I have started going to academic talks. I suppose it is never too late to take up skydiving and learn Chinese but these days History is all encompassing. Every second year student must take the ‘rethinking history’ unit, which challenges the mind with complexities which put the basic sentiments expressed in one’s personal statement to shame. Last week my confrontation with post-modern theories on whether the past is real or not naturally lead to nostalgia of simpler times. I looked back on A level past papers which ask the reader ‘which source is most useful to the historian’, only to wish my teachers had imparted the wisdom that they are all as facile and inane as each other. Such illogical and impetuous thoughts are undoubtedly a product of spending my work hours in the computer centre, where day turns to night in the blink of an eye; 65 desktops but no windows. I am actually really enjoying the spectrum and totality of rethinking history and would highly recommend E.H Carr’s ‘What is History’ to any applicant, apply it to your A Levels, extremely useful.

The unit encouraged me to consider the impact of other disciplines on how we study the past, and I attended a brilliant talk from Professor Ronald Hutton hosted by the Anthropology and Archaeology society on Britain’s pagan past. Ronald’s interweaving of anecdotes in a lecture is delightful, and his tale of discovering a book on ‘Lindow Man’ in a Cotham charity shop, leading him to grapple with the British Museum over unproven narratives and Historical plurality was exhilarating. The professor won the day, and one of the Museum’s most popular exhibits now unashamedly proclaims that we don’t have a clue how Ancient Bog Man died. The presence of leading academics is extremely heartening and encourages great intellectual exploration and discussion. That said, stumbling upon the fact that your lecturer has authored a complete chapter pertaining to the essay question you chose two weeks ago is simultaneously motivational and terrifying.

Rethinking not only the past but the future, my career aspirations are as erratic as my 15 year old self’s Call of Duty dictated sleep schedule. A talk from the from the former Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe of Nato, Richard Sherrif, inspired me to get involved in the government to help stop the impeding Armageddon. However, on the way home I realised vegetation will be recolonising the globe before I even make it through the application process if the General is right. Later this week I am going to Bristol basecamp’s networking drinks. Basecamp is a University lead initiative which encourages student enterprise, so maybe I’ll be able to afford an Anderson shelter by World War III. Finally a colleague in the SU office said I was “good at puns” when I misspelt ‘you’ll’ as ‘yule’ on a Christmas announcement post, maybe the saying ‘there is no wrong answer’ should be adjusted to ‘even wrong answers are right’. Interesting. this could be relevant to work and the future. I’ll stick it in the next essay and let you know how it goes.

The first week of second year was so vastly different from that of first year that September 2015 almost seems like a different age.

Twelve months ago everything was new; I was living in a tower of two hundred strangers from across the world, had no sense of what the City was like, and was frantically scrolling through the Wikipedia  on ‘historiography’ before my first Seminar.

In hindsight, I wouldn’t trade this disorientation for familiarity as it was such an exciting adventure that has brought me to write this blog in my comfortable flat, shared with friends after a seminar where I knew (*most) of what was being discussed.

Maybe the move from the ever noisy City centre to the quiet, leafy Chertsey Road (opposite Clifton Down Station) has made first year appear more thrilling than it was. Certainly my targets for this year are more focussed on getting a first class degree than seeing how many consecutive nights I can go out, but this year I have learned to manage my time more efficiently.  As such in comparison to last year, all it took was a timetable to reveal to me, I have much fewer hours to mess around. The workload certainly has increased but I am finding the necessitated increased engagement with lecturers and Historians to be very rewarding in developing my skills as a Historian. This fuels a passion that provides a different motivation than just ‘doing well’.

That is not to say that I haven’t found time to do fun things, and this year I have even found time to start swing dancing and have found a job at the SU. One of the roles was giving away freebies to freshers at a Pirate Themed night at the 02 Academy, this was certainly the culmination of my University career so far. Out of the blue, as I threw a treasure chest inflatable parrots and sharks from the stage to the mass of first years below, I had a moment of reflection. Everyone there in some respect was like me last year;  be it confused as to whether they will see tonight’s friends ever again, living away from home probably for the first time, or in the back of their mind wondering about how that 9am will go tomorrow. What united everyone however was the electricity in the air, the sense of anticipation that now was the time to disregard all these worries and make tonight that one unforgettable night you return to in memory. My perspective from the stage, as a second year was like the blow up creatures that night that everything falls into place.