Actually, while I'm backtracking, I may as well mention that I had a lovely bath beforehand, with a 'vanilla fountain', which turned the water bright green and smelt of burnt toffee and vanilla, which was lovely. The night before had been the Creative Arts Society GM, and the Writers' Circle wanted to break away from the rest of the society. Even though I *set* up this incarnation of the Circle, I didn't vote either way, since I'm not here next year, and the society thus needs to find its own path. Instead, I gave a long, rather rambly speech that I hope was heartfelt, recalling the difficulties we had setting up the society in the first place, and my experiences with it and with how university societies work. I aimed for 'neutral' but goodness knows if I was.
SO YES the careers evening. I managed to miss the only one of the speakers I was interested in, a freelance journalist and writer, and thus had to sit through an hour of PR and marketing people, as well as a publisher who, more than anyone else I have ever heard, took complete control of her audience. But I found the people I wanted to afterwards, with wine and olives of course. I knew I wanted to talk about my own situation, so I waited until those with more general questions (generally not finalists) had finished, and then spoke. I ended up being the last student there, in fact, chatting with the remaining professionals about technology and writing and so forth. I don't think I was that drunk at the time, thankfully, and so I was able to have some useful conversations, also with a more general freelance writer. They generally agreed that my experience with school and uni journalism, my Circle involvement, and my victory in the DAAD competition was a major boon, and their advice was thus mainly 'keep on going!'. Which made me feel really positive about my future, whatever happens after Munich this summer...
I'm a writer! ...or certainly will be. As for poetry, I'll write about that in a seperate post...
So what does my future entail? Well, I did spend a few hours last week looking up Postgrad degrees, and I've found a few that quite interest me. I've not looked over them carefully yet, and I'm so bad at making decisions like this, but there are a few courses that stand out, provided I don't simply want to carry on with History. Some of the most attractive unis include Manchester, Edinburgh, Leeds and UCL, and the most interesting courses include Gender Studies (in a Modern Languages context), German History, Modern European History, Gender, Sexuality & Culture and European Culture. You can see what sort of areas interest me here. I considered Comparitive Literature, World Cinema, Translation Studies and Creative Writing too, but I think I'd feel more comfortable with the former list. Incidentally, the list isn't in any specific order...
However, I doubt I'll be doing this next year. I'd have to rush things now, it's a lot of money at the same time as my brother is beginning uni, and I fear being burnt out since I'm struggling a little with the workload at the moment. So next year is a big black hole as far as my future goes, which unsettles me, but I'm trying not to worry too much...