End of Term

finally!

It was the last day of term today. I had coursework that was due in this afternoon so I've been stressing about that for the few days. We got given this work 6 weeks ago and as always I left it till the last minute to really get going on it. I've just been so unmotivated recently. At first I thought it was depression, and I suppose it is a bit of that but really what I've realised is that I have no interest in my degree subject any more. I cannot wait for next summer when I'll graduate and I'll never have to look at another bloody equation or learn about perturbation theory, Fermi distributions or free electron models ever again!

When I first came to this realisation I was distraught; I thought that the last 2 years of my life had been completely pointless, and I was convinced that if I ventured away from science it would be a waste of my intelligence. However I’ve since come to the conclusion that doing something I’m not passionate about just for the sake of wanting to appear clever and please others, would really be a waste of my intelligence.

It’s scary now that I’ve come to this realisation; I’ve always just assumed I’d get my degree then maybe do a masters and PhD, then work as a researcher or something. I might have not felt truly passionate about that plan but at least I had a plan. I have no idea what I could do other than physics. My social anxiety has stopped me from trying out so many things over the years that for all I know could have been my true calling. I guess I just need to try out as many new things as possible until I find something I love. What I'm thinking at the moment is to get through the next few months of this degree, hopefully get a 2:2 (I messed up last year so that's the highest I could realistically hope for), and then take a few years out doing odd jobs and probably getting a job as a waitress or something for a few months just to get a bit of money saved up, and then bugger off round the world volunteering and things. I've been doing some research and I've found a really great organisation called WWOOF (worldwide opportunities on organic farms); you just sign up to the site and you get access to loads of different farms that take volunteers. The idea is that you work for around 5 hours a day and you get accommodation and food in return, and you don't even need experience to do it. One of my dreams is to one day grow all my own food so this would be a great learning opportunity for me and a chance to travel very cheaply!

I'm feeling a lot more optimistic about the future than I have in a long time :)