My Honest University Experience

Hello, there.

If you have been following me for a little while you will know that I was in my final year of a criminology degree. 

I finished my degree a couple of days ago (yippee!). 

DISCLAIMER: I am going to be completely honest here. If you are one of the people I talk about then sorry, but not sorry also. 

A lot of people always ask me what university is really like, and I always find that a lot of people sugar coat things, and make it out like it's all party, happiness, and generally great times.

NEWSFLASH. 

This isn't true.

Sorry if I burst your bubble... 

Overall, university is a great experience. 

If you are thinking of going because you need it for a career then go for it. However, if you are thinking of going to uni to put off getting a job, or think you will "find yourself" (I cringe as I say that, ergh), or if you think it'll be an easy three years....do not go. It's a very expensive way to find out that none of those things happen or are true. 

University is hard. It has been a difficult three years. There is a lot of work, especially in your final year. If you don't work your ass off and commit to it fully then you won't get the grades you want. 

Hell, there will be a lot of blood, sweat, and tears. 

I have gone through some of the hardest times of my life at university. Dealing with being cheated on rather a lot, my mum having cancer, some nightmare situations this year that made me reconsider my entire degree, and some severe homesickness this year. 

I also made the decision to stop drinking back in October because I was starting to get a tad ill after drinking far too much (sorry, mum) over the previous two years. I found that this meant I essentially got left out of things - told you I was being honest - and actually meant that I didn't get on with my house mates any more. To be brutally honest, that has been absolute hell for me. I kept myself prisoner in my room, I was always scared to be in a room with them, and now I am extremely happy to be moving out. These are all things I never thought would happen to me, especially when I was really good friends with them beforehand. But advice I have been given is "you win some and you lose some". 

But it has also been a really great time. I've met (a few) people that I will consider lifelong friends, gained a degree, had amazing opportunities, and been able to develop myself in ways I wouldn't have done without coming here. 

The bad times were unbelievably shit, I won't pretend they weren't. Yet I have way more positive memories of the last three years, particularly more from my first and second year. 

The one thing I think I have learned most from being at university is that you can't please everyone, and you shouldn't try to. People are going to go out of their way to make you feel like shit, believe me it happens a lot. You have to be strong enough to know when to walk away, whether it be from a friendship, relationship, or anything group work-y. 

Oh, a second thing I learned (the hard way) is that you get out what you put in. If you put your everything into an essay then you will get the results. If you do them the night before you will (mostly) not do too great. 

Remember that you are coming to university to gain a degree, not to party your life away. 

I may consider doing a university Q&A sort of thing later on if anyone has any questions. I will be doing a "my degree in pictures" next week, so keep your eye out for that! 

I want to know what advice would you give to someone going to university/starting a new job/making a big life decision? Put your answers in the comments below!

As always, thank you for reading, and I will see you all next time!

PS. sorry for not blogging for a while, dissertations are hard.

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Dissertation?...DISTRESS-tation!

Well, it has been a while. 

Where have I been?

Writing a freaking dissertation. 

There are not enough words in any dictionary to express how much writing my dissertation has stressed me out and make me hate words. Actual words. Especially "euthanasia", "death" and "treatment" - as you can tell, I am writing an extremely uplifting essay...

As I sit here tapping away on my keyboard, the sun is shining, birds are singing, and it's warm. 

Yet here I am. 

Tucked away in my room doing this freaking dissertation and munching away through an entire punnet of red grapes and listening to Disney World park music, pining for the next 132 days to go quickly. 

Thrilling, eh? As is final year life. 

Considering I have typed 11,000 words - and done some nerve damage to my elbow in the process - I am feeling more stressed than I did about 6 months ago when I first put pen to paper to plan this bloody thing. 

This dissertation (or dissy for short, said preferably with a slightly unimpressed tone of voice) is restricting my (totally non-existent) social life, critical EastEnders viewing time, and most importantly...food time, which now often occurs after midnight.

All I want is a few days to play Sims, where dissertations do not exist (yippee!) and eat cheeseburgers without getting fat. Is that too much to ask?

I actually just purchased a stress therapy colouring book and a set of colouring pencils. Don't judge me. I am in no way artistic, and I can barely draw a straight line with a ruler, but colouring is just so therapeutic for me. So I have that to look forward to. Yay, procrastination!

I keep thinking that I see the light at the end of the tunnel with a huge Domino's pizza, an even bigger Ed's chocolate milkshake, and a lot of Netflix. 

Then something bonks me on the back of the head, sending my hurtling head first back to reality and I realise it is in no way over.

May 21st cannot come soon enough; no more dissertation, no more placement, and no more law exams. 

As soon as I come out of that exam I am getting in to bed and only moving to pee. 

Maybe once everything is over I can post some things about how to succeed at university. Maybe I will actually get my mind together and work on the USG. If you don't know what that is then you'll just have to keep coming back until you find out. 

As much as I adore you all, I am completely procrastinating now and should be getting back to my dissertation. 

If you have any tips to help me unwind, or ideas of things to do when university is over post them in the comments below!

Toodles!

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Inappropriate life rant part three | growing up edition

So this week I turned 20 (hold the applause) and was happily informed by my housemate that I should expect a quarter life crisis. To be perfectly honest I just laughed this off and thought that it was one of those stupid phenomenons that you hear about. Then the other day it sort of hit me. I am 20. 20 years old. I am not a teenager anymore. My age begins with a 2. In 10 years I will be 30. Holy shit. 

A million and one questions started shooting through my head: am I going to go grey now? What am I doing with my life? What have I done in my life so far? What is the meaning of life? Where will I be in 5 years? How will I get the money for everything I want to do? Will I ever find someone who will ever marry me?

Don't laugh at me. I am genuinely having a panic about everything, literally everything. I genuinely spent an entire day panicking about the fact all I have done in the last 20 years is be in education. So naturally I thought that it would be a fantastic idea to share my panic with you guys to make me feel better about life, and that maybe I am not alone in this little quarter life crisis. I am not sure why this has been placed under an "inappropriate rant" title, but I think that it is fitting. Maybe. It probably isn't. I hope you're still reading. 

As you have probably guessed, I am panicking about the fact I am not 20. I had to change my Twitter bio to say "20" and writing that "2" genuinely almost made me have a panic attack. It probably didn't help that my Grandma was telling me that she got married when she was 18...I am like holy shit, and I am just sat here drinking 10 bottles of wine a week in a desperate bid to forget everything else (it works). I mean I have been alive for 20 years...twenty years and what have I done? Sail through the first few stages of education, then spend most of the rest of the last year drunk beyond belief or studying for exams. So thrilling. Although I am trying to think positive and think that my degree will benefit me in the next few years, and might hopefully help me get a better job. If there are jobs anywhere. 

This leads me nicely on to the fact that I have absolutely no idea what I am doing with my life. I have been studying criminology for over a year now, and I do enjoy it, but I am starting to think that I really don't know if I want to work in the criminal justice system anymore. I don't even know why I decided on criminology to be honest. If I am blunt with you guys, I really wanted to do law but I didn't think I would get the grades to do it. Turns out I got way better grades than what I thought so I could have done it...oops. Then I started this blog...fucked up everything, that did! I forgot how much I absolutely love writing. I did English Literature as an A Level and hated it (partly due to one shitty teacher) which really put me off writing/reading for a while - despite my mother telling me that I should have done English Language instead (she was right). Gah. I have been looking at postgraduate degrees...the only problem is that you only get a loan for your tuition, and I can't afford to stay down here. I literally have no idea what to do.

I also know that I want to do some travelling, or that sort of thing. Recently I have been looking at work placements in Walt Disney World and Universal Studios in Florida. I was considering taking a gap year before university to do something like that, but then thought that I probably wouldn't go to university in the first place if I did that. So I have been looking at it online recently for something to do for a year when I graduate. There are loads of different things that you can do in Walt Disney World and Universal studios, and I would love to work on the rides and whatnot. But I don't know whether I would even qualify. Have any of you guys worked there before? If you have then do tell me below what it's like. 

I am dying to go abroad for a few years when I graduate either way. I have family and friends over in Australia and would love to travel over there. I'd love to move there one day, too, so would be awesome to try and find a nice place to settle. I know that there are a group of Australian's who read my posts, so where do you guys think a good place for me to settle, get a good job, and find a nice man would be?! Heeeeeelp. Also, where are the best places to travel to? Comment your answers below - would love some help.

I have come to the conclusion that I am going to die alone. To make matters worse, I am allergic to cats so I can't become a crazy cat lady. Sad news. So I am going to become the crazy pug lady. I really want a pug. Like really badly. They're so cute!

The worst thing about becoming 20 means I feel like I now have to justify so many things. For your pure entertainment, I give you a list of the things I feel I need to justify:

Buying Bob The Builder pasta shapes

Going to Walt Disney World

Still watching the Disney Channel and Nick Jr

Loving Phineas and Ferb beyond belief

Buying stuffed toys

Enjoying going in play parks

Thinking that some kids rides are better than bigger rides

Going to Toys R Us

Still loving the films you did as a kid

So I still do all those things...but I do buy more things like Dora The Explorer pasta shapes. Don't judge me.

I'm also panicking about the fact I am going to go grey soon...

The best bit in all this? I already have arthritis....I shit you not. I have it in my ankle. 

Fuck.

I am going to stop ranting...this is a bit long isn't it?

Please comment if you are feeling like this, I don't want to be alone!

As always, thank you for reading, and I will see you next time!

Toodle-oo!

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Big life decisions

Hello there, buddies!

As per usual I am suffering with writer’s block…typical for a Sunday – it never seems to happen any time else. I dislike Sundays…maybe I should have been writing about the fact I hate Sundays? Hmm…

Anyways, crazy person ramble over (sssh) I thought that today I could just ramble on about big decisions I have going on in my messy brain for after I finish university.

Yes, I know I still have two years left, but this is the sort of time when I feel like I need to figure out where I going in life, what I want to achieve, and where I want to be. So naturally, my blogger brain took control and thought that talking to actual people would be a bad idea, and telling you guys is a much more logical mechanism… I am not actually sure whether me typing away to myself is going to solve any of the problems and help me come to any conclusions faster, but we shall see.

I have had these thoughts going round in my head for a couple of months now, so they are considerably clearer than what they were. But basically I have no fucking clue where I am going in my life. I am probably going to get frustrated and not end up publishing this for a while so bear with me.

I know that the last couple of weeks have been slow and not my normal type of posts, so I do apologise for that, but I am hoping to get an all-round feel for my blog, and see how well certain things go down with you guys. I don’t want to give out the image that I am just a person who complains all the time, because I am not, so adding extra posts in like these ones seemed like a good idea. At the moment I am just trialling them to see what the success rate is going to be like, and so far so good! You guys also managed to get me to the front page of Google search results for my post regarding Ask.fm the other day, so thank you so much; that meant the world to me!

I am also going to give a little shout out right now to one of my lovelies who I have been speaking to on Twitter recently! This lovely is Sunny Williams (@notthatsunny) who replied to a Tweet I put out about Harry Potter last night! She is so cute and brand new to Twitter so get following! I also got a reply from Matthew Lewis (the gorgeous man who plays Neville Longbottom in the Harry Potter films) on Twitter last night, so I went fangirl mad.

I have gone completely off topic now….

Ah yes, life decisions.

In September I am going to be starting my second year at uni, as you probably know by now considering I bang on about it allllll the time, and I have been mulling things over about where I want to go after I finish. Literally everything from what job I want to do, to whether I want to take a year out after uni. Then I started thinking about things for the next two years, too. Gah, my mind is boggling.

So I am going to attempt to logically talk them through on here in the hope that they make some sense to you, and in the end to me too, and hopefully you guys can help me out a bit?

Just a warning, these are going to be so here there and everywhere and in absolutely no order at all. I am going to try to be chronological here so that I am not jumping from what I want to do next week, to 2015, then back to this year. That could get confusing…I have written a list and I hope to try to follow it, but you guys know what I am like…

The first thing on my mind is about getting a job for this year and next year when I am in Plymouth. I mean I seriously need the money, like badly. There are so many places I could apply, but most of them are shops and my 4 years’ worth of experience is all in hospitality, so I am fucked there. If someone could pay me to write I would literally be in heaven. I don’t even care what I would be writing about, as long as I get paid. Gah, I sound desperate…Long story short, someone give me a job down in Plymouth. I will be spending the 11^th handing out CVs to every single place with an open door. Prepare your shit, Plym.

Then I am trying to decide whether I am going to do the same thing that I did last year and not go back to Swindon until Christmas then come back to Plymouth for new year, or go home in my reading week for my birthday. To be honest, I would much rather stay in Plymouth, especially because I think I have International Relations lectures that week…and I can be in Plymouth for longer with my friends. Hmm, decisions. I am hoping some of my friends would be up for being back in Plymouth for new year too, so that I am not alone. That would be so sad – getting drunk on my own… +James Martin  new year in Plym-Plym?

Ok, now seriously thinking ahead like two years, I am starting to wonder what the fuck I want to do with my degree like job-wise. When I first joined university I was dead set on joining the police as a full police officer. I have done quite a bit of work with the police over the last year and I have to admit, I am a teeny bit put off from joining it! Which sounds reaaaaally bad, it is nothing to do with the job itself but I think that it isn’t overly suited for me. I don’t know – I am not going to completely rule it out, but it isn’t my first choice anymore. I then thought that I could get the good bit of being in the police by joining as a PCSO so I am not a full officer…still not entirely sure how I feel about doing that, but you know. I have always been interested in youth justice and whatnot, and I have good connections with the Youth Offending Service down in Plymouth and also down here and I would love to work in that area of the criminal justice system, so hopefully they are going to be looking to employ new people in 2015 so that I can go straight in to a job (that will never happen). I am also looking at pursuing this writing this, but writing about my field of study…damn you, blog, making me reconsider everything. 

Now we come to the conundrum that is literally on my mind a lot – where I want to live after I graduate. Now I know I am not going to be able to afford to pick and choose, but everything I am about to say is me thinking in an ideal world. None of it will probably happen because I will be skint. I am, and have been for a while, considering a massive move over to Australia. I have been doing research and there are quite a few job opportunities for me over there, and I have friends and family there who would be able to keep me on my feet for a bit. Gah the temptation. The only thing really holding me back is money to be honest. Then me being more logical and thinking realistically, I am looking at either staying in Plymouth or moving over to somewhere like London. But we shall see where I end up – I will go wherever I can get a job really.

Then I have the whole “do I want to take a year out after uni to go travelling” situation. I was looking at taking a gap year before university, but chose not to as I knew I wouldn’t go to uni after. So now I am thinking of taking some time after uni to get some experiences under my belt by travelling and working abroad for a year or two. Only problem here is that it is crazy expensive to take time out when you don’t have money behind you. I am lucky enough to have finally got myself a job here, so I could easily save the money over the next year, so I will make the decision at the end of university I think. It will depend on job prospects I think. What do you guys think? Should I take time out?

In slight relation to this, I have come to the sudden realisation that I can now afford a major holiday when I graduate – which will be awesome. I was looking at going to Disney World in Florida with my friends, but then we looked at travelling Europe and whatnot. But after seeing the events of Comic Con and Vidcon in San Diego and LA, I think we might he heading over there instead. Would be awesome to actually get to meet the YouTubers I watch and get to go to Comic Con – so many things could be ticked off my Bucket List because of that.

I have so many more decisions that I want to tell you about, but this post is nearing 2000 words already so I should probably stop.

If you have any advice you wanna chuck my way that would be awesome!

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As always, that is all for today, Lovelies.

Toodle-oo!

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