21/09/2014

University Series | My 1st Year Experience Semester Two


I wrote about my experience of my first semester here so I thought I'd write about the second semester too. The second semester started after my exams in January and ended in June so was split up by the easter holiday and was longer than the first semester so sorry for quite a long post. 

University blog series


first year university experience
1,2,3,4

JANUARY


January came around and so did my first lot of university exams,  I was pretty nervous about them. They're not really that much different from any school exams in the sense that you turn up to the room and find your seat, one thing that I did find different was that the invigilators didn't read out any information from the front they just told us to start. We also had to seal the corner of our exam papers by licking them, which was weird the first time as I was looking around the room thinking why are people licking their exam papers?! 

Whilst in the midst of exams and revision my flatmate Sophie and I (yes we're both named Sophie kinda weird) decided to book onto the trip to Amsterdam that our hall had organised. It was nice to look forward to something during the exam period. 

So exams finished and off we went to Amsterdam, the coach came to pick us up at 9 on the Saturday night and after surviving a 3 am ferry we made it to Amsterdam at 10 am on the Sunday morning. After travelling all night I felt pretty gross but our rooms weren't ready yet so I had to make do with a slightly make shift freshen up in some cramped toilets. I'm actually surprised I didn't look worse during the first day. We didn't really know where anything was but we knew we were hungry so off we wondered to find somewhere to eat. We finally stumbled upon a place that sold pancakes, this made us very excited after only eating a not so great cheese and tomato toastie on the ferry. We went in and I ordered the chocolate pancake (picture 1), they were pretty big, having said that Sophie and I both looked at them when they arrived and said they weren't big enough! We were wrong! 

After eating we explored and went to the I Amsterdam sign and then the Van Gough museum. As part of the trip we had free entry into a club on the night so we went back to the hostel and got ready. We were pretty tired so didn't stay very long. The next day we hired some bikes (picture 3) and made our way to the Anne Frank house, we both found this very interesting and sad, it was weird to think that we were in the rooms where they hid. After this we went on a boat cruise on the canal. By this point we were very hungry so made our way back to the hostel where we asked the receptionist where we could get some good pasta. She recommended a place, which turned out to be really posh and charged 40 euros for two courses (not student friendly) plus we looked very out of place with our rucksacks, we eventually found somewhere we could afford! The next day we had to make the long journey back to Nottingham, save to say as soon as we got home we went straight to bed!


FEBRUARY


February wasn't the most exciting of months, I had just started my new modules for semester two so was having to get used to a new timetable. I ended up getting pretty ill, I thought it was just a mild cold but it need up lasting over a week, it probably didn't help that I went out one of the nights but it was a night out we had had planned for a long time. I missed most of the lectures that week and spent my time in bed with a dozen tissues! 

MARCH


Nothing particularly exciting happened in March, most of it was spent writing essays. We did however make quite a few pancakes on pancake day, we ended up having to mix the mixture in one of my casserole dishes as we didn't have a mixing bowl! (picture 8). My friend from school who's studying at Leicester University came to visit near the end of March and we went on a night out, it's always nice to be able to catch up with school friends. 

my first year university experience
5,6,7,8,9

APRIL


Most of April involved revising for summer exams, I had 4 weeks off for Easter so I was able to just get on with revision. During the holiday I went to visit my friend Emily down in Winchester, it was the first time I'd been to visit her at her uni and we hand't seen each other since Christmas so it was great to catch up and have a break from revision! Right at the start of April we had our spring ball (picture 6), like the Christmas ball the food was really nice and there was a chocolate fountain. I also ended up embarrassing myself on the way to my table as I lost my footing because the floor was wonky and nearly ended up falling over, may I add I was wearing pretty high heels. 

MAY


The dreaded exam season began as well as some nice sunny weather, which we weren't able to enjoy fully due to the exams. As much as I hate exams I quite like being able to focus all my time on revising rather than having to attend lectures at the same time. I spent most of May stuck in my room with Netflix for company. 

JUNE

The last month of first year! My exams finished on the 4th, this was good as they finished before term ended but annoying as all my flatmates finished a day before so all went out to celebrate whilst I had to stay in the flat to prepare for my last exam. I also went home for my mums birthday and then got the train back to uni as we had tickets for night out and day festival. Then I was back home again for the weekend to go to Download and then back to uni for one last night out and to collect my results. So I was pretty back and forth for the whole of June!

_____________________

Overall I had a great first year at university, I'm moving into my new uni house tomorrow and started year two so it's quite weird looking back at my first year!

Sophie 

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