The Results Are In!

Well, it happened. I received my exam results, and I'm finally free from the stress of those dreaded exams, coming out with an honours degree (and that's about as much about that as I'll say online).

There's something incredibly relieving about holding the final transcript of exam results that I don't think I can effectively capture in a few words. Four years of lectures, essays, teaching placements and exams, all down to one piece of paper - and this one's not even the degree! But the little piece of paper I received today doesn't say much about my time in college.

Yes, it reveals how well I did in my final year modules. Yes, it says how well I did in my research paper (incidentally, it was the best result on the page). And yes, it says how well I did in my teaching placement. But it says nothing about the amazing friends I've made in the four years that led to this day. It says nothing about the conversations over tea and spirits, sitting together at a dinner table or dancing like everybody's watching and we're the sexiest people to ever walk in the doors of whatever pub or club we've found ourselves in when the occasion struck.

It says nothing about the final curtain of my first performance in Drama Soc, or the lights going up on my own play. It says nothing about trips across the city for competitions, or fundraising for an important charity. It says nothing about bake sales and lunch time masses and inflatable slides suitable for a child's party, parked outside the canteen.

It says nothing about the scandals or the romances, the fights and the make-ups, meeting new people and saying goodbye to wonderful friends.

The results are in, and they say so little about what four years in college actually means. This was an opportunity for me, provided willingly by my parents. They didn't doubt my decision to go to this small college they'd never heard of. They supported me when I told them I was going for Drama Soc auditions in first year, and they sat in the audience when The Rest is Silence sold out in third year. They allowed us to have friends down at the house, hosting a post-21st-birthday-party party.

When they arrived home from work today, the first thing I did was hug them. I can never say thank you enough to them for everything they've done for me over the past four years, including all the worrying and the anxiety they went through, hoping that things worked out okay. From making lunches to ironing shirts when I was on Teaching Placement, or picking me up from the college when rehearsals in Drama went on too long; from allowing me to be upset that one of my best friends would be leaving the college, to supporting my choices in what I'd like to study in a Masters course in the future; there are too many things for me to be grateful for, too many to name and too many to think of, and I don't see myself ever being able to express it to them how much they mean to me, and how much these past four years have meant to me.

A little piece of paper told me about my academic results. Nothing can accurately summarise the results of the past four years on my life, on who I am and how I feel and think. There just aren't enough words, and I think I'm okay with that.

So That's What My Floor Looks Like!

Since I was released from the shackles of third level examinations, I've been cleaning my room. It's been and on-again, off-again task these past couple of weeks, because I just didn't want to do it. As far as I was concerned, sitting about playing games or watching videos or reading books was much easier to do from the chair or bed in the room. It was a rare thing to have to actually use the floor for anything.

Alas, that logic does not hold up with the house-owners (i.e. my parents.) While I'm still too underemployed and poor to move out, this is how it has to be. If they want my room to be clean so that they could, theoretically, walk about it (while ducking... no matter how clean the floor, the ceiling will always be low), then that's how it has to be.

In practice, they never enter my room.

They've done so on...three occasions in the past two weeks. Once to open the windows during our heatwave. Once to get something copied in my printer. And once just to look and see if the room was clean.

However, I've really gone at it of late, and it's paid off...kind of.

I mean, I still have to do a few different things to finish up, but the majority of the rubbish has been cleared from the floor. Now there's just a lot of things that don't seem to have a home anywhere.

I have no idea what to do with them, and they're all necessary to keep. So...that's going to be difficult to manage. On the bright side, at least I've made some progress and can see my floor more easily. Once the tidying is done, I'll be rearranged my room to better suit my needs. Whether my parents like it or not, I'm thinking of adding more storage space to my room.

That equates to more bookshelves, and possibly somewhere to put the likes of folders for various projects. It needs some planning, and some money. So that'll be fun.

Tomorrow's post may be a little bit short... I'll be out pretty much all day, and depending on my levels of exhaustion and my ability to type on my phone at said levels of exhaustion, my ability to say anything of value may vary considerably from the norm.

The Name's Frye!

Some consistent readers might be familiar with the concept I apply to keeping friends' names secret: I used pseudonyms. One of my friends went, for a long time, by the name Ferris Bueller. You know, because he was very much like him in my eyes.

What I didn't expect was that I would start considering myself Cameron Frye.

For those of you who haven't seen the film, Cameron is Ferris's best friend (I'll get to that in my life, later.) On the one fateful day - the day-off - Cameron undergoes a change in his life and expresses his frustration with his parents, specifically his father. While his life isn't exactly a bad one, it's not suitable for Cameron.

In much the same way, I disagree with my parents' views on life. To paraphrase Mister Frye, they're always pushing me around. I'm expected to do all the boring things in life when it suits them. It's the second part of that sentence that really gets me, because I totally understand that there are certain boring things in life that must be done. I get that chores need to be done. I just don't agree that my parents should decided, at this point in my life, when I do said chores.

I say "chores". It feels like an American word, to me. I've only ever heard it in American shows and my own head. Anyway, I digress. It's things like hoovering the house, or emptying the dishwasher, or sorting out the boxes of things that had been dumped on my bedroom floor while I was at college. These are things that don't have to be done immediately. Yes, the dishwasher needs to be emptied before the remaining plates and glasses pile up. Yes, the hoovering has to be done to stop the house looking filthy.

But the boxes on my floor? I didn't put them there. I had been getting ready to bring everything up to my room to sort out at my own pace, organising them as I went along. Now they're not only on my bedroom floor, they're in an incomprehensible order. I need to literally unpack these boxes of odds and sorts to put them away again. It would take a whole day, as opposed to the few hours it would have taken before.

These are small things. It's the rest of my life that's the problem. My parents have ideas about my life that don't concern my own free will or interests. I think every parent does it.

I don't think it's a secret that I want to write for a living. I know it would be hard to get to a point where that's possible. I accept that. But it's what I want to do.

The problem, of course, is that to my parents the writing comes second. To everything. Remember those chores? Yeah, they're more important than the chapter I happen to be writing, or the poem I'm trying to reconstruct. If it's not college writing, it doesn't count.

The director of The Rest is Silence had to ambush my parents to force them to promise to go to the show. They speak out it begrudgingly, like it's such a difficult thing for them to get in the car, drive to the college and watch an hour long play their youngest son wrote. An hour. That's it. It's purposely short because of the content. The lead cried during rehearsals. Heck, we all cried. Can't have two hours of that.

So, it would take two hours out of their night, including travel time. That's assuming they show up right on time and leave immediately.

And how does this relate to Cameron Frye? Well, that's where Ferris Bueller comes in. When we speak of my parents - heck, when we speak of either of our respective parents - we come to the conclusion that they're kind of insufferable and detrimental to my health. I think they drive me insane. A lot of the time he then takes it upon himself to talk me to the point of doing my own thing.

Now, this isn't a case of rebellion. I'm not about to kick my dad's car to crap. I'm not about to run off for the day for no reason other than the fact that my friend is bored. Heck, he works too much for that to even be possible. But it's a case of standing up for myself. It's about doing what I need to do with my life, and not letting them decide for me.

And as for the "best friend" thing. Well, I wouldn't claim to be his best friend. I know who is best friends are, for a start. I've spoken to one and I know where another lives (because he's my friend's next door neighbour...). I'm neither of those people. I don't expect to ever be called his "best friend". But we have a particular type of friendship that allows for a lot of honesty, a lot of philosophy, and phone calls at two in the morning. They're my "day-off".

I just gotta take a stand, right? Just face up to the people who think they're in charge of me. As my
pseudonymous name-sake says, "I am not gonna sit on my ass as the events that affect me unfold to determine the course of my life. I'm gonna take a stand. I'm gonna defend it. Right or wrong, I'm gonna defend it."

Just call me Frye. Cameron Frye.