Eva Short ¦ Contributing Writer
It is mid-September, and college is back in session. It’s an overcast day, mild, with a barely palpable breeze. Outside the Arts block, a small collection of students are sitting on the grass, nestling into stylishly oversized coats. Their conversation meanders through various topics – current affairs, animals, people they know- and is always peppered with laughter. At one point, a young woman makes a rather interesting proclamation.
“Well sure,” she says “No one’s really awake this early in the morning.”
It was, at the time, 11:30 am.
Indeed, as I survey the surrounding area, there was neither a bright eye nor a bushy tail to be seen. Students are practically drooping into their coffees, rubbing their eyes, flicking their wrists as they gesticulate with cigarettes between their fingers. The place is buzzing with quiet chatter, presumably concerning the stress of having to attend a nine am lecture, or their hangovers, or technical issues with their timetables.
“It will never be this cheap, this easy, or this accessible. Don’t sleep through your college experience.”
I look around and realise that we, as students, are so far removed from the real world. What a charmed existence we lead, an existence where people are barely functioning at close to mid day and yet manage to survive in our little off shoot to society. We are, by all accounts, an off shoot – Trinity College is a bubble, a small isolated haven at the centre of our capital city. Outside the walls of our institution, people have been awake for hours, and they’re already incredibly busy. A nine am start in college terms is something that could potentially ruin someone’s entire day, but in the real world, that’s an average morning, maybe even a lie-in for some. And while students may complain about having to kill three-hour stretches of time between that nine am and their next tutorial, people in the real world are wondering whether they’ll have time to grab some lunch. They’re dying for more time, and we’re sitting outside our college trying to ‘kill’ time. We have so much of it that we feel the need to whittle it away; we worry about how possibly to stave off the boredom.
“They’re dying for more time, and we’re sitting outside our college trying to ‘kill’ time”
Should we be ‘killing’ our time, though? This boredom – which is, by the way, an issue reserved for the privileged – is not something we’re entitled to feel. For as students the world is, pardon the cliche, our oyster. At that moment, sitting in front of the Arts block, I couldn’t have thrown a stone without hitting something interesting to do or see. Behind me was the Library – if I’d felt so inclined, I could have gone upstairs and viewed an original Shakespearean folio. It’s something people in Trinity can mention in passing but, viewed objectively, is rather spectacular. They’re the original folios of plays written by probably the most famous playwright in the world, and I can look at them practically whenever I want, for free. As can you, for that matter. In front of me was the Book of Kells – 8th-century manuscript, revered Irish tourist attraction, and thing that nobody cares about. Or at least, no Trinity student, it would seem. We have all seen the winding queues outside the exhibit – tourists will come from all over the world and huddle under umbrellas, euros in hand, devoting a portion of their holiday to looking upon the Celtic gospel book. Any student with a lecture in the Arts block could easily cross the square during a lull in the tourist foot traffic, flash their student card, go past the security free of charge, and view the book for themselves. However, I’m not sure anybody has; the Book of Kells is, more or less, merely the butt of a campus-wide joke. We have this opportunity, we’re not bothered enough to seize it, and that’s apparently hilarious. Maybe it is funny, but it also shows the extent of our jadedness.
“Students have all this time on their hands, all these options, but it’s only for a limited period. There’s a lot less time than you think!”
I hasten to add here that I’m as guilty of this attitude as the next person. A while back one night, after dinner, my mother asked me with a hint of excitement in her tone “I heard Seamus Heaney is doing a reading at Trinity, is that true?” My answer was at best noncommittal” Oh, yeah. Something to do with Paradise Lost, I think.” The man was a Nobel Laureate and, upon seeing the poster advertising the reading he was doing as part of a readathon in TCD, I gave it but a cursory glance as I made my way to class. As we all know, he is sadly no longer with us. I was too late; I’ll never have a chance to see Seamus Heaney do a reading again.
It’s that which gets me more than anything else – students have all this time on their hands, all these options, but it’s only for a limited period. Even if some take shelter in a post-grad, that still only leaves them an average of five years. That’s a lot less time than you think. This stage we’re at is very temporary, and despite this, we’re asleep. It’s almost noon, and we’re only one foot out of bed, bemoaning having to get up at all. Understandably, some students may find it hard to sleep through the night, especially if they have hip issues, for example, or insomnia. But with there being options such as soft mattresses for hip pain issues, hopefully, these students can get a better night’s sleep and not fall asleep in lectures.
This is not a call for everyone to go en masse to the Book of Kells (I imagine that would be rather traumatic for security), rather this is a call for people to realize that they could do next to whatever they wanted right now. If you’ve ever had a notion of taking up a hobby, an instrument or learning a language or skill, now is the time to do it. It will never be this easy, this cheap or this accessible. Don’t sleep through your college experience, or have it all fly by you in a blur of drunken nights and hungover days.
It might seem fun now, but you’ll regret it. When you’re forty and harkening back to these student days, you won’t be thinking of that time your 10 am seminar was cancelled, meaning you didn’t have to wake up until two in the afternoon. You will remember that you went to a class and learned how to juggle – or perhaps, you’ll remember that you always meant to go, but never quite got around to it.
