Queen of Peace

I have written here in over month and for that I sincerely apologise. Obviously during exams I had a legitimate excuse, but they finished on the 18th of June and I don't really have a reason to explain by absence other than apathy.

Leaving school and exams ending have left in a weird place. Although year 13 itself was 12 months of weird. Everything became very real, very quickly, but by the time I felt I was beginning to get the hang of things it all ended.

So much of my identity has been built around school, which is why I guess I feel like I'm drifting in some vacuum and a bit out of touch with who I thought I was. School has just always been something I could do. Not just lessons, but the other stuff. I was always that girl on the student council, or in house drama, or being picked for this or that. Actual life, on the other hand, is a system that's not so easy to play. Who am I kidding? I've only been out of school two weeks. This hardly counts as real life. But when your oldest friend is getting engaged and being offered jobs based in Swindon, it can be hard to remember.

I'm not really sure what it is that I'm feeling. Cha, adolescence summed up in ten words. It doesn't help that any emotional responses feel rather delayed. It takes a good few days before I will feel pissed off at whoever for doing what they did, or happy for someone's achievement, or to enjoy whatever book I've been reading. I could just be tired. I turns out doing nothing is very tiring.

Gwendolen

 Photos taking by me during a walk at the Epsom Racecourse 

Words that have been out and about, on people's lips

From Tumblr

So I left school two weeks ago. I keep on expecting some big emotional reaction but it never comes. Probably because I haven't really left school yet, but am in the weird limbo that is study leave. I'm still going in for exams and the odd revision session but I'm not really a student anymore and I have done all the tradition last day stuff. However at about 3:34pm on Thursday 18th July 2015 once I leave the sports hall following the grimest day of German and Physics that really will officially be it. Then I'm sure my body will crumble and I'll start the long process of rebuilding myself into something that resembles an adult.

I plan to start my gap year by not getting out of bed until comfortably after midday. Then I will do myself a cooked breakfast before taking a shower to wash the remaining evidence of sixth form off me, before walking down to a field near my house, where I shall spend as much time as it pleases me lying under a tree looking up at the branches to sky beyond.

I have done a lot of walking lately. Even the odd bit of running, which is pretty horrible but does allow me to work off some pent up aggression that has built up towards Billy Collins for being such a boring and uninteresting poet, and towards Edexcel for making me study him. I've walked roughly the same route most Sundays for the last three years but over the last few days I have been less formulaic, allowing myself to explore the little paths made by teenagers on Friday evenings that take me to clearings that I am not quite brave enough to sit and read for hours in.

My gap year is not there for me to find myself. If I have learnt anything from physics over the last two years it is that I am a but a wavelength smeared across the universe, made of matter that will happily turn into nothing but energy in the blink of eye. But when that makes me feel too insignificant I remember that most of the particles that are in me are interacting with every single charged particle in the universe, and that those particles are in turn interacting with me.

That, and to always put units and to watch your significant figures.

But before I can start all that I need to I get revision and exams out of the way. I'm not dwelling too much on quite how much I have to do and how little time I have to do it because it will only stress me. Thinking about the probabilities of what I need and want to get this year will only make me feel inadequate and insecure so I'm just going to pretend I am what everyone thinks I am. But maybe I should think about all that stuff more if it means I will actually spend as much time as I need on integration by parts and vectors, rather than just drinking copious amounts of coffee, reading translations of Rimaud's Illuminations and watching Rich Kids of Beverly Hills. 

Mother and I went to the Royal Opera House to watch the Royal Ballet's production of Woolf Works, a new ballet inspired by the writings and suicide of Virginia Woolf. It was the most intense and moving piece of art I have seen in a long time. Attempting to describe it makes it sound a little crap as it involved a surprising amount of lasers and synths. But watching it was like reading her works, with their overwhelming intensity and the beautiful way in which her language moves and forces the plot to become secondary. The moment it finished and Alessandra Ferri was left to dissolve on stage I was hit with a sadness so overwhelming I headed straight to loos to cry.

Sorry it was so wordy and sounds a little forced but I writing this was way more therapeutic that I expected. Also Cecily's doing good. Not that I know that for sure because she hasn't been on the internet for the last two weeks and I'm seriously suffering from lack of contact with her (I hope that when she reads that she feels suitably guilty). However I believe her exams have finished.

Gwendolen

August/September Disposables

The rather grim view from my room in Sidney Sussex

The time we found teapots in Fleur's sink

I got experimental with hairspray, toothpaste and disposable camera lenses to variable success

Gwendolen

PS I shall be haranguing Cecily to post

I tie my life to your balloon and let it go

Hey Readers

 Well I guess year 13 has really begun to kick in what with my absence. I would also like to note that Cecily is also letting the side down (your publishable drafts are running very low *hint hint*).

 The last three weeks have been pretty full on, but great. Minus a very horrendous Thursday and weird hormones. Suddenly the general outline for the next few years have fallen comfortably into place (gap year inc. some time in Deutschland, then off to University to study English or Liberal Arts). My UCAS application will be in by tomorrow evening (Final choices: Manchester, King's College London, Cambridge (Ha.), Edinburgh, Birmingham*) and then I can start my applying to the odd Dutch one. I am in a moment where how quickly the future and adult life is approaching is actually kind of ok.

The lightest weekend all term

 For the first time since year 10, I have one teacher I definitely don't like, and another I can't quite make an opinion on. I am also experiencing a desire to push back against authority, in a perfectly normal and healthy teenage way. All my experience of being an adolescent seems to have been pushed into this wonderful year of being 17. This one is just a bit odder than the rest because I guess in some strange way I am also now in a position of authority.

Chatting with Mum during my family's traditional first day at school photos

I have once again become aware of how emotionally ruthless I can have a tendency to be if I don't watch myself. Actually "emotionally ruthless" is the entirely wrong phrase. On one hand, it's plain old emotional constipation. On the other hand, it's not having the time or energy to actually push out said emotions and consider them properly.

I haven't written in my diary since I last wrote on here and I can feel the emotional build up from not being able to expel all my thoughts. Every now and then I will catch myself wishing I had a completely secret blog where I could be slightly too open, and before I start saying that little bit too much I am going to go and journal.

Amber Run - I Found. They are my brother's friend's band so it's nice to see them doing relatively well

Gwendolen

*Dat offer range**
** For non-UK teenagers, they all ask for A-level grades of A*AA or AAA

You must prepare your bosom for his knife

Hey Readers!

 This is the end-of-summer-holidays evening I will ever experience.

 I'm going to miss the feelings that inevitably come with this night. When there seem to be an infinite number of events to occur, friendships to form and conversations to have, all wrapped up in the depressing yet comforting sense of predictability.

 September is going to be a stressful month. I have my Duke of Edinburgh practice expedition to Snowdonia next week - 6 nights of camping, which mean I shall be missing my friend's house party and the Birmingham open day. The internal application deadline for anyone applying for Oxbridge is the 30th September, so that's 27 days to get my UCAS up to scratch. Then there will also be head student stuff. And organising meetings for the Feminist Forum. Plus the Manchester open day. And 4 A2s. And my EPQ. And all of the other stuff I will inevitably end up doing.

 I can feel myself coming to the point where I will be ready to leave school. It's an odd thing to say, because school has always been such a safety blanket, the one thing that I know I can do. Part of me is worried it may turn out to be the only thing I can do. I am looking forward to University (Note to self: speak to teachers re gap year). I've spent most of this summer residing in the University of Kent's library pretending to be a student. I don't want to end up somewhere uninteresting. The best thing my sixth form has done is probably make me into a slightly more interesting person, and I want my future to do the same. I'm almost ready to move on from school, but I'm not ready to move onto a 9-5 office job and a house that looks like every other house ever.

 I should go and get my bag packed and enjoy this evening. I have already done the necessary stationary organisation, and my entire life is now divided up into 7 folders. I shall try and do a post tomorrow in an effort to digitally preserve my last every first day back at school.

Gwendolen