De balans opmaken

The past year in uni in numbers:

-    3.2 kilo's of Hagelslag
-     18 pizza's
-     63 tutorials
-   160 lectures
-     14 pub dinners
-       5 Ceilidhs danced
-       9 novels read
-       5 essay's written
- 3000 words written in assignments
-     21 practicals
-     63 hours spent staring down a microscope 
-     16 Sunday Dinners cooked
-       3 moves
-     54 hours worked in the lab
-     17 different professors
-     12 Philsoc discussion nights
-     13 Swims
- 8749 puns made

Say yes to the dress

When I was little I had this blue and white dress that my mother absolutely loved. Sadly for her, I wasn't a girly girl, and I didn't wear it often. She sometimes tried to convince me to put it on, until one day on a vacation in Sweden, she offered me an ice cream if I wore it for one hour. No child could refuse such an offer, so I donned the dress and we went to get me my cornetto. Then I went into our caravan and played patiently with my K'Nex until the hour had passed. That was when my mother decided she was not going to push me to wear dresses or skirts anymore. 

Fast forward half a decade to my high school's Christmas gala (ball/dance). I had actually been asked by a guy, so I felt I couldn't show up in jeans and a tshirt. My mother lovingly gave me a beautful red and black dress of hers and we even had it altered by a friend. I spent the night of the dance feeling incredbly awkward, only comforted by the fretting of the boys in their grown-up suits and ties (although many cheated and wore jeans and sneakers under their jacket).  

By now I have worn dresses on several occasions. Two Christmas dinners with friends, two scouting end-of-year parties, and Christmas at my grandmother's (I'm sensing a theme here..) and a wedding have proven that I am capable of spending a considerable amount of time around people without wearing trousers. And yet, when I took out the tartan skirt I was planning to wear to a ceilidh yesterday, I was nervous. The girl staring back at me from the mirror looked smart enough, but she didn't look at all like me. Friends spoke encouraging words and I even asked my mom whether the colours I picked went together well. And yet, it was that one guy who simply told me I wasn't brave enough to wear a skirt in public who caused a moment of stubborness that lasted just long enough to put on my jacket and get out the door. On my way to meet my friends I considered several times to turn back, grab some trousers. At the ceilidh what I struggled most with was sitting in a ladylike manner so as to not reveal that I'd accidentally put my panthyhose on backwards. But as soon as the band started playing, I completely forgot everything. And because I am not enough of a girl to shrink away from being pragmatic at the cost of looking pretty, I was nice and warm in my rainproof trousers on the way back while the real dames chattered their teeth :)



(Sadly, due to the photographers' curse, the night I danced a ceilidh in a skirt will go down in history undocumented..)