Robyn's weekly rant: "Ranting and Raving About Turning 23..."

It feels like a hot two seconds ago was first year and now I’m suddenly 22 and feel I’m not just approaching my 23rd birthday in the new year, but my 25th and 30th all in one. My body is crumbling, I’m crippled for days after a few drinks, and everyday someone asks me “what’s next after graduation?” or my aunt might drop in, yet again, how she was married by 22.

Over Halloween I spent six hours trailing gradireland.com applying for jobs until I finally cracked feeling so overwhelmed at having to sell myself on repeat - “I feel/believe/think these skills make me so qualified for this role”. There’s the added considerations of masters applications, whether I want to go travelling or just in general where I want to live. I’m originally from London and a post-Brexit London seems even more unattractive. The vote reaffirmed what I’ve always disliked, this British nostalgia or ‘romanticised’ headspace about the past. It’s like Lydia Bennett from ‘Pride and Prejudice’, where the unruly Mr Widdecombe and his nice accent, hair and bumbling personality trips her into a self-indulged love story. Cue modern day Widdecombe - BoJo - who seduced the electorate back into this rhetoric on colonial sovereignty. Moreover this has unleashed a climate of xenophobia, where one Cabinet Minister even suggested the government should be extracting teeth of incoming refugees to ensure we are actually accepting children, not adults. Over the Atlantic, American voters were also cajoled into this rail against the establishment. I feel closed off from a US option post-graduation too: I cannot assimilate into a society where a President jokes that he doesn’t pay taxes, tweets about global warming being a Chinese-invented construct and criticises his citizens for using their freedom of speech.

2016 and my 22nd year however has definitely been my favourite. I guess 23 holds the future which in turn holds the end to this stable chapter of my life. So far I haven't a notion, least of all romantic, as to what happens post-university. In other news,the weather is turning Baltic and is acting as my ‘pathetic fallacy’: I’ve suddenly hit November and despite all my ranting and raving, I’m feeling a bit frozen.

#rant