The end of an era...

After three years, hundreds of thousands of words and more deadlines than I care to remember, that’s it. I have finished my degree.

Yesterday I submitted my dissertation; my very last piece of University work. Printed, bound and proof-read a ridiculous number of times, I popped it in the box and said goodbye to three years of Undergraduate study.

It’s a surreal feeling; there’s a mixture of excitement, pride, terror, nerves, relief and then pure happiness as friends congratulate you with the news that now you’re free! It’s almost as if Uni had us tied down in chains for the last few years…

But it does feel like a huge weight has been lifted. The deadlines are over, the stress has gone and there’s just a wait now to find out whether the hours spent in the library will pay off. In the meantime though, the fun can begin - I’ve begun to notice that University pretty much starts with a party, and ends with one too…

Heads or Tails.

I’ve spent two hours folding clothes into the smallest shape possible, calculating how much make up it’s possible to wear in 2 weeks, and prioritising work by how light the book is... it can only mean one thing. It’s the end of term.

Every time it’s the same :
- you pack light, and still have a heavy bag.

- you give everyone the biggest hug goodbye, and then remember it’ll only be a few weeks until you’re reunited.
- you excitedly get on the train home, anticipating the overjoyed welcome you always exaggerate in your mind, only to spend the journey terrified that your bag on the overhead shelf will fall on that small lady with her head stuck in a book. What a shock that would be...

But this time, it’s different.

This time, it’s the last time.
Reminiscing with friends this week about our very first day at University and the nerves involved with moving into halls, we all realised something. That feels like ages ago. And it is.

Next time I pack to go home, I’ll have finished University. I’ll be leaving...

Excuse me while I take a quick break to run around the house in a state of panic...

Regaining some composure, let’s have a look at the main issue here. As a final year Undergraduate, thoughts inevitably split between current study, as essays come out of your ears, and future plans. What am I going to do with my LIFE? I hear my friends moan. How do I pick a CAREER? HOW do I pay this loan off? and... it’s so UNFAIR we have to decide our future path at the horrifically young age of 21... That’s my personal favourite.  

Despite some insistence that student debt isn’t ‘real’ debt, students facing graduation feel the intense pressure of picking a career or gaining an internship and ultimately earning some money.

First arises the decision about living arrangements. Every student is terrified of going home. Although it’s a financially viable option, allowing you to eat proper food (rather than cereal for dinner), it can also be seen as a step back as you wave goodbye to the independence of living with friends and settle into the family hierarchy as if you never left.

Then there’s the choice of further study, an internship, or a direct job application. With the first two, there’s a further issue of income because, quite frankly, it’s unlikely you’ll have one. Facing the bank of Mum and Dad versus ANOTHER loan, further study is quite scary.

But regardless of these concerns, think about the real problem here. Every step is a risk. Moving back home is risky - what if you get stuck living with your parents for longer than expected? Living independently is risky - how are you going to afford it without the many loans and bursaries you’ve previously been used to? Further study is a risk - it’s another year between you and a career and another drain on the bank balance, but it could land you in that dream job. Applying for a career straight away is also a risk - you might hate it. Or you might rise up the career ladder and love it...

The way I see it, it’s all a big, fat risk. But surely at our age, now is the time to face it. The student loan will get paid back eventually, the job will eventually be landed, the dream flat will eventually be rented... it will just take time. So why not do what you want to do now, and chase the dream you have even if you do think it’s unattainable. If it doesn’t work out, you still have the rest of your life to change career and reconsider your options. So stop panicking and just go out there and do it. And if you don’t know what to do, it’s not the end of the world - you’re young enough to still have time to work this out. Remember the wise old words of Baz Luhrmann - some of the most interesting 40 year olds still don’t know what to do.

So yes Graduation is terrifying...it’s the end of an era. But it should also be stupidly exciting as it’s the start of another one, even if you haven’t planned everything about it yet.

With that thought, I’m off to flip a coin to decide my future now. Oh don’t judge...everyone knows no-one can take their own advice...

The Scrooge Epidemic

Is it me or has no-one felt particularly festive this year? The majority of people I’ve spoken to have told me how this year, they’ve felt less Christmassy than ever before. WHY?!

True I was one of these depressingly unexcited people…up until 9pm Christmas Eve when it finally sunk in…

Was it the weather? Rain does make everyone’s moods worse its true, and it’s hardly very festive. Is it the financial climate? No one has been particularly looking forward to the expense of Christmas, this year more than ever! Or is it simply because we’re all that one year older?

But that’s the thing isn't it? When you’re a kid, Christmas is all about the anticipation of Santa coming, presents to play with and too much chocolate to nibble on. When you get older, the realisation that Christmas is an expensive, stressful, bloated time of year finally sinks in. But actually, I beg to differ. I refuse to turn into a modern day Ebenezer Scrooge so here’s 3 lessons to remember about Christmas:

1)      The most successful present I gave this year was a sentimental one.
Lesson: You don’t need to spend half your inheritance to make people happy.

2)      Things usually work out even when you do forget to seal the envelopes down, or the Sellotape doesn't stick properly or the turkey gets freezer burn.
 Lesson: There’s no point in getting stressed about things you can’t change – especially when they often can resolve themselves.

3)      Just because there is a temptation to buy everything in the festive aisle of the supermarket doesn't actually mean you have to eat it all within 24 hours. Unless you’re going for a ‘Man VS Food’ style Christmas…
Lesson: You don’t need to be bloated every year on the 25^th December and declare, rather angrily, by 8pm that you will never, never be eating again.

Finally, let me remind all you Scrooges out there that, yes, it’s unlikely you are feeling particularly festive on a wet winters day when you still have wrapping to do. But that doesn't mean that Christmas can’t be something to look forward to. Take it with a pinch of salt; it is only one day after all. So remember the words of a great man, Mr Charles Dickens, and think of the true spirit of Christmas.

Now go and eat a mince pie and cheer the hell up – you’re giving Scrooge a run for his money…  

21: An 'adult' at last...

So it's happened. I've reached another major birthday and have thus worked my way through the age restrictions of youth. Now, the only thing I can't do due to age is get a pension. Or a bus pass. Oh the travesty!

Yes that's it folks - I've reached the grand age of 21.

AKA - OLD.

That's what people keep saying to me. Is 21 really old? Is it though? What does that make fifty year olds? Ancient?? Let's put this into perspective for a minute - 21 is just over two centuries. For me, a '91 December baby, it's seven thousand, six hundred and seventy days. Oh.

Alright forget the maths - it doesn't matter because it's not how old you are, it's how you are old... (good ol' Gavin and Stacey!).

Besides, I can honestly say that as people get older and reach that 'age of maturity', it's (ironically) quite unlikely that they will mature. Of course, you gain a sense of wisdom, experience and common sense, but even the most sensible, grown-up still feels like a child sometimes!

This is what I'm going to keep telling myself. After a fantastic birthday, where I was completely spoiled with cupcake flowers, visits from friends, the most sentimental presents ever and gorgeous keepsakes, I have realised that I am one lucky, lucky girl.

So despite constant references to how old 21 is, it doesn't matter. In my head, I'm 21, I'm still young and life has only just begun (metaphorically speaking...)

I'm 21 and I still haven't grown out of the cheesy grin...

Flamin' hell it's cold...

Following on from my last entry, any of the mid-term meltdown stress I was suffering from has well and truly disappeared with the traumatic incident that happened in our student house this weekend. Although it most probably should have contributed to my very own breakdown, it actually injected a bit of perspective and a strange amount of adrenaline.

Let me explain.

It’s Friday morning. I’m deservedly rather excited about the prospect of a night out after what feels like a year-long week. I spend the day working out at the gym and wading my way through more reading and yet another essay.  I do all of this with a little shiver; not out of horror at the work, but because the house is slowly getting colder and colder. So much so at one point, I’m sure I felt the house itself shivering.

My housemate and I investigated and linked the lack of hot water with the ominous red light on the boiler. Pretty sure that was green before… Wisely, she phones the landlord who comes and resets it and all is funky-dory again! J

 He’d probably only been away for an hour when the main bulb in my bedroom blew. Now, we’re not the type of household to have spare bulbs lying around, so I just phoned our landlord and he came straight back. It’s a good job he did too – the red light of death returned on the boiler. We waited anxiously on the stairs whilst he slowly took apart the metal box on the wall, both silently aware that we needed the hot water to come back on so we could shower for our night ahead…

He emerged from the bathroom with a grin (to this moment I still don’t know what he found so amusing.)  He told us that the boiler needed a new part and he didn’t have a spare one! YAY!

So to sum things up, we had no hot water and no heating and we hadn’t showered yet. Sometimes I just can’t believe my luck.

Our landlord did try to help…but that’s when things started to turn rather dramatic. He showed us how to get the electric shower to pump out hot water and said that he’d wait in his van for 20 minutes with a clip on one of the boiler tubes just to heat the house up for that duration. Then, once we’d showered, he’d come back in and take the clip off – that way we’d at least have taken the chill off the house. It sounded like a good idea at the time…in retrospect we probably should have considered that by clipping a tube he was blocking whatever was running through it and letting it pile up…

My housemate showered and came out with a shiver saying the temperature of the water dropped. I attempted to shower and could not for the life of me get any hot water. I was just thinking about giving up when I smelt gas.

‘Don’t be stupid Steph. Why on earth would a bathroom have a gas leak?’  I thought. I turned the water off and poked my head round the shower curtain to look at the boiler.

The monster in the corner of the room. 

Or rather, the blue monster in the corner of the room as a tidy gas flame had engulfed the box.

I jumped out of the shower and grabbed a towel before the less threatening little blue flame turned into an ever so slightly scary real flame of fire which was coming from the boiler and into the room. The very room I was standing in wearing only a towel and my owl slippers. I freaked.

Yelling ‘FIRE!’ I grabbed my phone and reached for the door, which, by the way, is right next to the boiler. Yes readers, that’s right. My only exit was right next to the flame that was potentially endangering my life. And all for the sake of a sodding shower and a little bit of warmth.

With my housemates shouting at me to come downstairs, the landlord ran up and it was extinguished, mainly thanks to the draft of air I’d let in when I legged it out of the room.

Danger averted.

Well, the good news from all this is that our fire alarms work! The bad news is that I was ever so slightly shaken up and spent the next hour when I was meant to be getting dressed and excitedly putting make up on drinking tea, having a little cry and then having group hugs with my housemates. And I still hadn’t had my shower.

So where are we at now? We still went on our big night out – we saw the life threatening situation as more of a reason than ever to let our hair down a bit and de-stress with some cheesy tunes at Ocean nightclub.  And I finally managed to have a quick shower. But the boiler still isn’t working and the house is still rather cold. But we did learn a few things from this.

1.  Student life is not only damaging to your mentality with the threat of a mid-term meltdown, but it’s also rather unpredictable. Unpredictable but never dull.
   
2. Blankets are better than flames....

Mid-term Meltdown...

There comes a time during a University semester when students begin to look a bit tired and pale. They are non-responsive in seminars and when they do finally say something, it's more of a grunt or a sniff. A vacant stare will appear over their face.

No, this is not an attempt to get into the Halloween spirit and create some ghostly account of University. This is a phenomenon I have decided to call 'mid-term meltdown'.

Think of it like a mid-life crisis but for overwhelmed, and tired, University students. (Oh woe is us!)

I almost had one of these this week, when (as luck would have it) everything just seemed to come at once. With no reading week this year, I was wary that I had an essay due in, meetings to attend, and a mountain of books to read, all for one week. It got to the point when, on the verge of tears in one of campus' coffee shops, I considered calling mountain rescue and just giving up.

But I persevered. I manned up. With the help of litres of caffeine and a combination of late nights and early mornings, I did it all. (You really don't need as much sleep as you think y'know!)

In my week of stress, I noticed that I wasn't the only one around campus who looked like it had all got a bit too much. You know the feeling, the work just piles up, the colds set in and you start counting down the weeks until Christmas (or in my case the weekend and a well deserved night out!)

On the bus this morning I was sat behind a girl wearing a woolly hat.
'Wise', I thought to myself, 'it's like the Arctic out there.'
Then I looked again. I can tell you for a fact that her hat was from H&M. I can tell you for a fact that her hat was fairly new ... because she'd left the tag on it. Hanging cheekily down underneath her little pom-pom was the square piece of cardboard that she has most probably spent the rest of the day cursing for making her look so silly. Undoubtedly, this was a symptom of mid-term meltdown - too tired to notice that the tag is still hanging off the bobble on a woolly hat. Tragic.

I then waded through a room of what felt like synchronized sniffs and fits of uncontrollable coughing. The cold's have hit Uni, and they just make everything feel so much worse!

I persevered through my day and went to pick up tickets for the aforementioned night out. Bright eyed and bubbly I struck up conversation with the staff. Only to find out that mid-term meltdown doesn't just hit students... Struggling to remember what day it was, forgetting to write my student number down, and then almost writing my first name where my surname should be, we eventually managed to sort everything out and I sauntered smugly away with my tickets.

So yes, I've successfully dodged mid-term meltdown; I had a stressful week but such is life. I survived that mountain and I have a weekend of freedom to enjoy before it all starts again! So far, it's 1 to me and 0 to 3rd year. You have not broken me yet!!

But be warned readers. If you're mooching around campus and towards you comes someone who looks paler than you think possible, could carry their library books in the bags hanging from their eyes and is wandering aimlessly like a...well, like a zombie... don't be scared. Be sympathetic. It's mid-way through the term and they're merely tired. Besides, you could be next.

RadioHead

So that’s it. I’ve come back to uni and I’ve broken into the world of radio.

The speakers aren’t going to know what hit them…

On Tuesday, I walked into the URN studios at my University filled with nerves & excitement. Before I knew it I was thrust in front of the microphone, reading the news bulletins and joking along with some of the afternoon’s friendly presenters. I felt so welcome. Then, two hours later, I was back in front of a microphone, sat around a table with 3 others discussing some intriguing news stories…and you know what?

IT WAS SO FUN!

Yes I realise those capitals are going to look like I just angrily shouted that in your face, but I can’t stress this enough. 

I wasn't going to tell anyone about being on air; y'know. Just in case it went horrendously wrong. At least on radio anyone who didn't know who I was wouldn't recognise me around campus...But, once I'd had the practice of the bulletins, and caught the radio buy, I ended up telling almost everyone I spoke to that day what time I'd be on air and how they could listen in. My Dad even recorded it... 

I left the studios afterwards, with a mixture of emotions – thrilled that I could say I’d just ‘been on air’ and had spent most of the afternoon ‘in the studio’ (check me out...), disappointed that I hadn’t thought to join URN sooner, but excited that at the same time next week I’d be doing it all over again!

So what do you think…shall I open my horizons to include broadcasting?!