Looking Forward

I remember when I first went to university. I didn’t know what to expect. I’d read all of the prospectuses. I’d read the information the college sent out. But I didn’t know anyone. I left home, driven by my parents to unload my worldly possessions into a room the size of a postage stamp, talked merrily about all the fun I was to have until the time came to wave them goodbye, then sat on my bed and cried.

This afternoon, Bethan spent three hours chatting over zoom to the group of people she will be spending the next three years with. At a stage when I wouldn’t even have known if I was going to university or not, she’s already started the process of working out who will be her support network as she navigates her way through university life. They played two truths and a lie. That’s two truths more than most of the people I met at university introduced themselves with.

It’s always hard to predict the future. I’ve just been watching Minority Report. That’s fifteen years old now. We’re closer to the year it depicts than the year it was made. The only thing in it that looks vaguely similar to the world today is Tom Cruise, who appears to have been preserved in aspic (or has access to some really good hair dye).

As a result, my vision of what going to university is like in 2020 has very little basis in reality and a large amount of basis in dim recollections of 18-year-old me. I have no idea what advice to give my daughter. I could suggest not to drink too much but, apparently, nobody does that anymore. Everyone tells me that getting drunk is so 20^th century. A hangover from the days when we all got grants and could afford to spend it on alcohol. Of course, all the people who tell me that are about my age, and Bethan spent a large amount of the three-hour conversation discussing pubs, but I’m sure that my advisers are right and modern-day teenagers have evolved past the need to get outrageously drunk on a Campari soda and a bottle of Strongbow.

The only advice I think I can give is what my father told me: whatever life throws at you, take it as it comes. We don’t know what’s coming. We don’t know what lies around the corner. But we do know who we can rely on.

It’s only by remembering our roots that we can feel free to stick our heads in the clouds.