Having failed to write this post several times due to losing track and changing tack I’m going to dive in, and hopefully when you get to the end (which you will!) you will see why the hell I’m writing this first sentence.
Although sleep is one of my favourite activities, and I’m sorely lacking sleep right now, I don’t actually intend to talk about that… no, I wish to talk about ‘dreams’. And just so you know, that’s not sleep-dreams it’s more the hopes, aspirations, life-goals dreams.
As we grow up and mature our dreams change, in primary school a kid may want to be a train-driver or a fireman or some other highly generic school-kid’s fantasy. Soon enough he grows out of that, favouring the life of a footballer, an action hero or some sort of extreme sportsman. Once he passes that phase he’s most likely a couple of years into secondary school, now the future holds more than simply summer holidays and Christmas presents, teachers start to impress the ‘significance’ of GCSE’s (which is a total lie, they’re a load of BS) and mention of A-levels starts to arise. So dreams are put on hold, having dreamed previously of being a footballer or a rock star there’s a tiny memory of what it was like to look into the distant future and just ‘suppose’, but the stress of the now and that which others expect of you becomes more important. It’s no surprise then that when a student chooses his A-levels he is rarely thinking of his dream job, more often than not the choices are made according to performance in GCSE’s.
The same thing pretty much happens in the A-level to Uni transition – how many people dreamed they’d be a banker, estate agent, geographer or even chemist when they were 10? It never turns out the way you hope.
So a student will study his or her degree, and coming to the end (or after the end when suddenly the summer holiday ends and the future stares at you like an endless expanse of emptiness) he will give some thought to ‘what do I do next?’.
Naturally many people seek out a job in the subject they have chosen to specialise in, knowing that employment prospects are best if one has a degree.
So what happened to the dream? When did it die? Did it die when GCSE’s came along and the student found he could not simply do as he liked, that people would judge him not on how he might carry himself or what he says but how he did in a set of exams during the summer of his sixteenth year? Or was it maybe when he chose to follow ‘sense’ and elected the A-levels he would do best at, not those which might make him happiest?
Or is the dream dead at all?
The last few days have tested my mettle in numerous ways, Monday was exhilarating but highly stressful (we had our ‘internal show’) Tuesday was my big sister’s wedding! (which was really nice, really a great day). And then came Wednesday… I don’t wish to say too much as the mental scars are still fresh and to pick at them would cause a great deal of anguish, so I will say the effect it had on me and no more. Wednesday featured so much stress, both the ‘I’m really angry’ type and the ‘I need solutions but there aren’t any’ (which I believe is known as frustration in the English speaking world) kind. I did what I could to remedy situations and it blew up in my face time and time again, by the end of the day I was ready to explode – seriously, imagine road-rage and times it by several hundred. This grievous time really did a number on me, and while I normally have a mostly sunny demeanour I was ready to spit acid – followed by debilitating despair. So Thursday came and I felt the same low spirits as the day before, naturally we forged onwards with the project, time waits for no man, and by the early afternoon I had started shedding some of my gloom.
Then a bombshell was dropped on me concerning the death of a close friend… a tragic event by all accounts and something too sensitive for me to elaborate on… needless to say it hit me moderately hard. It’s hard to describe the feeling, but so many times death is so far from your consciousness that it’s hard to truly comprehend when it is presented in such a stark way right in your face.
Later on Thursday was my brother’s graduation, great news, officially he’s qualified as a teacher and he’s raring to go – full steam ahead, that’s what I like to see!
So why the account of my week? Well, it has put some serious perspective on everything.
While I was still at Uni my brother decided he wanted to become a teacher, the response to this from many people was ‘Why? That’s such a waste!’ – He had just completed his MSci in physics at Cambridge, and they thought he should go and do something equally high powered. Regardless, he went for it, and while it took a great deal of his energy and caused him no small amount of hardship he has now finished the PGCE with flying colours and has secured a job in the north of London. So, did he do the right thing?
I came out of Uni with a degree in physics from Cambridge, I looked high and low for a job – the one I thought I’d done best in at interview told me the following: ‘you’re right for the job, you just don’t want it’. This was true, I didn’t want it, and when you don’t want something you won’t fight for it… so I enrolled on a videogames course, and now I’m on Dare! Did I do the right thing?
My friend did a degree in economics, he got a job as a headhunter with a handsome salary, he wanted this job a lot and had always pictured himself in that world. After a few months he quit and enrolled on a 3 year course in ship building and yacht sailing; did I mention he’s always been passionate about sailing and is far too nice a guy to be screwing people over all day long? Did he do the right thing?
Another friend of mine recently finished her 4 year degree at Cambridge studying geology, she’s an incredibly friendly, lively outgoing person and she wants to head off to India to learn massage, she could go and get a job at an oil company and earn a packet, instead she’s making headway into becoming a professional masseuse. Is she doing the right thing?
And of course there’s the fact that a friend of mine has recently passed away, this guy was a real champion, he was one of those really great guys you marvel at – how is it they can be so smart, so talented, and so genuinely friendly? He was a good friend of mine, and to a small extent we enjoyed a friendly rivalry… it’s incredibly sad what has happened.
It’s hard to see any silver lining to such a dark cloud, but when you’ve had a week such as mine you realise what’s important… your dreams.
There’s nothing which will stop me from doing that which I long to do, no person will stand in my way and no amount of work is too much for me to do in order to make it happen.
I have seen my friends and relatives fight hard for that which they want more than anything and I believe whole-heartedly in doing the same.
If there’s someone out there who would cheapen it, someone who might tell you it’s not worth it, or that you’re wrong to want it then they are fools, spare them no time as you will leave them in the gutter where they belong.
There may be those who are unwilling to fight for their dream, those who may not see it as something they can achieve or that maybe the rewards for their efforts will not be as great as they hope. If you are one of those people, if you don’t believe that you will ever make it, or worse, if you think that somehow you can achieve it without having to break your back to get it just remember that if you don’t chase your dream you’ll never catch up to it.
I’ll leave you with a quote from one of my favourite games: Gitaroo Man.
“It doesn’t take much to make ‘impossible’ into ‘I’m possible’ (that’s your dream calling)”
