The shutters are closed and the eyes are drooping. The warm wash of lethargy brings you closer to sleep with each passing wave…
Aka: I’m exhausted.
The last few weeks have been a complete change for me. But at the time of writing this post, I am sitting on my bed, bundled up in pyjamas and fluffy socks, recovering from my first full stint at work.Read More »
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.Read More »
I am the type of person who likes to be organised. When it comes to blogging, I have everything planned and scheduled out. I then have a shock if I don’t have posts ready. I feel out of control and stressed if things aren’t where they should be when I need them to be.
Luckily with my job, I am not yet at a stage where I need to worry about these sorts of things. As long as I know I’ve worked hard through the day, it’s fine. But at university, it was a different story. I had two massive deadlines a year so had to make sure that multiple projects were all being worked on at a steady rate to ensure the best marks I could. On top of a part-time job and just general life, this meant being organised.
So how do I deal with deadlines?
Tuesday 13th 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.
Four years ago, I dropped out from university. It took a long time before I could even think positively about my future. Until finally, I decided that I wanted to go back and try again. Only this time, it was to do a course that followed my dreams and passions rather than one I thought was expected of me.
Last Saturday, I submitted all of my final work and can now say I have made it to the end. Despite everything life has thrown at me, I have finally made it to finishing university. Deciding to go back was the best decision I could have ever made.
The first time around, I let myself be swept up in the pressure: school, parents (although they’ve been nothing but supportive). I never stopped to think about what I wanted. To say the results weren’t pretty was an understatement. Even last summer I was fighting serious lows that I couldn’t shake off. It changed everything I thought about myself and I had no self-belief or even the slightest shred of confidence.
A few hours after submitting everything, the impact of what I had just done hit me. The confidence surge I received from that and my general desire to go out and show the world (and myself) that they had been wrong about me was almost overwhelming. I have never felt so determined in my life, so adamant for the first time in a while that I was going to make my dreams come true, no matter what.
So now I am back at home again, surrounded by boxes that have been my university life for the last three years and trying to work out where I’m going to find space for all of these things. It does feel strange that I won’t be packing up in September to go back for a new term. But at the same time, I feel ready. I feel like it’s time to discover precisely who it is I have become over the last three years and make the most of it. Between housing and health issues – as well as deciding to go back – I know it’s someone who will stubbornly refuse to give up.
The reason for writing this post today was that I wanted to say one thing: follow your dreams. It’s getting to the time of year where people might be thinking about their future as school/college/university comes to an end. It’s scary – I know I’m partly terrified of what is next. But we’ve made it this far and can handle anything else that might be thrown our way. For me personally, it’s about embracing what I can do for a change and stop focusing on the things I can’t. Easier said than done, I know.
But I’ve made it this far despite never thinking I will. So now it’s time to see how far I can get now I have the chance. I hope you do too – believe in yourself a little and it’s incredible what you can do.
This is the final one of these. By the end of today, it will have been submitted. That is a terrifying thought. But I am also really excited to finally hit submit and know that is something out of the way. I have no idea what sort of mark I am working at, but I do know I feel like it is the best thing I have written in regards to a creative piece and that alone is enough to make me smile.
Over the last month, it has been a lot of tweaks. Odd words here and there. A sentence changed for more impact. I had to try and get more description present, but through the eyes of my protagonist – it had to be things that he would notice. It was not easy, and there were many occasions where I sat with my head in my hands literally trying to visualise what it was I thought he would see.
Breaking away from it for a few days before returning to read has been an interesting experience. I thought I had checked through it closely before, then only on the last reading I found four “needs” in two sentences. Stopping thinking about it can really then clear your mind when you come back to it. I just hope today’s checks throw up any other problems that might have slipped under the net and remained invisible up until now.
Some of the fun has been lost recently while working on the critical essay. However, a lot of it is about the progress, albeit disguised under different headings. It’s been interesting to write because it’s forced me to consider some of the obstacles that I’ve been up against and what I have done to overcome them. The fact that I’m writing the essay proves that I have overcome them, and that in itself is a great feeling. There were a few issues with the essay lacking focus, but I shouldn’t have been surprised by that. My first drafts are often unfocused while I’m working out what it is I’m trying to say.
Although I have had great fun working on this, now it comes down to it, I’m worried. Creative writing is so hard to score a higher mark on – I’ve always done better on the essays. And this mark counts twice. Needless to say, it’s nerve-racking to think that this could determine what grade I graduate with. Today is going to be full of checks to make sure I haven’t done anything stupid in it that could cost me marks. Other than that, I think it is just a matter of knowing I have worked hard at it and – as my mother would say – done the best I could. With handing this in, it certainly makes it feel like university is coming to an end – by this time in two weeks, it will all be over which is definitely a scary thought.
Right, back to work for me then…Let’s get this submitted!
A Rambling Reviewer 