"Keeping my options open" and nostalgia overload.

I'm just back from the DCU Open Day, which I went along to with a few friends solely because I had an Irish test toda-...I mean, I wanted to keep my options open for myself. The CAO application has been open for a few weeks now, and to be honest, I can't think about much else until I finally fill out that form. I'm fairly sure where I want to go, but it's no harm to have a look around, as my mum would say.

As previous readers know, I attended CTYI in DCU for three weeks in the summer of 2009 & 10. I loved it at the time - however I may feel now - and arriving into DCU today was a really confusing experience. Don't get me wrong, it's a lovely college, and it was much friendlier than the UCD open day - there were helpful studenty types everywhere, we were given bags of free stuff and it had a really nice atmosphere of student-ness. DCU is forever intertwined with the CTYI experience for me, and even the smallest things caused a wave of nostalgia.

For instance, the restaurant smells the same as it did, and the revolving trays for food are still in place. The Quad is still the Quad - just with a good deal more smoking. Spar is still horribly expensive and I felt nervous sitting in The Street, despite being a prospective studnet and completely allowed to. It's really weird to think that all I have to do is get 400 points and I could be living permanently in the Larkfield apratments and hanging out in the same places I did two summers ago.

Though they really are the smallest student apartments on Earth.

My problem with open days is that I'm generally too busy running around seeing my friends from outside school to really get a proper look at the place. Today was no different - Franki and I left the Communications lecture before it started and looked at make-up instead. Then I met Conor, but that's beside the point - my point is that I seem to get very little DONE at Open Days, particularly at DCU's today. It just...didn't appeal to me though! Now that I think about it, it's probably the fault of CTYI that I never considered DCU as the university for me, and today I was proved correct in thinking that going back as a student would just be too weird. As I said earlier, it's a damned cool university, just not the right one for me. The right one for me is currently way up in the air and causing quite a bit of stress, but hey, it'll be fine.

One thing I will say, though: student food? Deadly. I got curry chips, a Snack bar, soup and juice for a fiver!