Thinking of: permanently residing at the Quad

Writes Maeve McTaggartI put off writing this editorial for as long as I could, because doing so means acknowledging that this is the last issue, that we have reached the end of the year and, by some strange occurrence, the end of me being a student at UCC. This time last year, when I was confronted with premature nostalgia for my college days at the thought of leaving, I was reassured by thinking I would be ready. But I don’t think I am. This year has been cruel to everyone, where ‘nothing’ happened while the world still dutifully broke itself apart. Everyone missed the milestones of birthday parties, weddings, anniversaries, graduations… but it’s the loss of the small moments in-between which twist the knife. I had assumed I would be able to gather as many of these small moments as possible during my final year, happy to see myself off with too many to carry in both hands. Instead, they glitched inside a lagging computer screen, pixelated and pining for a return to campus which never came. I feel a lockdown away from a forced removal for a number of reasons. One: leaving college means assuming a sort of adulthood I’m not particularly in the mood to fulfil. Two: leaving college means having spent just 1.5 years of my 3 year degree online, and that fact hurts a bit too much to dwell on very often. Three: I just don’t particularly want to go. In Normal Times, reason no. 3 would be reassured by knowing what was coming next, and Pandemic Times have made it impossible to even know what next month looks like. If this were Normal Times, I think I would be ready to go. I think. But as I enter the existential crisis of realising I am no longer really technically very much of a student, it has been reassuring to have this little space to write about what’s going on in my brain during the year where nothing happened. Thank you to everyone who kept up to date with our news stories, I hope it made you feel more connected to campus despite all of this distance. Thank you to Maebh, my partner-in-writing-news-when-there-is-no-news, I think we played a blinder. Thank you to Fiona, an amazing editor always very forgiving of my technical difficulties and the most fantastic person to run ideas by. We did it!Maybe I am getting ready to leave, if this was the Oscars they would already be playing the music. Yours,Maeve