Beware the ides of March…..

I love it when I hear people say “yeah no”. Perhaps the most versatile contradiction in the English language, it can be used to communicate a) “Yes I appreciate your concern but no it has never happened to me”, b) “Yes I can hear you talking but no I think you’re a fool”, c) A sub intelligent and confusing contraction of “Yes I know” or d) when “Yes” is simply a reflex response and the correct response is in fact “No”. However having been a new generation arts student for all of five days now, I find myself using “yeah no” exponentially more frequently. It has become my retort of choice to any question regarding the purchase of books, alloc8, tutorials and pre-readings for lectures; essentially everything I am still struggling to get my head around.

The more observant reader will have undoubtedly deduced that I am encountering severe writer’s block, a state of consciousness only worsened by Cold Chisel’s ‘Breakfast at Sweetheart’s’ playing in the background. I would love to write a thesis on the wild experiences of o-week – college of course; however I feel there are few lessons to be learned from an elaborate recount of inventive ice-breakers, loud chants and extensive pub crawls (maybe another time). I am far too overwhelmed with concern about my studies; for I feel the deeper I delve into my subjects, the more I realise just how little I know. After only five days I have learnt that the French language is far more elaborate than the high school curriculum suggests it may be. After only five days I have learnt that not everyone in Spain speaks Spanish. And it only took one microeconomics lecture to discover that caffeine simply prolongs the inevitable.

I cannot help but wonder how long it will take before I truly fulfil Socrates’ philosophy “All I know is that I know nothing”.