In need of direction

Have you ever thought about what those two words mean? To live, and to exist?

Over the last 9 months, I have just existed. I have hardly had a life, or one that I have been happy with. I'm not ill, nor have I had anything terribly bad happen to me, but I'm just not satisfied with the way my life has turned out.

Last year I ended university on a complete high, rounding off exams with an amazing summer abroad- 3 months in the USA, New Zealand and Spain. Then, like reaching the top of a rollercoaster, I was slammed back down to earth when I started my new course.

Teetering over the edge, just before the 'coaster lets you go, well, that's exiciting. You close your eyes, but find yourself peeping out. A little nervous, a little bit of intrepidation, but most of all, excited. That's how I started my new course. I had a new start in a new town, new people, new subject. And it started off okay. I got on well with my housemate, and I was looking forward to having a really good year, much like those I had experienced at university.

It did start off like that. But over the months, things changed. I missed my friends in London, my friends at my new course didnt live near, and so socialising was hard. Then I ran out of money.

Money. Money and I have a love-hate relationship. I hate the way money dictates everyone- we all need money to live, and I've seen so many people pushed into jobs/careers that they dislike just because they need the money. I hate the fact that although I've been to university, studying like thousands of people all over the country to make this country and this world a better place in which to live in the future, yet we are punished for this by being plunged into thousands of pounds worth of debt.

I know the Government says that a graduate end up making much more money over their lifetime than their degree-less counterparts, but I don't think that is the issue. The issue is that students at this very minute in their lives cannot afford to eat, can't afford to pay the rent or bills. What good is it to tell someone who is flat broke and can't pay their rent that they will earn more money in the long run. The point is they have nothing now. And then what do you do?

2 weeks before Christmas, I was flat broke. My tuition fees had to be paid in 5 days, and I had nothing. Overdraft limit reached, savings gone, credit cards with about £20 between them. My tuition fees were £1200. How the hell was I supposed to pay them? The post-grad course I'm on is slightly different to university, in that you would be thrown off the course if the fees weren't paid on time. No excuses, no sob stories, no promise of cash after Christmas once you've sold all your presents on e-bay. No. That was it. Money or leave. That's what education in this country has turned into today. An ultimatum decided by money. It makes me feel sad just even thinking about it...

What am I going to do with my life? What do I want to do?

Questions everyone has asked themselves at least once in their lives. I think, however, that students ask those questions more than most. Especially university students. And so we should. The answers may influence the some of the most important decisions we will ever have to make. Its made even harder by the sorry fact that the hardest decisions we have had to make over the past 3 or 4 years are whether you stay in the bar or go to the library, or whether you're going to have blackcurrant cordial in your snakebite or not!

So after 18 years of education, with GCSE's, A-Levels and now a degree under my belt, I couldnt answer either of the above questions. Not with a straight answer anyway. I want to do a job I enjoy, that stimulates my mind and pays enough so I don't have to live on super noodles every day of the week.

The end of life as I knew it was almost a year ago now. Award ceremonies always mark the end of the year, but for me and my friends it was much greater than the chance to dress up and be revered for outstanding contributions to student (or rather social) life.

We would no longer be together as a unit, everything was going to be different. Some of my friends were going travelling...or putting off the inevitable in the heat, as I saw it. I wished I was going with them. But I had no money, and no rich parents who were willing to fund a jaunt around the world for a couple of months. So it was out of the questions, or going with them was. They were leaving too early. Another of my friends had a job set up in the city. Sounds great, but it was daddy who set them up with that one.

I couldnt follow any of my friends leads, which meant I was totally stuck. So I did either the cleverest or stupidest thing, and enrolled to do a law conversion course. Cleverest because it points me in the direction of a career, stupidest because it costs an absolute fortune, and I wasnt even sure if I wanted to be a solicitor. But I'm prone to stupidity, and I went ahead. Its been...well, the worst year of my life so far...

How come there are people in life who know exactly what they want from life? Game plan, life plan, whatever you want to call it, it still bothers me that people have these plans...or rather that I don't have one.

That is not to say that I don't have dreams and ambitions, because I do. I just have no idea how to make those dreams reality, or how to achieve my ambitions. That's why I need help...but can anyone help? I don't know (Anyone reading this has probably got the impression that I don't actually know that much...eeek!).

I had a turning point in my life this week. Or rather, my life started to mirror my revision for my postgraduate qualification- I realised I have given up before I've even started. Sounds defeatist? Yes, I admit to it, but hell, if you were studying the joys of the English legal system, you probably would too.

This time last year, I was slightly stressed about doing my finals at university. Not so much the exams, as I quite liked sitting in the grandeur of the Royal Horticultural Halls at Victoria. Its a great art deco (or something like that) building, with lots of very interesting things to look at instead of frantically scribbling down the beginnings of a thesis on Cultural Landscapes: North American Style. No, far more worrying than 3 hour exams in the heat was the prospect of having to enter the big horrible real world, where your life revolves around work, bills, mortgages and sweaty armpits in your face on the tube as you stand the 40 minute journey home...