Act II

Last term was incredible. I don't know anyone here who is not of that opinion. I've already written more than enough in the past ten weeks about the brilliance of meeting new people and that it is a pleasure unequalled by any other. I spoke at the close of last term with many a friend of the difficulty returning home at Christmas presented; departing new friends and heading back to a place which was no longer home.

This term, heading back to Whitley Bay seems near inconsequential. I am much looking forward to seeing friends of old, a great deal more so than I was at Christmas. Nonetheless, it is neither saddening nor a relief to be leaving campus for five weeks. Why is that so? Well, I've given it a great deal of thought. Here comes that thought.

Act Two

That's just it. Only once before did I ever truly dive into a new setting, and that would have been at the very start of school, which failed to make any mark on my memory at all. Neither have I ever encountered so many fresh faces in such a short period as I did at the start of university. In much respect, those ten weeks was the establishing piece of this year, of my university experience, and possibly of my life as a whole. Thus, Term 1 was in all respects Act I. Conversely, this term, as I mentioned to Josh Glenn on numerous occasions, has felt very much like Act II. Very little has developed; nothing much has changed. We have, for a second time, reached the interval, and this time the anticipation for further narrative is much diminished.

The word "diminished" leads me nicely onto a second, partially detached, point.

Diminishing Returns

Viewing this term not as a second part, but as a second story, it is then a sequel and not a second act. Thus, as ever, it suffers inevitably from diminishing returns. It could never measure up to the original, or, at the very least, it would fail to stand alone. Term 2 relies on Term 1 for all of its themes and motifs, but Term 1 being a conceptualised, perfectly closed work of art — as shown by its ability to captivate the audience and render them wanting more — Term 2 would never manage to match the effect of the former.

Leaving analogues to performance art in all its forms aside, we venture for my final deliberation into the wacky world of philosophy.

Me

Douglas Adams closes the first of his undeniably fantastic Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series of books with the following gem:

The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases.

I like to think of three phases in the development of personal relationships as the You, Me, and Them stages. In the You phase, the main aim is to build rapport with the new person with whom one is building a relationship. The Me phase involves discovering how this new relationship affects oneself, or rather, finding one's own identity. The third and final stage is the most complex, and this Them stage appertains to the theorising of how any third party might view the first two parties and any interaction between them.

In very basic animals, knowledge of one's surroundings is acquired, and some basic prey may understand the existence of a predator without necessarily having any concept of self. The next level of creatures up I'd imagine includes cats, who can both reason that the bird in its vision is a living thing and that it is itself a creature capable of choices. Thus, the cat can reach the Me stage, which the ant cannot.

The human has a very strange ability yet. He is not only capable of reasoning that the creature in his vision is a conscious one, nor that he himself is thinking, but further: he can think as though he were that creature. The Them phase, then, is covered by any creature with the ability to empathise. This strange affinity for putting oneself in the shoes of another is something quite sophisticated indeed. What the hell does this have to do with trimesters? I'm glad you asked.

In Term 1, the emphasis was very much on getting to know one's surroundings, and, more precisely, the knew people in one's life. Thus, upon leaving said people who had very much been the focus of any thought, whether conscious or subconscious, the observer suffers a sudden sense of emptiness, of desolation. "Why am I leaving my whole world behind?" is possibly the thought that occurs in some shape or form of anyone vacating a brand new home for the first time.

In Term 2, I have noticed in myself and others a tendency to question one's own identity. After ten weeks of this tendency, suddenly the world is no longer about everyone else, but more about the new person whom one has become. As such, leaving this place behind no longer equates to deserting one's world. My world is where I am. Next term, according to my "You, Me, Them" theory, we may well pass into a phase of questions such as "What do they think of us?" Nonetheless, at this point in time, I'm much more concerned with knowing who I am than wondering who everyone around me is, or what they think of everyone else around me. A five week break may well change all of that, but for the moment I have no quarrel with taking a five week break.