By Tom Molloy.
Welcome to the seventh edition of my Final Year Diary, and the first of 2021. I’ve got so much to talk about so bear with me.
I hope you all had a wonderful and peaceful Christmas. It wasn’t your usual Christmas, but I hope you managed to spend it with the people you wanted as much as that was possible. From a personal point of view, I ventured back home to Athenry on Christmas Eve for a cameo appearance at my family Christmas before making my way back to Limerick on Stephen’s Day. Despite these unprecedented times, the common Christmas tropes were still present. Plenty of mince pies were eaten and plenty of cans of Guinness were drank.
It’s comforting to know we are now in a post-Trump world. That was four years straight out of bad political B-movie which would result in reviews bemoaning the lack of realism. I was going to say that Trump can save his whinging for Twitter, but he’s been kicked off that too. They could make a new series of The Apprentice, but I think that Trump has burned all of his bridges with actual reality at this stage, never mind reality TV.
Just after the new year, Saoirse and I moved into our new house and we couldn’t be happier. The move also coincided with her starting her internship at the Limerick Leader, so she’s delighted to have her space to work. We’re enjoying adding our little touches to make it feel like ours and it’s so comforting knowing that this is our home until the end of the summer and having all this space to ourselves will really help us with work and college.
In other news, I completed my application for my master’s degree this week which is very exciting. If it’s successful, I’ll be spending another two years in NUIG and hopefully we’ll be back on campus when I start.
We shouldn’t get our hopes up too much when it comes to life returning to normal this summer, however. We’ve been here before and we were disappointed before. The alarming rise in cases over Christmas was nothing short of shocking and really brought the severity of this pandemic back the forefronts of our thoughts.
So, as always, thanks for taking the time to read my thoughts. I wish you all the best for the second semester and hope you stay safe. Talk soon.
