, this is not my first rodeo, to say the least. This year will be my third attempt at going through the CAO (the organisation that handles college applications for Ireland) and I’m finding it difficult. Difficult to not feel nervous, to hope that I somehow can figure out where I want to go in life.

My first course [4-year degree in Computer Science] I didn’t complete because I fell out of love with it and as such left after a year.

My second course was the one I’m doing now, Culture and Heritage, but couldn’t defer the Arts course (decided to go for C+H after I applied) at UCC I had put my name down for as I was going in for a course, so I had to let that one pass me by.

The third time (lucky?) I’m planning to go for the same one - Arts at UCC. As for the subjects, that’s what I’m going to be spending my summer thinking about. History and (maybe) Sociology, but for my two electives, still working those out! So you can probably understand where my anxiety stems from with this, the uncertainty as to whether this will be the right decision either.

But instead of making this post solely about future panic, let me give you a rundown of how this past year has gone.

This year I’ve been in a class of 28 people young and old from all walks of life and it’s been amazing because in every conversation we’ve had someone has always had something interesting to contribute making sure every chat was a well-rounded one. I’ve made so many precious connections I didn’t think I’d make.

But that didn’t come without the hard work, studying a little from many topics from Archaeology to Folklore to Social History. It’s been a little bit of everything which has left everything feeling oh, so vibrant. Not to mention the pleasure of going gallivanting around graveyards. Getting up close and recording history while making it available for people to look at.

Examining a headstone with a high-lumen torch!

Here is the graveyard we did if you want to take a look! (We did this one at the same time as the first one) On top of all that, we just did this one a few days ago!

It gives me a little hope that something might present itself when I go and figure out what I want to do. Be it teaching (although, don’t know if I could manage that!), working in an archive, or becoming a historian or maybe none of the above — it could be something different again. Who knows what the future holds…