Thursday 23rd July 2020. What significance does this date have? Not much to be quite honest. This was the day I received my final university results and degree classification. The culmination of 4 years of hard work and struggles. Surely a pretty significant moment in my life right?? WRONG! Despite being just a few days ago (4 days at the time of writing), I have little memory of this day. In fact it felt so insignificant that I had to look up the day/date whist writing this because I could not remember. To me it was just any other day of the week. A pretty boring morning. I remember opening an email with my results around 8.45am, seeing my result, sending a screenshot to my parents and then swiftly laying my head back down on the pillow to go back to sleep. The only miniscule sign of emotion was a split second of relief that I had got the 2:1 I needed to meet the conditions of my job offer. But this was very short-lived, lasting less than the time it took me to take the screenshot. Beyond that I felt emotionless – just a deep pit of nothing. Not even a hint of happiness or excitement or anything of the sort. Neither did I feel any disappointment or sadness. I simply felt indifferent. There was a complete disconnect between me and my results. I knew the grades were a result of work that I had submitted and spent hours and hours doing, but yet there seemed to be no emotional attachment there. I was there, the results were there too, but we didn’t know each other, we were strangers.
I thought perhaps the reality just hadn’t quite sunk in yet and that soon I would experience some sort of delayed response. After all, I had worked towards this day for 4 years – surely I should feel something!? Or perhaps the effects of COVID-19 and the disappointment of not being able to finish university in person or have a graduation ceremony, as well as the ridiculous amount of time between finishing exams and receiving results, had been so mentally draining and had exhausted all my emotions so much that there was nothing left to give when the event finally came around.
My parents soon came into my room, smiles on their faces, expressing their happiness and pride, but still I felt nothing. And here I am 4.5 days later still yet to feel any real emotion regarding my results. All I wanted was to go back to sleep (yes, sleeping is still my primary coping mechanism lol). When other people asked if I was pleased, I almost felt obliged to say yes, but in reality this was a lie. I wasn’t unhappy either. I just felt, and still do feel, so indifferent. Everyone else seems so happy for me but I still felt nothing. Nothing could have prepared me for how incredibly underwhelming the experience was.
