My First Day (Again): back to the student life

Hello friends!

I'm back with another post to this community of #SilverBloggers after a while, more than a month I think, and that time I told something about my new plans for the future, which was basically going back to the past, many years later. And I commented that I would tell more when everything started.

And here I am explaining a bit about my first impressions and how the beginning has been so far. Well, I decided to go back to university to study something different, something that would allow me perhaps in a few years to change direction, because no matter how old we are, we are always in time to learn, to change and to decide about our life or at least we have to try.

So a few weeks ago I went there, to start a new life, to start over, a new first day (and first month already...).

And really, after years, returning to the university has been like a trip back in time. I was in that building, in those hallways and in those classrooms more than 20 years ago, although not for long because I studied at another campus, but I went there sometimes too.

Well, it seems as if nothing has changed. Yes, there are some changes in the façade, in some renovated classrooms, a restructured lower floor, but most areas are the same, and the feeling you get when you go up the stairs and enter some of the large classrooms is that time has not passed. And there I go with my backpack and folder as if I were 20 years old again. It's weird.

And it's weird, sitting there again looking at a long blackboard, waiting for a professor to tell things, and surrounded by people who are just starting out. Young people who have just started that university life that I remember, who are excited and also unfamiliar with everything they will experience in that new university world. I already know it, I have studied a lot, many things along different years, and I am coming back again, with a new outlook, with old memories and with many thoughts that crowd together certain doubts and some fear too...

Because it is not easy to go through those doors and sit in a classroom again, there are many sacrifices, of effort, time and money. Sometimes it can seem like a bet with one's own life, with destiny, and we don't know how this crazy adventure will end.

Because some people will think it's crazy, starting over, reacquiring a habit in a world that is now different. Things have changed, maybe not the tables, but the blackboards that now project digitally, also the requirements and the type of teaching, more similar to school students.

And I have to adapt myself, there are things that have improved, but others have not, honestly. Before everything was more innocent and practical, now everything is impregnated with an ideology that subtly conditions everything or almost everything, you just have to observe it, maybe you have to be from another generation to realize it.

But there are also times when you think you have gone too far, that you have to study a lot about things you didn't expect, and do a lot of homework, and it's a lot of time that you have to dedicate.

I wonder if it will be worth the effort, the dedication, taking time away from other things, spending more money, going by bus every day despite the distance... there are many questions and doubts that sometimes arise while I write on a sheet of paper in class, or while I look out of a window when I go out into the hallway, or sometimes, when I have my head resting on the bus window while I look at the sea that always accompanies me on the journey to the city.

And these doubts also generate a certain fear, and I realize insecurities and also that everything is uncertain, but that's life.

There are other things too, it's just that the beginnings are overwhelming, especially when the routine changes are so radical. But I have also realized that this may be the most confusing year with so many different subjects, and it will be the next year when I focus on subjects that I like more, I'll tell you more...

But on the other hand, there are things that I think are never lost, like the ability I had to take notes for example, and instead, others are improved, now I can ask questions in class more naturally, without having the embarrassment I had when I was much younger, in some way I gain confidence, despite the insecurity in other matters.

I also see that the interaction with other classmates is curious, it doesn't change much, except that I can tell them things from years ago, but I don't feel the distance in time in other details, nor do I feel like someone strange, or isolated, nor do they look at me differently, I think. And I have realized that, among these young people, there are very capable people, very studious and interested in learning, and that is good, they are not so much the image that is given of young people who start university.

So, now very close to my birthday and at the beginning of a new life, halfway through life, I reflect on this risky, demanding but ultimately exciting beginning. That is why I am here, facing doubts, fears and limiting beliefs to live a different future.

As it usually happens, there are positive and less positive things in life changes, and in the decisions we make, without really caring about age, it is more about how we now see the same things that we lived before, with a background that gives us another perspective but that at the same time can cause us certain doubts. But I suppose that is the way, that is the learning now, in addition to everything that I am studying now as a new university student who has already been a university student.

Let us live the life that we choose to live and let us bet on it.

Thanks for reading! Have a nice and happy day.

The text is totally mine and the photos too, by ©Duvinca - NO AI and the image has been created using Canva.com