My problem with...time

Not really a rant, but more a realisation that time is very odd. In a little over 6 weeks I'll be leaving Trevs for the last time. Once again, summer has raced away like it did last year. For the first time in as long as I can remember I don't know what's going to happen 2 months from now. At the moment I have no job and thus the future is very uncertain and I'm not sure I like that. From school I knew I was going to uni and then 4 years later I knew I was going to do a PhD, so this is probably the first time I've been in this situation. When I started the PhD back in 2003 I joked to people that by the end I'd be 26 and still living with my parents - now that moment is almost here (September birthdays really aren't an advantage anymore).
It feels like the world has changed so much in the last 7 years. Yesterday I put a load of old photos up onto my facebook account and seeing some of the photos from my first year brought back a lot of memories. When we arrived as freshers in 1999 Trevs was a different place: the cobbles and bar had yet to be refurbished, only about 1 in 4 people had a mobile phone (and that was mainly thanks to a Barclaycard offer of a free one) and only about 1 in 10 people had computers. College wasn't networked and the rooms weren't even carpeted and came with very old rugs (the so-called college Bungles). We had Pepsi, Fosters and Kronenberg instead of Coke, Carling and Stella and shots cost 95p. Even Durham itself has changed - Klute was the club of choice, Rixies still wasn't Rixes, but was DH1. Robbins cinema offered very small screens, mono sound and weird L-shaped rooms where Walkabout now stands.
Within a few days I was so happy with Trevs and my new friends. The first 2 terms were the most amazing time of my life as everything was so different and we were completely free to do what we wanted. Being the worrier I spent a lot of time in the 3rd term thinking how this was already the end of an era - because of the way Trevs allows finalists to live back in, there wouldn't be another time when all my friends lived in college.
I always seem to think about - and remember odd things. In 2nd year I realised that the calaendar year 2001 would start with us go from having just about got used to running a house and end with us 1/3rd of the way through our 3rd year. When you start thinking like that, 3 years really doesn't seem very long. Those of you who've now looked at my facebook photos (you'll need a durham/dunelm email address to sign up to dacebook) will notice that they stop after my 3rd year. The 4th year for me was a lost year. My life changed a lot as I had to make new friends and adapt to a different Trevs experience. The decision to stay for 3 more years was fairly easy to make, not only was I offered a place in an area that's reall interesting, but Durham has a 5* rating and I felt as though there was so much more I could accomplish here. The rest of the 4th year passed in a blur of big nights out and bar work. Walking back into Trevs in 2003 felt very odd. I had to continue making new friends and sure enough, by last summer I was really happy - even my reactions at work were working. I could see a fairly good short and even medium term future. This really would have been the perfect time to leave - on a high. This year I've struggled and I'm actually glad to be leaving now. Of course, once I get home I'll probably still expect to come back up to Durham, but that won't be happening.
PhD funding seems to be increasing to 4 years now which is insane. When I started I was under the impression that I'd make some really important discoveries. Of course, that hasn't happened - with a PhD, supervisors are getting cheap labour and we are getting further training. And at the end of the day, it really is just that: training. By extending a PhD to 4 years and then allowing a further year to write up we're getting on for half a decade! For those that choose to stay in college, that's 8 years! Those people who are only here for 3 years might as well not have been here.
Whenever I see friends who've left and got "real" jobs, they always say that they couldn't imagine going back to being a student. Well, at the moment I can't imagine not being a student.