And so it has ended.

Alright kiddos, if we're going to do this lets do it right. I'm going to do this end of year thing, but its not going to be about my work. If you're interested, my work is going alright. I feel like I've improved and the teaching methods used on this course suit me pretty well. I feel like I've progressed a lot not only in my artistic skill but I also think I know what I want to do with myself after uni, so that's a pretty big deal I guess. But there has been so much more to this year than the game art course (which, again, has been fantastic). A lot has changed since I first came here, not only in my life but within me as a person. A awful lot has changed, in fact.

My dad's best friends are people he met at university, and so are mine. He always said this was because until university, you're discovering yourself. You're identifying who you are and more than anything you're developing. As your school friends grow and change, you will lose sight of the people you once knew. Maybe it takes some people a very long time to truly discover who they are, and I'm not for a minute suggesting that I'm done yet, but I think its started. Above all else, this is thanks to the people I have met since coming here. There are people here that I will never let go, not in memory or in communication. People who will be part of my life till the day I die, and that isn't something I take lightly. These are people who have affirmed their importance in my life faster than anyone I've ever known, and as I said, in the space of a year I have found lifelong friends. Earlier in 2013, I was in a bad way, and these people stood by me when everything else ebbed away. I came away from this confused and still trying to work out what this means for me as a person, but alongside all that confusion was a certainty. That these people I had found were still here. And that they certainly would be here tomorrow. They were and still are my salvation, and for that I am eternally grateful.

Its not only my fellow first years that have come to be my friends. It is with a strange mixture of happiness and sorrow that I say that many third-years have come to mean a lot to me, too. One of the single most fantastic things about this course is the relationship that we first years have with our third years, and the wealth of knowledge they share with us every day. They are our gurus and our inspiration; but beyond that, they are our friends. I wish them well on their journey into the wide world, and I'm sure I'll see them again soon.

To think that a year ago today, I knew nothing but their names, and had no idea how much they would come to mean to me, or the development that this place would bring out of me. It is a defining place in my life, just as this is a defining time. Sure, Leicester isn't the prettiest city in the world, nor the cleanest. But here some of the most important people in my life have been brought together and this is where they are. Over the next two years I have no doubt that these bonds will grow ever stronger, and form the kinds of ties that cannot be broken when we inevitably part ways once again.