I am a 20 year old English Literature student. Despite being fiercely stubborn and therefore unwilling to allow myself to complete my degree without gaining first class honours (which I naively and haughtily believe is within my intellectual capability), I find reading most of the books assigned thoroughly laborious and hardly fun. Nevertheless, I try to make other people think I’m well read as it will make them think I am deep and interesting. Writing essays do not make me scream for mercy and I sometimes enjoy hiding in the library surrounded by old books and haphazardly pretending for hours upon hours that I am doing something in any way useful. However, I struggle to write anything of decent quality and am never fully satisfied with anything I have written, be it personal or public. My grammar is atrocious, my vocabulary diabolical, my spelling mistakes too ghastly to even contemplate. I have vague ambitions of later entering either the fashion retail industry or the world of magazine journalism but have no connections and have attempted to secure various work experience positions without success. I have the irritating notion that an opportunity will just fall into my hands from the sky the moment I leave university. However, I am not ashamed to admit that for a while I seriously considering video blogging like charlieissocoollike and subsequently becoming an millionaire internet phenomenon overnight. I thankfully managed to persuade myself otherwise, recalling my previous acting debut in a friend’s A Level Media Studies project, where I stupidly volunteered to be the main character of her music video, mainly because no-one else wanted to commit such social suicide. Now, two years later, I still shudder at the thought of myself badly pretending to argue with an exceptionally spotty boy cast as my fictional boyfriend because he was apparently leaving for New York without having told me. The piece ends on me melodramatically ripping photographs off the walls.
My friends dwindle in ever decreasing numbers. The more I realise my unpopularity, the more unpopular I make myself by simply turning into myself like a snail with a very dark shell. I prefer to give up hope and lament my loss of enthusiasm for friendship rather than going out and making an effort to rope even more unfortunate people into my sad little life. In my spare time when I’m not on Facebook trailing people more attractive than me, I go onto the Urban Outfitters website and load up the playlist and pretend to myself that I like cool, alternative music. I also check up on some fashion blogs I follow of more people more attractive than me and critically analyse the content of their most recent post to make myself feel better. I then stalk down exactly where they got every single item of their clothing from and gaze mournfully at the price whilst considering how many hours of work I would have to do at the pub until I could afford those items of clothing. I watch mind-numbing television programmes like Made In Chelsea, Desperate Scousewives, The Apprentice, and Come Dine With Me. The first so I can laugh over the misery of the beautiful and stinking rich, the second to make myself feel exceptionally intelligent, the third to see what people who are actually achieving something with their lives look like, and the fourth because I sometimes hope that watching other people cooking and eating will put me off eating my own food.
Year after year I make the same New Year’s Resolutions. To join the gym and lose 10 kilograms just like every other miserable female who are under the illusion that fat busting will make them attractive, successful and wealthy, in that chronological order. I have tried and failed to diet many a time. Paul Mckenna did not make me thin. Others include aiming to have written my first book by Christmas. Or to excel beyond my parent’s high expectations in the educational sphere, despite the fact that my father still cannot get over the fact that I have no interest whatsoever in economics, business or dentistry. To climb Kilimanjaro. Et cetera.
This year I aim to do something sensible, achievable and valuable.
1) To save up and buy a car so that I can help make the hole in the ozone layer even bigger.
2) To become more charitable. This is to make myself feel better about making the hole in the ozone layer bigger – we might all frazzle from increasing temperatures and drown from melting ice-caps but at least I gave ending world poverty a good go. This resolution also gives me an excellent excuse to spend more money in charity shops on clothes I don’t need.
3) To make more of an effort in finding work experience this summer.
4) To stop using Sparknotes.
5) To stop consuming so much caffeine.
6) To stop being so negative, seeing as my years of inevitable unemployment, presumably leading to a council house in Essex are things that can be looked forward to in the distant future, and besides, the world isn’t due to end until December.
