Reflections

I’ve been thinking about this address I’m supposed to give on Sunday night as I will be getting my advanced diploma, despite only graduating ‘normally’ last year.

I’m also trying not to dwell on the fact that I’m the only one graduating as it was nerve wracking enough sitting up there last time with cordelia , this time I’ll be up there by myself. But I suppose at least this will give me lots of room.

So I was reflecting back on when I started institute when I was 18 and something hit me. In September that would have been 10 years ago, 10 YEARS!

This also means that it’s been ten years since I started at uni and it really, really doesn’t seem like it was that long ago. Ten years, that seems like a ridiculous amount of time to have passed, when it only seems like three or four years at best.

Now I’m sure some of you (mainly the church members as my non LDS readers might not have realised that) have wondered why exactly it’s taken me nearly a decade just to graduate let alone get my advanced diploma.

Well there in lies a tale (cue flash music and special effects).

When I first started uni I ended up in the area of a small branch. There were two other YSA at the uni at the same time as me, one of whom we rarely saw she went home every weekend. Now the president of the branch we were in was very nice and couldn’t do enough to help us out. He would keep checking we were okay, come and pick us up for church and run us into institute. We used to give him petrol money but we then found out at Christmas he had simply been saving it up and gave it all back to us.

So we attending institute in Liverpool at the stake centre there until Christmas. As it was 1999 we also added stuff to a time capsule which was being placed into the stake centre walls (oh I think that might be getting opened this year, must remember to check thatt out).

So it was shortly after Christmas that the branch we were in was dissolved as there were not enough to Priesthood holders. As the boundaries were redrawn we found ourselves in a new ward and bid a sad farewell to nearly all of the members from the old branch as they ended up in a different ward.

Now like most churches, heck in fact anyplace, church, society, office etc we have very good people, good people, medium people and not so good people. The leaders in our new ward were, shall we say not as helpful as our old branch president. The YSA who did go to institute from our new ward did not want to come and pick us up as it would add 15 minutes to their journey each way. So we were left with the option of public transport. However this would have entailed us having to navigate an area that most church members would have rather stayed away from on a Wednesday night. So it was with great reluctance that we decided to forgo institute as none of us believed we could get there with out putting ourselves at great un necessary risk.

So after uni had finished and I moved back home, I started to attend Leicester institute and was able to finally complete a full year. However it was at this point that I changed jobs in my old department which meant I switched to rotating shift patterns. As there was no set pattern to these patterns initially I either worked 9am to 5.30pm, 11am to 7.30pm and 12.30pm to 9pm, five days out of every seven. As you can imagine this wreaked merry havoc with being able to have anything approaching a social life and although I tried to attend Nottingham institute when I could the rotating shift patterns were so exhausting I found it too much effort to do so at times and preferred to go straight home and sleep.

This continued for several years and then finally a new job opportunity opened up in my current department and luck being on my side I managed to get the job and move to whenever I’ve been ever since. As well as gaining new responsibilities and the opportunities for learning new skills I finally got off having to work Shifts, moving to Monday to Friday 9am to 5.30pm hours. I was extremely grateful for these new hours as I don’t think I would have been able to keep going on shift patterns much longer.

So with a standard Monday to Friday job, my evenings became free and that meant I could finally start attending institute once again and that’s basically what I’ve been doing every since.

Now I know you could say that it hasn’t technically take me nearly ten years to complete institute as I wasn’t studying for every year of that time period but I prefer to count from when I took my very first lesson, even if that doesn’t make it sound like a incredibly long time. Which it is, but I’d like to think that it isn’t no matter what the passage of years may say : - )

Now I suppose I could relate that whole spiel as part of my address which would probably take up all of the time they want me to speak for (and more) but I don’t think Bro H would be too impressed if I sent everybody to sleep.

I suppose the main thing I can say about institute is that completing it isn’t easy. But then again completing anything worthwhile never is.

Later folks,