Ranting is the preserve of the columnist, whether you’re in the mood for it or not. Any opinion writer worth his (or her) embittered salt should be able to find some target to spew their vitriol at, or at least find something that vaguely deserves a discussion.
Today however, I am struggling with this task in quite a disquieting way. The sun is burning in the blue springtime sky, the leaves are shivering away in the refreshing breeze, while the crowds below gr towers waft their way between town and lectures, grinding revision and ground coffee.
Erstwhile I sit on a chair in the afternoon heat, fanned by one of the gaggle of fans cooling this oven that our climatically adjusted writers call an office, slowly, inextricably ticking away the time towards the day when the university will finally no longer be the source of my daily entertainment, and I will be forced to face the peril of becoming that scariest of all things: a real person.
That means jobs, and interviews. Worst of all, it means tax and paying back my student loan. No more free money for me, not any more.
Considering all of this on a day like today would lead even the least nostalgic among us to have pangs of wistfulness, urging the clock to tick slower so I don’t have to leave this city which has been my home, through thick and thin, better and worse, for the last three years.
I’ll miss the Union, and the farcical nature of student politics, the dressing up parade every spring which passes as an election campaign, and the fears and tears that I’ve witnessed covering the election results.
I’ll miss Fun Factory, the crush and push of Come Play and the ever more fantastic antics of Rubber Duck. I’ll even miss sticking to the floor in Metros.
Cardiff truly is a great city to live in, and while it’s not perfect, it doesn’t have the crime rates or crush of London, the sheer size and navigational complexity of Birmingham or the gun crime of Nottingham.
Everything in this city is within easy reach, most things within walking distance, and if that wasn’t enough in terms of venue choice, Swansea and Newport are just a half hour away, Bristol, Cheltenham and Gloucester just a little bit more.
What teetering upon the cusp of departing Cardiff has made me realise is just how many great times I’ve had here. What other university city of similar size can boast such a fantastic range of pubs, clubs, gig venues, theatres, cinemas and sports teams, whilse housing a Russell Group university with such a strong sense of identity, a mixed group of students and a thriving collection of societies including our own fiercely independent student newspaper?
By now I imagine that I sound like a University recruitment advert, but believe me when I say that I’m not being paid enough to write for the University. So why my sudden burst of uncontained joy spewing out across the page? Well, I’m actually going to miss it, and I’m allowed to reminisce, as painful as it may be.
I guess there are plenty of you out there wondering what the hell I’m on about. A year or two of averagely boring lectures interspersed by nights out in clubs you can’t really remember are what memories of Cardiff are about, right? That’s certainly a fair assessment of my first year, but let me make just one point.
Don’t throw away a second here because before you know it, you’ll be facing your finals without a clue where the last three years went, feeling like an 18-year-old but appreciating that in six weeks time the world is going to expect its fair contribution from you.
Don’t worry about joining societies that you’ll probably hate, or those that are full of cliquey people with their cliquey in-jokes, because if you don’t go you’ll never know just what they can offer in return.
If you’re getting any firsts in your first year exams then you’re wasting your life. Trust me, I got one. It was in psychology, a subsidiary module which I hated with a venom and have never looked at since. Not really worth the four solid days of revision.
Stick you’re neck on the line once in a while, go and try something you’ve always wanted to, and see what happens. It’s possibly the last chance in you’re life to do things with the safety net that university, especially Cardiff, offers.
I’d like to think that I’d made a lot of the opportunities at university, but I know I let chances slip. I didn’t do enough in my first two years and I’ll always regret that. Cardiff is a great opportunity, and I’m going to miss it immensely.
Right, well as the sun begins to sink to a level low enough to dazzle my laptop screen, I’m going to have to stop whinging.
Maybe I’ll head down to the Union letting agency and get housing lists for next year. Suppose that would solve the whole issue.
1. Mark
“What other university city of similar size can boast such a fantastic range of pubs, clubs, gig venues, theatres, cinemas and sports teams, whilse housing a Russell Group university with such a strong sense of identity, a mixed group of students and a thriving collection of societies including our own fiercely independent student newspaper?”
Off the top of my head? Well there’s Newcastle, Liverpool, Sheffield, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Belfast, Warwick and Southampton. That’s excluding the others in much bigger cities too, like Manchester and London and, of course, the quitensintally British instiutions of Cambridge and Oxford.
Don’t get me wrong, I like Cardiff, I really do. I’m a born and bred Cardiffian and one of the reasons I stayed here for University was because I knew enough by the age of 18 to know that Cardiff was a good a place as any for studenthood and the University wasn’t half bad either. Now I understand that many people, like yourself, do a three year piss up in Cardiff and enjoy all the wonderful things Cardiff has to offer for the student. Maybe it’s because I know Cardiff, I know it from it’s green leavy suburbs of my home neighbourhood, to the lively student villages of Cathays and Roath, from the manic city centre on a weekend night to the open fields and rolling hills that look down on the city. Cardiff’s a good place to be a student, but it has it’s flaws, it is, for example, the most expensive place to live in relation to income in the UK. It has relativly high crime rates, high levels of alcoholism and alcohol related crime, particuarlly assaults, it has an underlying drug and prostiution problem which has never been resolved, it has areas, such as Ely and parts of Butetown, that one really should stay clear of and it has a growing problem of violent crime, particuarlly with knives and firearms. Now admittedly all of these things could describe, to one degree or another, any city in the United Kingdom. And therein lies the point, Cardiff is just like most other cities in the United Kingdom. I’d imagine that all around the country writers for student rags are saying the exact same thing in their paper about their University as you have said about Cardiff in Gair Rhydd and, to a certain extent, they’d all be right.
My point is merely that you should try to contain your nostalgia, good as Cardiff is it is still just a relatively small city offering services to its residents that one wouldn’t expect, it does, so to speak, punch above its weight. I suspect one day I’ll come back here, probably if and when I start a family, but after I finish studying I’ll be heading straight to London or, hopefully, another big city out in the Anglosphere. There’s a big wide world of cities out their, to all those people graduating this summer and going off to work I’d strongly urge you to consider London as the place to be as a young, single professional, or Sydney, Auckland, Cape Town or New York. Cardiff is a nice place to while away a few years, but that’s about it.