Postera Crescam Laude

So, this semester is over. I am seven eighths of the way through my uni career.
Holy Fuck.
This is the eleventh hour, people.

I just had my final exam of the semester, First Language Acquisition, and this means I am now finished with both FLA and Old English, topics I have been studying, on and off, since first semester of my first year. I may, emphasis on may, resume studying FLA later in life, but I see no reprisal for OE. I have never been wild about historical linguistics, which is a shame as they're something of an Edinburgh speciality, and this course just confirmed for me that I don't have the patience or dedication needed to really make a good job of comprehending ye olde languages, much like babysitting Sam confirmed that I should never have children. I'm just too selfish to be a parent or a philologist, which are pretty much the only things that humans are put on earth to be.

I jest, but my future is ever present in my mind at the moment. I really don't know where I'm going to be or what I'll be doing there in six months' time, let alone a year's and I think that that's what's really terrifying: until now, the stages of my life has been measured in spools: Australia took a year, pre-honours took two, secondary school took five, etc. But now? What I start doing when I finish in May could easily be what I do for the rest of my life. I highly doubt it will be, but then again my father has worked at the same company for forty years, ever since he left uni. My mother has been doing more or less the same job- teaching languages- for the same amount of time, although in different capacities and, I think quite impressively, an array of different languages.
I don't know what I want to do with my life, or, I do, but it seems very unlikely: I want to be a professional writer, for both stage or screen, with the occasional best-selling, Pulitzer winning novel thrown in just to establish my intelligentsia cred.
I want to win an Oscar.
And this will almost certainly never occur.
I've always been slightly ashamed of this dream, probably because it's unfeasible, but also because it has a faint odour of the Britain's-Got-Talent-X-Factor-Make-Me-Famous-Now desperation about it. But I'm not Salieri, or Mozart really if we're taking from the same historically dubious source, I don't want to "blaze like a comet", I just wanna do something I enjoy and get money for it. I don't feel that's an uncommon or particularly embarrassing ambition; surely that's normal. And, actually, being a screenwriter is in no way an efficient way to achieve fame, even if you're good. To prove my point: tell me who wrote Argo, this year's recipient of the Best Adapted Screenplay Academy Award. Hell, name an Oscar-winning screen writer who isn't Woody Allen. See what I mean? (By the bye, twenty demerits if you didn't even know Allen had an Oscar.)
I like to think I'm a good writer, but the first few scripts I produced were very poorly received. And I can see why, looking back. Sweet Gay Baby Jesus was juvenile, unfunny and had an absolutely awful ending; Man Up and Shoot Me in the Skull (on which Rob and Roberta is based) was uneven with horrendous pacing issues; A Million Ways was two incredibly unlikable characters discussing their self-confessedly boring lives with occasional outbursts of Rik Hart which, admittedly, do make everything better; Cheer Up Frowny Face (you may also notice that I had an issue with titles) was, as The Student quite rightly pointed out, 'boring and middleclass'. I should point out here that I am not fishing for compliments: I like to think I've improved a lot, but to believe that I have to admit I was pretty terrible.
I have no idea how Rob and Roberta will be received: as previously mentioned, the cast are all fantastic, but I don't know if the underlying skeleton- i.e. the dialogue and ideas contained within the play- are worthy of them. I think it went down well in Melbourne- certainly, only good comments were passed on to me, but then these were always coming from a secondary source- I wasn't there myself to verify.
Only time will tell. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and Occupied were both very well received, but that's still two to one in favour of me being terrible (I'm not counting Aladdin or either of the two twenty four hour plays, because I simply have no info to go on re: their reception).
So, am I really any better than the really awful terrible contestants on aforementioned "talent" TV shows? You know, the ones who you really feel should know they're terrible. The ones who are so struck with the idea of celebrity that they ignore the very pressing reality that they're just singularly laughable.
I don't want to be like that. I don't want to be delusional and obnoxious and just generally pitiable, striving for a goal that is blatantly, patently unattainable and just pining for something that will never be. But I also want to give my dreams a chance, because the unseen counterside to this self-deprecating waffle, the only reason I'm even brave enough to admit that I have these dreams to people at all, is that there is a more confident side which tells me that I could make it. That I am good enough. And certainly, I don't wanna reach the end of my life and realise that I never even tried to do this thing that I really want more than anything, at least for now.
Part of the motivation behind this wall-o-text is that Laurie, star of Rob and Roberta, is applying for a scriptwriting course next year and I'm insanely jealous. Frances, my little fresher who I weaned and nurtured, has just been accepted onto a media production course for next year with an eye to screenwriting. Rosie Curtis, who I started out at uni with, is already working for a theatre in London. I so want to join them in their pursuit of this goal, but I promised, quite wisely, I feel, that I wouldn't rush into post-grad or anything like that. And I've already borrowed a large amount of money from my parents to do the TEFL course, and I should really deploy that in some capacity, at least for a while.
This is, of course, a very bourgeois dilemna that does not matter on a global, national or even local scale- it's entirely personal. It can also be left for a little while, as I should really focus on trying to get a halfway decent degree and, besides, almost no artist I respect started out doing the thing for which they later gained credit (the English translation of this post's title is 'Later I shall grow by praise' and is the motto of the University of Melbourne) started out their careers doing that thing. So maybe I can afford to take some time to do other things and see if this is still what I really want in a couple of years' time: just because my parents stuck to one thing all their lives, it doesn't mean I have to. I have to remind myself that uni ending is the blossoming of possibilities, not the death of opportunities for creativity.