Is politics the right choice?

I’m going to the University of Edinburgh to study politics in less than two weeks. This is a subject I am hugely passionate about and something I do know a huge amount about, but recently I have been having my doubts as to whether it is actually the right thing to study.

At school I studied Modern Studies rather than politics. Modern Studies is like a mixture between politics and sociology with some economics and social policy type stuff thrown in as well. I had a fabulous modern studies teacher who now is one of my very good friends as well as an ex teacher. Sometimes I wonder if my passion for the subject came completely from the fact that she was so inspiring when teaching it. We had so many debates and discussions about current issues and what was going on in the world and the Tories’ latest screw up (in our opinion) or the most recent, sneaky thing the SNP were trying to do. So, having not been in her class for more than three months now, and having completely neglected keeping up to date with the news, I’ve started to wonder if politics is actually the right thing for me to go and study. I used to discuss politics and current events so often and in so much depth that as soon as I heard about them my opinions and my thoughts on issues were forming and solidifying straight away but now that just doesn’t happen. And it’s made me think that I’m either losing interest in something that used to fascinate me so much or that I’m simply becoming too lazy to be good enough to study it. I’m conflicted! It could be a good thing I’m having a break from all things political because then when I get to Edinburgh on the 14^th my fascination will be reignited and I’ll throw myself into it and have a fabulous time. I just don’t know. And it’s making me nervous.

And I just wrote the word politics too many times and now it just sounds funny.

Two weeks today

It’s two weeks today that I go to uni and I am absolutely counting down the days. I’ve spent all summer trapped in this house, in this town doing nothing and I cannot wait for the rest of the my life to start. How pretentious and obvious does that sound?? I know, I apologise. These last two weeks at home will fly by, I’m sure, and there’s enough organising-type things to do to keep me busy but I can’t help feeling trapped in the middle of a beginning and an end. I kind of wish I’d started blogging at the beginning of the summer, kept a record of the things I’d done, this last summer of childhood.

That being said, I had a huge list of cool things I was going to do this summer and I’ve done none of them, except maybe turn 18 and go to the pub without being ID’d, but does that really count? I’m not sure. I was going to pass my driving test, go on cool road trips to the beach and the Highlands, have a big party, go to lots of parties, even spontaneously do some travelling. In reality I’ve spent the summer either in bed rewatching old episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or doing shifts in the tearoom where I work.

It didn’t start badly, the summer I mean. It started with finishing school, which was of course a positive. Then there was Oliver! the school play which was the best fun I’ve had in such a long time and will probably become my best memory of school which is ironic since it happened after I’d already left. After Oliver! it all started going down hill. There was the summer ball – basically prom, but my school likes to pretend its too good to have a prom so calls it the summer ball instead – in which I got spectacularly drunk and ended the night crying on my modern studies teacher’s shoulder and subsequently being invited out for coffee by her at some later date. Then I went to London for two weeks which was actually fab and then I was home spending the days lounging about doing nothing which just made me miserable.

But now it’s all changing! It’s the beginning of the end of the summer, some of my friends have already left to go to uni, more are going in a weeks time and this is it and I am so so so ready for it.