Once upon a time, quite long ago, I decided to publish a blog post every Monday and Thursday. That schedule worked pretty well for me - except for the four times this year when I took a break without warning. Over the summer I was actually getting ready to settle back into my routine though. You might have noticed that I failed. These past few weeks I only managed to publish one post a week at best. This time, however, I had a good reason to be slacking off: I started university.

If you've followed my blog for a while, you'll know I was forced to drop out of college in May 2017, because of circumstances that were out of my control. The deadline for applications had already passed, so I couldn't get into another college or university right away. I went to Southeast Asia that summer and started working as a translator when I came home. Months flew by, and before I knew it, I could apply again. Even though I liked my job, I wanted to go back to school sooner rather than later. When August 2018 came around, I officially became a student again: I am proud to say that I study English and German Language and Culture at Utrecht University.

After a full year of working in the 'real world', it took me some time to get used to life in university. So far, I've survived five weeks, which means I only have two weeks of classes left until the end of the first block and the start of my first week of finals. It's been fascinating, surprising and a true rollercoaster. The whole adventure started when half of the freshmen went to the east of the Netherlands for an introduction camp with a medieval fantasy theme. We spent two days making memories - and loads of embarrassing videos and pictures for group challenges. Within a week after that, I'd become the go-to person for anyone in need of a Smeagol impression.
To my own surprise, I did pretty well in all the awkward social situations that come with starting a new degree course. I've talked to loads of people in the first five weeks and have made it my goal to sit next to as many different people in lectures as possible. And the lectures and seminars themselves... Let's just say they make me feel like I've finally come home. I fell in love with linguistics in no time. The way sounds are made and how a slight movement of the tongue can change everything fascinate me. Literature, on the other hand, is the class in which I have no idea what I'm doing, but apparently my weird interpretations of Rich and Dickinson are pretty decent. And then there's my one German class, which I follow to keep my German at a decent level. For me, that comes down to sitting back and relaxing. Now, every day I come home and bore my parents to death with random linguistic facts I learned in class.


Still, it's not all rainbows and unicorns at Utrecht University. I spent the first two weeks in a state of complete panic, not knowing when I was supposed to take which books to which class. Or where that class was going to take place. All normal things new students have to figure out, but my perfectionist brain found it unacceptable that this situation lasted over two weeks.
Getting used to doing homework again also took me a couple of weeks. With one German class added to my timetable, I had a lot of trouble finding the balance between work and the rest of my life. Actually, I still struggle with that every Friday (I just can't put my work down), but I'm slowly settling into a routine. Soon I hope to come to the point where I can regularly blog again, but I'm not all that bothered about it. My grades are more important to me now than any digital numbers.

To be honest, there is only one thing that does bother me that I can't change: the immaturity of a lot of my classmates. A lot of them are fresh out of high school and you can tell they've never seen the big bad world for what it actually is. Now naivete isn't a crime, I know that, but I couldn't believe my eyes when a girl in my class almost went into hysterics and wanted the teacher to kick me out of the class because I'd casually cursed. Can you imagine that, a grown woman using the F-word? Oh, the horror!

Seriously though, I'm nitpicking. If immaturity and imbalance are the worst things about being back in school, I have no right to complain. In fact, most of the time I'm thoroughly enjoying my time in Utrecht. I hope I'll be able to combine my studies with my blog, but if I disappear again, you'll know what happened: I'm probably buried underneath a landslide of homework and would love it if you could send a rescue party. Thanks in advance!