Educating Emily

I want to write about what it feels like to be a senior in college. Overwhelming is the word that would probably be most appropriate. I am in the process of making a list of everything "Cambridge" that I want to experience, and yet I also want to make a list of everything "Cambridge" that I have experienced. This blog has been very useful in that respect, but it's getting difficult. What about the things that I have done that at first seemed completely unreal, but now I regard as second nature? I am afraid of what I take for granted, so that years from now I can still remember what my first reactions and thoughts were actually like.

I have friends that have applied for jobs - some very successfully, others, not so. Applying for these jobs is unbelievably time consuming - one of my friends was saying that she spent over 8 hours on a job application to a banking and investment firm. My plans on the other hand have a similar projection as the Iraq war - President Bush says "We're going to pull out, there's just not a timeline for it yet..." and I say "Oh yeah, I'm going to get a job or go to grad school, it's just I don't have a timeline yet..." Yikes!

The other problem with all of this is, with my education in England coming to an end, it seems my adventures are also starting to wind down. After I graduate I'm supposed to be a real person - bills, a lease or mortgage, my own finances...I won't be able to run off to France for a weekend if I wanted to - I'll have *gasp* responsibilities. Gareth is annoyed with me, because I keep saying things like, "Why don't we just go to Mongolia after we get married? I know a guy here who's trying to set up a social anthropology department there - I could probably get a job with him..." I had it in my mind that after university ended, that's when the adventure truely began. But now I'm not so sure.

And further, what does my degree actually mean? Apparently, if I go to Japan, people will physically fight for me. There, a Cambridge or Oxford degree is next to godliness, or so I've heard. But in reality, I don't feel particularly qualified to do much. How exactly does three years of listening to people lecture and then write a lot of papers about it qualify me to do anything? Sure, I've read dozens of books and gone through reams of paper, but what does that prove?

Today I saw two Japanese men wandering around the college, and the one was taking photos of the other. I went up to them and offered to take their picture together and they were both so grateful. But I know from past experience, that they'll go home and show that picture to people and say "Yes! And it was taken by a Cambridge student!" And it means something to them. But I'm not sure what that means for me, and what it means to me.

I'll think about it more when I have time. For now, it's back to the books and the paper.