Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
AFTER a month of a coffee-sustained existence, battling 15 exams and coursework, I am done; sealing my school years in an envelope and sending it far, far away.
My room grows slowly emptier as I shove mounds of paper into bags. IB candidates must be one of the world’s major contributors to deforestation, judging the sheer volume of paper that I have accumulated over the years.
And now, after years of exasperation, all-nighters, endless tweaking and editing, I watch as all my work gets shredded, dumped and recycled – paper to be used a year later by people who write shopping lists and draw up evil schemes.
And that’s that. High school is just a passing phase. It’s over for me, now; just a memory, a keepsake of what David Mamet would call ‘the virtual warehousing of the young’.
Raking out the contents of my room, I realise the magnitude of the situation – everything is going to change.
High school is just a little taste of what’s in store for us. Now we’re about to be thrust into the big bad world. We now need to fend for ourselves, manage our own resources, do our own laundry. It was bound to happen.
The ‘bird leaving its nest’ analogy would be strikingly appropriate and cliché at this point. Try to fly, test the winds – we’re all growing up, aren’t we?
As with most teenagers in Bahrain, going to university is synonymous to going abroad; struggling to find a place in an entirely alien country, culture and climate, cribbing about the cold and the absence of shawarmas. It’s understandably difficult moving from Bahrain - having lived in a bubble, on the beautiful island of palm trees and golden smiles.
But not to worry – university is, or so I’ve been told, an incredible experience. It opens up an opportunity to meet a great network of people and to learn what you always wanted to learn. It also tests your capacity to get along with others – something I predict my unfortunate future roommate will be tested on a lot. She’ll be fine as long as she leaves my Harry Potter shrine alone.
The only unchangeable entity is change itself. I have no idea what such an over hauling will have in store for me, but I’m agreeing to it anyway.
There are two months left and lots to take care of; to decide how I’m going to shape my next four years – what courses to take, what room to live in, what meal plan to choose.
Yes, change is inevitably unchangeable, but for a small space of time, you can always pause and unwind. That’s why God created summer.
