One winter morning, the sun rose in a cloudless sky. Smiling upon Edinburgh, the sun pushed its rays towards a block of flats. While many of the flats’ residents would see this as the signal to wake up, for one student, the rays would give her the inspiration she needed.
Clara, stumbling out of an unpleasant dream, opened the curtains and took a moment to admire the sun. She let her mind drift like the clouds above. She’d never realised this before, but the sun never gave up. It waited for its time to shine. Even when clouds covered the sky, the sun waited, knowing its rays would be visible again soon. Then, when the sun started to leave Edinburgh for the night, it blessed the other side of the world with its light. It was persistent. And whenever things got bad one day, it would bring in the next morning with a smile. It would start again, like someone turning over a new leaf. That was what Clara needed to do.
A cloud had covered Clara’s life for the past year. It floated into her life the moment she started studying psychology at university. The subject was fascinating, and her friend was studying it too, so Clara was sure she’d love it. She didn’t understand what the tutor was talking about during her first tutorials, but hey, she’d soon learn, right?
Wrong. No matter how many times she read her notes, or listened to her tutors, nothing clicked. Terminology went over her head. She stared at pages of notes every night. Everyone else taking the course seemed to be a hundred steps ahead of her. Okay, so the subject was difficult, but Clara wouldn’t give up. She’d keep revising.
…Well, maybe she would have if she hadn’t got so distracted every time she opened her textbooks. That was probably why everyone was so far ahead of her. Never mind the subject being tough – Clara wasn’t taking the time to study it. She didn’t ask her tutors for more information either.
So, on that winter morning, Clara stared at the sun. The sun never gave up on trying to show itself to the world. Why should Clara give up? She liked university, just not the subject. As the sun stung her eyes, Clara wondered how many more evenings of crying over psychology textbooks, nights with powerful headaches, and mornings spent panicking she could handle.
A new day had come. A new beginning. A new beginning was what Clara needed. Stepping away from the window, Clara researched other subject options at university.
Hey, the university had courses on computing and programming. That was what Clara used to love doing. She’d studied computing and programming at school, and at home, spending countless hours in front of her computer. That was something she could study hard and learn more about.
That was what Clara did at university. She left her old course to turn over a new leaf. Like a caterpillar escaping its safe chrysalis to fly into a new life, Clara left her safe placement at university to start a new course. She is in her third and final year now. All thanks to the sun, which brightened Clara’s life. Maybe today, someone else will open their curtains and decide to change their life.
