£1,285.
The cost of the first year of the HND course for Creative Industries: Television at Aberdeen college.
And the cost of my first taster of what I'm aspiring to do for my career.
For that amount of money, I could buy a Fender stratocaster. I could afford a used ford focus. I could do several incredible things, like go on a trip to Africa to help lion conservation groups, or donate the lot to charity to make a serious impact on someone's life...
But instead, I'm choosing to spend it on an education for a course that I'm in no way guaranteed a job at the end of. Which is a tough fact for me to hear, but I feel as though I need to remind myself of it every once in a while.
What's brought this post on? I got my letter of funding in from SAAS a week or so ago. SAAS is the agency that provides students in Scotland with money to pay for their higher education. Seeing how much my education really costs, written down on a piece of paper like that? It got me thinking. Mostly about the future. And also how fortunate I am.
Some little kids in other countries can barely afford to pay for primary education, and here I am, going to college to sit an HND, and hopefully on to do a degree in media following that. It just doesn't seem fair, that they get so little, and that I get so much, when something as trivial as geography could have ensured that we were both in the same boat.
I don't know... that just doesn't seem fair to me.
I've been thinking about the future quite a lot recently (I've had a crazy amount of time to do so as well... jobless insomniac FTW), and I'm having extreme difficulty seeing myself in ten years time. I could be a director, or a writer, or a producer by that time. I could be a wife, or a lover, or even a mother by that time. How can we cross anything out? Ten years ago, I was this naive little kid who thought S Club 7 were the best band ever and that the place she lived in was the most beautiful place in the whole damn world. Ten years from now, who knows what will have changed about me... about the world? We could be driving around floating cars and I could be a completely heartless bitch. You just never know.
With my £1,285 education, I'm going to push myself to my limits. I'm going to create videos that make people emote: whether that emotions are sadness or joy, we can only guess. I'm going to meet new people and we're going to make a mark on each-others lives. I'm going learn new skills that are going to stay with me for a lifetime...
And, most importantly, I'm going make sure I enjoy every single minute of it, because to do anything else would be a slap in the face to all those less fortunate than I.
Lauren xxx
