Seven weeks, forty nine days, one thousand one hundred and seventy six hours. That’s how long it is until I graduate and step out into the real world. Since you’re born there’s always been a “next step,” you start off in preschool and after preschool, you go into primary school and after primary school, you go into secondary and after secondary, you go to college or a PLC and after that…. well I’m not sure. 

Okay so the obvious answer is “get a job” and in fact, I’ve been told there’s an Applegreen opening right beside my house in Dundalk and they're looking for staff for the Burger King at the end of May. How unambitious and boring is that though? Working a minimum wage job right beside my house straight after college, I’m nearly sure that’s the plot of a 1970s film starring John Voight.

Speaking of John Voight, the film Midnight Cowboy springs to mind. A small town man quits his job as a dishwasher and moves to New York City to pursue his dreams, which kind of resonates with me. Well, not so much the part where he aspires to be a prostitute but more so the fact of quitting the boring job and moving to the big city to be what I want. I know for a fact that filmmaking/photography is what I want to do for a career but unfortunately, neither of those occupations are something you can just walk into, you have to work your way up.

So, if I must work my way up that means I must start somewhere. The most sensible option is to work some kind of media job in Dublin while practising my passion on the side until it becomes my career. That may sound easier said than done but it’s not as complex and as ambitious as becoming an astronaut. Yet the delve into the real world and employment is not the hardest part of the next seven weeks. Leaving DCU is.

I wanted to do film & broadcasting in DIT and it was proudly down as my first choice on my CAO application. One quick Bruh moment later I realised I would in fact NOT being going to DIT nor was I even close. I was going to DCU, a college I was so disinterested in that I didn’t even go to the open day. Despite this initial disappointment, I have come to accept that going to DCU has been one of the greatest opportunities of my life. The reasons I am so satisfied (and also dismayed) about my time in DCU, are all the people I’ve met and things I’ve achieved. One of those things is, of course, the Media Production Society.

I distinctly remember running for first-year rep for the society, I mean it was right up my alley. Particularly the TV end of the society. I didn’t get first-year rep but over the course of three years I ended up being on the committee and alongside one Aoife Brady, organised the DCUtv 24 Hour Broadcast raising over €12,000 for Sonas. This is almost certainly the pinnacle of my college life and perhaps all of my life. Not only because of the event’s success and the money we raised but also because of everyone involved. I’m not sure of the exact number but there were roughly over 100 people who were involved that went through stress, worry, tiredness, hunger and delirium for the benefit of the charity.

This feeling of pride came at me very fast when this year’s presenters, Ruarí Flynn, Sarah McGuinness, Lara Walsh Fagherazzi and Anna O’Reilly signed off just before the feed ended at the 24th hour. Soon everyone who had been working on this since December came into the studio to celebrate and I cried my eyes out. I was so overwhelmed by how many people I had come to know in this brief three years and how much they all meant to me. All these individual people who whenever I walk from Shanowen to campus will always stop and engage in conversation. The same people that turned my college experience from going to lectures and going home to a whole new experience. The people who I’ve taken a pre bus piss with, the people I’ve gone for “just one can” with, the people who cheered me on when I was in a boxing ring, the people who have talked to me when I needed it, the people who I’ve gone to Belfast, Berlin, Copenhagen and Budapest with. The fellas, the mellas, the queens and the Bossmen.  Some of you I know since the start, some barely half a year but I truly love some of you like a sister/brother and that means a lot coming from an only child. These people are what I’ll miss the most when I graduate. I’m saying this as if I’ll never see any of you again but as life comes at us, we could be on opposite sides of the world or maybe just down the road, you never know.

To put it into simpler terms: I am shitting myself to graduate but I am thankful for everyone who I have met in my short time year.

You know who you are.