Oh dear Lord

It hasn't properly sunk in yet that I'm done with school. As in, DONE. OVER. FIN. GAME OVER. THE END. Holy fucking crap it's crazy to think of and yet it doesn't really connect, like it's all happening to someone else and I'm pleased for them but it doesn't really affect me, when jeeez does it affect me.

I haven't told many people yet, and now seems like a good time to make it known: I've deferred entry to university, on the grounds of the really, really simple fact that I don't want to go to university. I'm kind of protective over my decision because I had a truly awful, utterly degrading conversation with someone last weekend, which went something like this:

Person: So when are you going off to university?

Katherine (not anticipating any kind of shitstorm because Katherine's life is none of Person's motherfucking business on any day of the week and especially not when it comes to something as significant as university): Oh, I'm not going.

Person: What?

Katherine: I've decided to defer.

Person: But... why?!

Katherine (puzzled): I don't want to go yet.

Person: But what are you going to do instead?

Katherine: Work.

Person: *noise of derision* What a waste!

Katherine: Excuse me?

Person: Doesn't it feel like a wasted opportunity?

Katherine: Actually, no it doesn't. It feels like an unimaginably large weight has been lifted from my shoulders, and for the first time since university was presented to me as the only available option for a reasonably-high achiever such as myself, I feel free. If you truly believe that my choosing a path other than university is a "wasted opportunity", then you are wrong. Success is not determined by a degree. Would you like a list of successful people who did not attend university, or dropped out after deciding that it wasn't for them? No? Well, have one anyway: H.G. Wells, Whoopi Goldberg, George Orwell, Anne Hathaway, Thomas Edison, Jamie Oliver, Alan Sugar, Henry Ford, Simon Cowell, Abraham Lincoln, Bruce Willis, Ralph Lauren, David Karp, Billy Joel, Jimi Hendrix, Molly Brown*, Benjamin Franklin, Tom Hanks, Eminem, Halle Berry, Walt Disney, Charles Dickens, Ellen DeGeneres, Madonna, and among others, Bill Gates AND Steve Jobs. Are you convinced yet? No? Then maybe I ought to tell you just a little about the not-so great place I've been in for the last couple of years. I'm an obsessive, neurotic, anxiety-ridden depressive. I am so pumped on antidepressants that sometimes I wonder if I'm really myself. Only in the last couple of months have I come clean to my mother about the self-mutilation, and although it might be nothing to you, that I haven't harmed myself since is a really, really big deal - but my point is that, despite my progress, I'm still recovering. You wouldn't get a man with broken legs to run the 100 metres. Likewise, I am not ready to move out. Putting it bluntly, I can't be trusted to not have a bad day and immediately succumb to the need to gouge into my skin with an almost-certainly unclean shard of metal, thereby exposing myself to all kinds of infections as well as the risk of slipping, cutting just a little too deep, and bleeding to death on my regulation student mattress because even though I probably wouldn't mean to, I'd take it as a sign that, sometimes, these things happen, and that then is my time to go. In short, not going to university is a superlatively good thing and you, Person, can pipe the fuck down, because you are what is referred to in intelligent circles, as a cunt. *snaps fingers in Z formation*

Okay so I didn't say any of the last bit, I said something noncommittal and walked away. 

* If you Wikipedia no one else on that list, Wikipedia this lady. If you've seen "Titanic", Molly Brown was the lady who, when all the rich people were out in their lifeboats, tried to get them to go back to save the people who were drowning. She wanted all the lifeboats to go back, but she was shouted down so much that she only managed to convince them to send one, and that's the one that saved Kate Winslet. She later became known as "The Unsinkable Molly Brown". How. Fucking. Badass. On top of that, she fought for women's rights, and for fair wages for factory workers, and for child literacy and education, and she used the fame she gained from her actions aboard the Titanic to aid her appeals. Nice lady.

So, yeah. Instead of going to study Literature, I have an apprenticeship. At a restaurant. I'm training to be a chef! Cool, huh?

Despite Person's unnecessary quibbles I feel a real sense of relief. I feel happy. Real happy - not artificial happy, not situational happy, not vicarious happy, just really, really fucking happy. I'm hopeful. Excited. (It's a good feeling.)

There's a small problem, though.

I can't stop listening to Bruce Springsteen.

Skip to 1:10 if you want to miss out on seventy seconds of adorable crowd-thanking and stuff.

Admitting to liking Bruce Springsteen is akin to saying out loud, in public, "You know what? I can't decide who I love more, Nickelback or Coldplay," and that is embarrassing but nuuuuhhhh his lyrics

Someday, girl, I don't know when, we're gonna get to that place where we really want to go and we'll walk in the sun - but 'til then, tramps like us, baby we were born to ruuuuuun

Not cool not cool not cool but I LOVE HIM BECAUSE HE'S A WHITE MALE AMERICAN AND HE USES HIS WHITE MALE AMERICAN PRIVILEGES FOR GOOD AND HE KNOWS THAT AMERICA IS A HOTBED (hotbed mmm) OF INEQUALITY AND INJUSTICE AND IN SONGS LIKE "BORN IN THE USA" HE SINGS ABOUT AMERICAN STUPIDITY WHERE IT CONCERNS WARFARE ("so they put a rifle in my hand/sent me off to a foreign land/to go and kill the yellow man") AND HE WAS DOING THIS BACK WHEN THE WHOLE WORLD STILL THOUGHT AMERICA WAS ABSOLUTE HOTSTUFF AND HE WAS LIKE "HOLD THE FUCK UP BITCHES" AND HE SPREAD AWARENESS OF THE AWFUL THINGS THAT AMERICA WAS DOING TO EXPLOIT THEIR POOR AND THEN ON TOP OF THAT HE WAS ALL INTO FREEDOM AND I SWEAR "BORN TO RUN" WITH LINES LIKE "wrap your legs 'round these velvet rims/and strap your hands 'cross my engines" ARE JUST THE BEST BECAUSE HE'S USING THE IMAGERY OF A MOTORBIKE TO SAY TO THE UBIQUITOUS 'WENDY' THAT HE WANTS HER DREAMS TO BE THE DRIVING FORCE OF HER LIFE BUT IF THAT ISN'T ALSO A CLEAR REFERENCE TO FUCKING THEN I AM COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY DAMNED AND IT'S THE BEST FUCKING SONG OH MY GOSH

It needs to be put in writing that I love Bruce Springsteen and I'm only a tiny bit ashamed