Neuron: Your Own

I went to Edinburgh's AGM today, the democratic system in the Uni that, depresssingly, 99% of students excercise their democratic right not to go to. Blogging, voting, giving your opinion in a World this full of people can be like being a red blood cell telling the circulation system how to work: things tend to ignore you, and flow on by at dizzying speeds. I think this might be too cynical though, or hope, anyway. I still believe, perhaps because I'm still eighteen years old and there's only so much cynicism my glands can produce, that a more appropriate analogy from Biology for any of our positions would be that of a neuron, a little interconnected cell that lives in the Brain. One neuron telling a person to scream won't succeed, but if it nudges those beside it with chemicals in a way science still doesn't quite understand, and everything else understands even less, slowly they'll start signalling to other neurons, the whole process building and building and multiplying, until suddenly the woman they all inhabit screams for her life in the middle of a conference about scissors, and has to retire in a fit of shame, you stupid neuron, you. If you're in the right place, at the right time. And aren't a hopeless wuss like me. I still believe that, because I still need to hope.

I worry I'm not outspoken enough, and then speak up and accidently offend everyone, and worry about being outspoken. When you have views that aren't offensive if expressed right that have the small snag of being impossible to express, and passionately believe in things people don't understand very well, or believe it's impossible to be passionate about. I'm worried that, over halfway through First Year (that's an eighth of my time as a student!!! Not counting Masters and possibly pHDing!!!) all I seem to have achieved is annoying a corridorsworth of innocent people, mistaking a blazer for passable ball dress, and designing a poster which attracted precicely one person to the advertised event, the fact that it was the most attractive person on my course and indeed Planet notwithstanding. Meanwhile there are all these people debating concepts I can't pronounce, editing newspapers, being mindlessly attractive. I'm worried I'm going to look back on my Student years and remember them. I'm worried I'm going to have about as much impact on anything as One True Voice. You don't even remember who they are.

But the motions I wanted to passed, and the one I really didn't want to pass folded despite overwhelming support from people who weren't me. Yaying and booing on the sidelines isn't much, but perhaps it's enough, for now, before I have the energy to do things and the schedule to fit them into around the endless work. Things change, and change in ways I certainly don't understand, and sometimes you hope you were a part of them, and sometimes you know you were, and have to hide the poison darts. I hope you reading this change the World. Trapping Boris Johnston in a cage, naked, over a field of angry Liverpudlians armed with feathers would be a start. But more on him later.