Six Years, One Degree, Worthwhile.

It’s Thursday 20^th August 2009. I think it’s 06.00. Maybe it’s 06.30. I want to say it’s dark, but perhaps my curtains were closed, it is a late summer morning after all. Whichever it is, I’m awake for the same reason as thousands of other eighteen (or thereabout) year-olds in England. It is A-Levels results day. I’m awake in my mum’s house or, back then, home. I’ve long-decided that I’ll be logging into UCAS on results day morning, rather than waiting until 10 or 11am to go into school and receive my results. Though UCAS will not display results, it can tell me one of three things:

A)    Unconditional offer at my first choice university

B)   Unconditional offer at my second choice university

C)    Clearing

I am expecting a confirmation of option A, and that I’ll be going to Queen Mary University of London to study Law, straight As the requirement. At worst, I expect option B, to study the same course at Kent with a requirement of ABB. I log in to UCAS. It is incredibly slow, but I’ve been warned it will by those who have gone before me. One of the thousands attempting to access a system that is probably poorly equipped to deal with this once-a-year surge of users attempting to access their servers all at the same time.

I’m in. The page has loaded. The status of my university application has changed. Clearing.

I Lost My Phone (Again) On New Year's Eve.

It's around the hours of seven or eight a.m. on New Year's Day. I've just stepped in from Webster Hall on what is the best New Year's Eve of my life. I'm drunk, but not that drunk. Very much functional, having stopped drinking around 2 a.m. But I've made it home. Well, not home, I'm in New York. And not even my New York home, our beloved Meserole Street that was home for ten days. I'm actually at my friend's house in Staten Island, NYC. Because for some reason, it seemed wiser to do that. Drunken logic was that it was sensibler to head home with friends who lived much further than make my way home alone on what would have been a fifteen minute journey on the subway, and probably around the same length by taxi. Why would I have been alone? Well, we were playing a game of last man stranded and I'd vowed not to leave the club 'til at least 6 a.m. (the night was going on 'til midday). It wouldn't have been my first time drunk and alone in a foreign country. It wouldn't even be my first time drunk and alone in New York. And I'd been just fine all those times. Alas, my decision was made.

As I entered my friend's, I was feeling proud. I hadn't been arrested for being drunk and disorderly in New York City at a time where black men were moving targets for the police, combined with being on a night where every bar had open bar (and when they say open bar in New York... They really do mean open bar. Any drink you want).

Cardholder, check. 
Money (do I even know how much I'm supposed to have on me?!), check.
Passport, fuc-, oh wait, I put it in friend's bag because I didn't trust myself to not potentially lose it whilst drunk. 
Mobile phone, fuck.

I've done it again. Day six/seven and I've lost my flipping mobile phone.