My brain’s fried and I can’t think of a good blog title now, so bear with me.
The gist of it is this: today, my 3 year stay at the University of New South Wales has come to a close. All the assignments have been submitted, all the readings done, all the presentations completed…everything.
And you what? It’s a pretty good feeling.
I’m not going to pretend I didn’t enjoy love parts of it. I had a hell lot of fun, made a lot of friends, learned critical thinking and knowledge that I couldn’t get anywhere else. Other than my Film Studies and Creative Writing major, I also did two subjects of Sociology, two subjects of Physics and astronomy, and one of modern history. Not everyone gets to say they studied (and passed!) advanced astrophysics at university level. I loved my lectures and I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything.
But all good things must come to an end.
While I did enjoy my stay there, and I do enjoy the process of studying, it’s a very draining experience. There’s always something due. Always another presentation coming up, always another book to finish, always another draft to go over, always another reading to do, always another-
It does your head in after a while. It really does.
And I’ve never let university stop me from writing and submitting work: it’s what I went there in the first place to do. Over the latter two years (I’m not counting the first) I had more than fourty-five (and counting) short stories, articles and reviews published, everywhere from Strange Horizons to Nature. And that’s just the stuff that’s been accepted and published. And that doesn’t include the 50+ episodes of StarShipSofa that I solicited, produced and organized.
Writing’s hard, man.
For the content of the courses, the majority were good, and there were some that were invaluable to me as a writer (and film producer!). When I get that book deal, my teachers are being thanked in the credits, that much I promised them. But there was one creative writing class that was the equivalent of the world’s worst sewers being funneled down to a single mammoth-sized container, and then exploding that container wide open. I think I’ve gotten PTSD from that class. The lessons being taught were so absurd, so wildly impractical and against every fundamental writing rule ever (give your character agency, write in a clear prose, keep your audience in mind, don’t use passive voice, etc, etc) that I shut myself out and resigned to going over those copy-edits that Nature wanted back. It was completely divorced from the realities of contemporary publishing and literature. There was a strong whiff of nepotism in it, too.
The thing I learned in that class was what exactly not to do if I actually ever wanted to be published outside a coffee-chain owned vanity press. And I’m not even going to go into how any type of genre fiction, regardless of it’s quality, was treated….
But anyway, that’s behind me. I’m looking past that all.
As I say, I’m gonna miss it. There’s a vibe to being on campus, a sort of exuberance that you don’t get anywhere else in the world. And it was awesome while it lasted, but it’s over now. No more essays, no more presentations, no more sodding 3500 thesis to submit in a matter of days. No more of that.
So what’s next?
Writing. A lot of it. I’m going to be scribbling down some more short stories and get around to finishing my novel. There’s also a ton of work to be done on StarShipSofa. Great things are coming to it, and I can’t wait to see the reaction. And of course, I’ll need to get that job sooner or later. I did actually go to university for a reason, after all!
But right now, I’m just enjoying my newly discovered freedom.
If you need me, I’ll be over at the bar.
Over and out.
JEREMY SZAL 