Memories that awaken old dreams

I read a review of one of Ursula LeGuin's books and it threw me straight back to Nottingham and my days as a student. It seems so long ago now. It's over a year ago since I handed in my masters dissertation. In my third year of uni I took a class called The Politics of Science Fiction. In that class we read Lathe of Heaven, by LeGuin. She's a brilliant author. I decided to open a folder on my computer which I have barely looked at for over a year. The folder labelled 'uni'. And for some reason I started opening my old essays and reading them. And I am truelly in awe. I can't believe I used to write things like that. I can't believe that that was my daily life. Reading articles. Formulating thoughts. Writing essays. It's seems so far removed from what I do today. If you had asked me then how my life would look like a a year and a couple of months after student life finished, my vision wouldn't have been anywhere close to reality. That sounded bitter. I'm not. At least not usually. It's just different. Very different.

I mean. I used to write sentences like this: "In pursuing this I will take on a Marxist approach and look heavily at the expansion of markets and the effects this had on the masses within different populations." Who writes like that? I used to. And I loved it. It makes me want to take up that old dream (okay, not that old) of doing a PhD. How cool and painful and amazing wouldn't that be? Only problem is I think I'm more likely winning the lottery than getting a PhD place in Sweden. The other option is to do it in the UK. But that would kind of defeat the whole purpose of moving back to Sweden. And besides, I have no money what so ever. Let alone money to finance five years of higher education. But oh wouldn't it be wonderful? I think it would. Maybe I should start working on that proposal again? Couldn't hurt.