Bloody Students: deadlines and university

Phoebe Inglis-Holmes is an honours year multimedia journalism student, aspiring radio presenter, music festival obsessive and green tea connoisseur.

I've always been the annoying person who has handed in every assignment weeks in advance. Throughout my four years at university my classmates have rushed about like chickens on speed come deadline day, working until the last minute. I've received my fair amount of stares and glares as I've sat there, trying not to look smug that I'm done and dusted. Yet my last ever deadline was this past Friday, and I've dragged my heels with this essay, submit-ting dangerously close to the one minute to midnight final deadline. As my friends have been re-joicing that everything is complete, leaving them free to boast to all and sundry (whilst simultane-ously complaining incessantly about the cost of hiring graduation robes), I've been slowly slogging away at my laptop, not giving this piece of work the full attention that it has required. This is because my friends are so ready to be finished. They're desperate to never have to sit in a classroom again, nodding along like they've done the seminar readings and checking half the books out the library just to write a quarter of an essay. But me? I'm devastated. It's not that I'm worried about being in the 'real world'. I'm pretty sensible, have some good jobs and projects lined up and know I can handle waving the student world goodbye. But I don't want to, because it's here that - prepare for extreme cheesiness - I've really found myself. (Boak). When I first came to university I had only been to Glasgow once before - for three hours, on my interview day. Gulp. I knew nothing about the place and didn't know one person. I religiously de-pended on a little tattered campus map to find my way from halls to my lectures, yet still managing to get lost along the way. I was totally desperate to get it all right; I wanted to make my first ever feature article totally perfect and studied shorthand for two hours every night to try and get that elusive 100 words a minute qualification. And then I blinked and suddenly, I'm here. I made that feature article perfect, I achieved the short-hand speed I wanted. But somewhere in amongst the studying I realised that actually, university is so much more than what your grades are. It was as a student that I learned not to put a plastic tub of brussel sprouts in the microwave on the highest setting for 10 minutes, and to wash my clothes at 30 degrees. It was as a student that I cried buckets learning to let go of old pals, and laughed like I didn't know I could whilst making incredible new lifelong friends. Amongst an endless whirlwind of gigs, club nights, festivals, and moving flats four times, I've managed to work in some incredible places, interview bands I've loved forever, discover what I want to do with my life, achieve lifelong dreams, and even - more boak - fall in love. University has been a place of new beginnings, in a setting where I've been valued, appreciated and believed in. Writing and re-writing articles in my cramped, dim en-suite room in halls with the dodgy shower that sometimes spewed out real live ants instead of water seems like a thousand years ago. So this final essay is not only my last, but my longest to complete, as I've held onto my last days at university with the tips of my fingers. Now it's time to let them slip through.