Dealing with Housemates

When you first head off to university, there is always the worry over who you are going to end up living with. You could end up with someone who ends up being your best friend and everything runs smoothly. With any luck, that is precisely what will happen.

Or you could end up with a bunch of people who annoy you. It is hard to know how you will handle the situation until you are there. You might think you are a bit of a slob until you realise their lack of washing up is annoying you. You might believe uni is about having no worries at all…until you realise the bins haven’t been changed and the toilet hasn’t been cleaned.

It’s really quite amazing what you can learn about yourself when you leave home.

Graduation!

Tuesday 13^th October 2015 was a special day for me. I graduated! I already knew my grades and had technically finished, but it was the day of the ceremony. Having dropped out of my first university, it was a day I didn’t think I would have the chance to experience. Or, for that matter, be able to give to my parents to experience either.

What a day it was.

Uni: First few days away

Although university terms are only just beginning, some of you might have already moved into your new accommodation. For returning students, this is a return to freedom after a summer of confinement.

For those of you starting university, moving away from home for the first time can be daunting and terrifying. I know I was extremely nervous. I am not a party-girl, I hate clubbing and I find socialising to be – quite frankly – hard. Moving into uni accommodation therefore had me extremely worried. Would I make friends? Would I be lonely? How much will I miss home?

The Waiting Game

Anyone who is doing exams at the moment – whether it is GCSE, A-Level or at university know there is still the worst part to come. The waiting game. The time spent twiddling your thumbs while you wait for results and to see if the next stage or your life is going to go according to plan depending on what you get. That is me right now. By later on this afternoon, I will have my final university grades and know what I have achieved for my degree. After that, I can start properly looking for jobs – it’s a little hard when the application wants a result and you don’t know what it is yet.

But the last few weeks waiting have been horrendous. I submitted on a Saturday morning and moved straight home on the Sunday. In a way, that helped. That week was filled with appointments and cleaning, unpacking and trying to move my life back into my home after having the time on my own. Then I was fortunate enough to have a trip away as a final uni experience, so that killed another week.

Last week, however, was hell. I am currently redoing my bedroom and in a sense that has been a saving grace – clear outs, emptying drawers, deciding on furniture has not only kept me occupied, but worn me out as well. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been enough. I am notorious for not being able to sleep when there is something on my mind and that kicked in early last week. While I was getting some rest, I was being plagued by strange dreams that left me feeling exhausted when I woke up – and I knew full well they were about the results.

So while everyone is telling you that you have done your best and there is nothing more you can do now, don’t worry. You are not alone in feeling like time has slowed down and there is something clawing in the pit of your stomach while you wait to find out how you did. I feel like my life has been put on hold while I wait for these results and it’s horrible. I’ve been trying to keep busy but while there is something working away on your mind, it’s hard to do. But it’s the only thing you can do. Throw yourself into a task that consumes every moment of your waking day so that you are keeping your thoughts about something else entirely.

Nerves differ for individuals. But by the end of the week, I was having warm baths/showers and a hot chocolate before bed so that I could at least give myself a chance to get some rest. The other positive thing was by the end of the week I had managed to write up a few posts for the blog as it kept me going – so I guess something positive came out of it.

All we can do is wait and worry. But good luck to everyone waiting for results and hope they set your life on the track you want it to go on.

Dissertation Days #2

I can’t believe how fast time has gone since I last wrote a post about how my dissertation was going.

I am pleased to say that progress is remaining steady.

Writing has always been a dream for me. The lifelong ambition so far has always been to write a novel, to actually get to the end and know I have achieved it. Alas, so far in life I have never really got that far. But now I’m using the novel as my dissertation, it actually feels like that dream could become a reality. In a way, it feels surreal that I’m working on it properly, focusing on each word at a time rather than playing around with it.

My first draft was received well considering I had the fear it would be so awful no one would want to read it. My main problem was that I was only half in the character’s head: half was me narrating from a distance and half was what he was seeing and feeling. Due to my own voice coming through too much, there was also apparently the hint of places where I was trying too hard for a good mark.

Working on my second draft put the love of writing right back where it belonged. I had so much fun getting further into my character’s head and making sure I was seeing things through his eyes. There were moments of sitting there with my head in my hands because I was trying to envision how he would react in the situation rather than how I would have him to react.

There were days where he refused to let me into his head. It meant I got barely anything written even though I was working on it for a considerable length of time. And then there were days where I just knew precisely how to have him react. Those were the days that were the most fun, the days where I felt like maybe I could write a novel after all. I hadn’t realised how much I was distancing the narration from the characters, but I was starting to see how much I was changing during this second edit.

With having such a major change to make throughout the whole piece, I’m hopeful it will mean I will have something quite constructive to talk about in my critical commentary. Anything to make life a little bit easier when it is a dissertation on the table, right?

I feel sorry for other departments. There is no denying it has been hard work and spending half an hour agonising over a paragraph is not fun. But writing this dissertation has actually made me remember what it is I want to do in life and to give me the courage to keep going with that dream. It’s making me feel that perhaps I can do this after all, as long as I keep putting the work in.

How many people can say that about their dissertations? Does anyone else have any comments on how their progress is going?