The End of an Era

I guess the starting point of my journey through the Gap is an ending: after three years spent merging into campus life I am leaving, and it feels a bit like I’m losing a limb. Not just because of having to leave the campus and city where I have spent perhaps the most formative years of my life so far. Leaving behind the memories and the people is what feels like an amputation. I am constantly having to resist the urge to cling on to any stranger within arm reach and sob "It's the end of an era!"

The facts of my time here don’t make the above announcement (‘it feels a bit like I’m losing a limb…[whinewhine] amputation’) any less melodramatic. The facts are boring. The facts are: I studied BA Literature and History at the University of East Anglia for the standard three years; joined some societies and made some friends; shared a flat on campus during my first year, moved into a shared house closer to the centre of Norwich during my second and third years; went to lectures and seminars, then graduated. Like I said, the facts are boring. A list of all the things that I feel the facts miss would take far too long and has the potential to get dull very quickly. Imagine a movie montage in a rom-com, soft-focus, emotive music showcasing all the touching and hilarious moments that occur in almost everyone’s time at university and finally fading out on a group of smiling students watching the sun set over the UEA lake .

I guess my point is that I’m going to miss it, a lot. And having a lovely, comfortable and friend-filled life and routine here in Norwich is making the prospect of moving back home and embarking on the gap even less attractive.

Well, the attempt to talk about this objectively and impersonally has already failed: the realisation that I’m leaving university, and student life, for good next Saturday has finally hit. I will save myself from the embarrassment of further words and conclude with a series of highly personal, completely subjective pictures, randomly selected pictures from the hundreds of photos I’ve accumulated.  Most of them were taken by me and the one's that aren't have been attributed in the pictures properties. Cue the cheesy music...