Beyond the Parapet

This academic year has been a year of 'lasts' for me. The past few weeks alone have included both the final day of my childhood and the beginning of revision for the last school exams I will ever take. The months preceding those were filled with yet more endings: my grandma was taken ill with ovarian cancer and died weeks later (the last of my grandparents), and in January I was rejected from the university I had long dreamed of attending. Today I made the realisation that I have just 16 days remaining until I leave school forever.

I like to imagine that the experience of school is comparable to seven years of house arrest in a luxurious castle; although you remain reasonably aware of the goings-on in the wider world, you live your life in the comfortable knowledge that not much is going to change from one day to the next. In the sixth year of your seven year stay, you decide to ascend to the roof of your castle to glimpse between the crenellations, all the while imagining what your 'freedom' will entail. You will do this all the more often once your final year begins. Despite having envisaged the new 'liberated' version of yourself throughout your incarceration, you realise that you have never felt the grass beneath your feet or the wind in your hair: you have merely witnessed their effects on other people through the castle windows that both protect and imprison you. Although you have seen the grass and heard the wind, you know that you will not feel them until the drawbridge is down and you are on your merry way.


As I type, my poll card for tomorrow's general election and the accommodation form for my top choice university (incidentally now seeming like a rather better option than my original dream) rest before me on my desk. To my left is the noticeboard I decorated before my first day of secondary school and to my right is a reading list for the course on which I hope to enroll in September. I am perched on a rather comfortable blue swivel chair, able to observe both what I have been and what I hope to become. The view is pleasing but nothing special.

These past seven years have been the most formative of my life and I'm not sure I ever want them to end. Nonetheless, the wind is beginning to blow through the walls and puffs of pollen are being carried into my bedroom by summery gusts of air. There will be no going back.