My student days are numbered

They say that bad things come in threes. Well, I’ve just turned 21 which apparently makes me an ‘actual’ adult; I’ve just started my third year at university; and my brand new Stagecoach digital pass is counting down the number of days I have left in Manchester. Cue the violins and the recurring career crises: I have recently, unfortunately, and alarmingly received clear evidence that my days as a student are numbered.

Not only do bad things come in threes, but they also appear to come daily. Every day Snapchat loves to throw up flashbacks of first-year-me, navigating freshers in quite a “blind leading the blind” style. A time which seems like decades but also only days ago. In these photos I look so fresh. Young, innocent, and academically unburdened. Nowadays my forehead wrinkles are alarmingly prominent, my schedule makes me feel like I’m trying to juggle while running on a treadmill, and I obviously can’t stop thinking about the Roman Empire.

But in my first year Snapchat memories I’m posing with a girl I no longer talk to, sitting next to a boy with whom I thought things would go further than they actually did, going out with people who I’d only quickly smile at from across the street now. Not that I have any regrets about these social interactions and relationships. They served a purpose at the time, they were (on the whole) enjoyable and fulfilling. Then all of us migrated from our first-year networks and formed new networks with other people who fulfil us in other, dare I say deeper, ways.

These memories seem like they belong to a different person, in a different lifetime; they are completely dissociated from the current version of myself. The photographs are like a visual clock: counting my first time in Squirrels at one, first essay deadline at three, first day in a student house at five, and now my first meeting with my dissertation supervisor at seven.

The thing with being a student is that everyone is aware that your time is finite. It’s assumed that those who do attend university will only spend three years there. And as soon as you haul those blue Ikea bags up to your first year box-sized room, the clock starts ticking. Before you know it, you are pleading with your landlord to not deduct money from your deposit for those burn marks on the kitchen counter which just mysteriously appeared, or, as mine noted, an “excessive use” of Blu Tack on the walls.

I’m all too aware that in just a few weeks, the awkward housing conversations will start where everyone creates mental categories of who they would like to live with, and who they wouldn’t. But will I be doing this? Even though I’d love to live in Manchester post-university, will I be able to? Are my friends even staying? Did you just say that you’re applying for a grad job in London and you have an interview next week?

Maybe I’m just whinging and being dramatic, but third year appears to be a race against time. Especially when the stereotypical “university is the best three years of your life” mantra keeps being thrown around. Because yes, for me personally it has been, and I know that I’m very lucky to be able to say that. That belief creates an atmosphere of dread and worry about what is to come after I graduate.

I feel like I need to do a Molly-Mae and squeeze out every single hour of every single day, so that I can proudly announce to stiff-smiling onlookers that I had the time of my life at university. I do, of course, want to make the most of my time left in Manchester, but without the added pressure that I can’t possibly miss this social outing in case it’s the last time we go here, do this, or see this person.

I don’t like the idea that I’m up against the clock. But it is a feeling which I have not been able to shake off since I started university – dare I remind you again, THREE years ago – and that feeling has only grown and grown. Because not only am I counting down my student days,

I’m also counting down the number of days I have left with (let’s face it) no real responsibilities, the number of days I have left until I absolutely must be in some form of full-time employment, the number of days I have left with all my friends being within a 20-minute walking distance, the number of days I’m able to just not turn up simply because I don’t feel like it – and perhaps most crucially, the number of days left until I’m barred from accessing UNiDAYS discounts.

The speed of time is something which never fails to shock me, which is probably why I’m in complete denial that my student days are numbered. Hopefully I’ll be able to banish the sense that I’m competing against time. What’s that, Stagecoach? Oh, I apparently just have only 257 days left of being a student. Wonderful. The hour hand is slowly creeping its way towards nine on the clock.