Three years really isn't a long time. When you get your university acceptance through, most people can't imagine how they could make it through three years of independent living, student life, deadlines and dissertations. But here the class of 2012-15 are, finishing up our degrees. Not everyone's quite finished yet, but I am. And so many people who finished before me said a single word to describe their feeling after handing their final essays in: deflated. At the time I thought how? It's done, it's over. It's been crazy, it's been happy, it's been sad and a real experience. How could you possibly feel deflated? But deflation is all I feel right now too. 

I now don't know where I stand. My degree classification is entirely out of my hands, I don't have a job lined up for the future, I'm not 100% sure on where I'm actually spending my summer, I'm not entirely sure what possessions I'm sending to Nottingham (the place I'll be moving to when I'm all finished up in Keele) and what to send back to Cornwall, where my home and family are. 

It's not the party poppers, pitchers and cheers all round I expected. I don't know how I feel, other than deflated, if I'm honest. I'm proud I've come this far, though I think I'd feel marginally more excited about life from here on out if I had a job waiting in the wings like many people I know do. But when you're choosing to make the jump from Cornwall to Nottingham, it's a little hard to immediately want to work. Do we graduates deserve a break after three years of stress, weight gain and drinking our sorrows away? (I kid we're usually all very cheery when we drink, truthfully though many of us do use a night out to avoid responsibility).

Since I moved to Cornwall in 2001, I've not spent my summer out of it. Going into my second year of university I cut my summer short and moved back to Keele early, but now cutting it out seems unthinkable. I'm ready to move out of Cornwall, because of my relationship, because of my desire to find job security, and for my own personal sanity due to how 'out of the way' everything is where I live. But it does seem like it's all come so suddenly, with the final exchange of paper and submission receipt, my degree was finished. 

Now, it's time to reinflate myself, get on the job hunt - but relax at the same time too - and wait for all my chums to finish so the party poppers, pitchers and cheers all round can finally happen! 

What does this mean for Life and Times of a Student I hear you ask? Well I may not have secure plans for myself and my future, but my little blog does have plans and by no means will Life and Times of a Student be left behind, even with my student days behind me. 

MissIsGoode