22/09/2014 / University
University Goals - Year Two
Seeing as I'm moving into my university house today I thought I would write a post about goals and things I want to achieve in my second year. I'm hoping I'll only have one night without internet in my new house so I should be able to keep blogging. I've been attempting to blog everyday in September and so far I've been able to stick to that so hopefully they'll be internet up and running so I can continue! So here are my goals for year two:
Be more organised with work
This year I'm hoping to set up more of a structured studying schedule and stick to it, I think sticking to it is the harder part. I'm going to try and make sure I don't have to finish any of my seminar prep just before a seminar starts.
Do more wider reading
Whilst I did do a lot of reading last year I felt I could have done more, I think this will also help me when I write my essays.
Keep reading
By this I mean keep reading books that aren't to do with my course, last year I didn't read any books other than ones I needed for my course! Over the summer I've got back into reading and have quite a few books to take back to university with me.
Walk home from lectures occasionally
This may sound like a slightly odd goal but my new uni house is around 40 minutes away from campus so I will most likely end up getting the bus a lot of the time but I'm hoping to make myself walk home at least once a week, partly to save bus money and partly to help keep myself fit!
Eat healthier!
I actually think I eat better at university than when I'm at home, but I'm going to try and be even healthier. That means I need will power so I don't eat packet of biscuits in one go which I've done of more than one occasion.
Try out new things
I'm hoping to join a couple of societies this year as I never got round to joining any last year, I'd also like to do more things that I could add to my CV
Keep blogging!
I didn't blog the whole of my first year as I had interest in blogging and this made me unmotivated to fit blogging into my schedule. This year I'm hoping I'll be able to keep blogging throughout the year even if it's less often.
Hopefully I'll be able to stick to all of these, I'm quite sure about the eating healthy one though!
Sophie x
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.
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| 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.
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| 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!
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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
17/09/2014 / Lifestyle
Summer Summary
I wish I could say I spent the summer in a far off land discovering myself or spending my weekends at festivals with my friends but unfortunately I can't. In all honesty the majority if not all of my summer would be considered pretty boring but having said that I have to admit that I didn't mind that much. I still managed to have a good summer so I thought I'd do a round up post.
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| 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 |
1: My summer holiday started way back at the start of June when I finished my exams, term didn't technically finish until the 20th of June but I was officially free from exams and so my flatmates and I were able to make the most of campus.We're lucky enough to have a lovely lake on campus and so we started our summer by taking some Pimms down to the lake and then hiring a boat. I discovered I'm pretty bad at rowing and steering a boat!
2: It was my mums birthday the day after exams finished so got a train home and we went out for a meal to celebrate. We went to Rushton Hall, which is near Kettering, i'd recommend it if you live in that area. The mini macaron was so cute so I couldn't help taking a picture of it, it was also extremely yummy!
3-6: These are all photos from a day festival I went to called the No Tomorrow festival, it was held at Wollaton house. It was my first experience of a festival and whilst it was only quite a small one it was still a good day out. I painted my nails in a galaxy design (tutorial here) and decided to dress as festively as I could! My favourite acts from the day were Clean Bandit and Sam Smith.
7: My last night out as a fresher, may I add I was completey sober in this picture! It was quite sad as it was the last time I saw some of my university friends and I haven't seen them all summer so it will be great to be reunited with them next week.
8: More yummy food! My nan turned 80 in June and we went for an afternoon tea, it was at Rushton Hall again and was extremely yummy. They're were more macarons, these ones were apple flavoured.
9: This is me doing some weird pose outside my halls on our last day, we'd just been given our results and I had passed with a 2:1 so I was very happy. The second window on the bottom floor was my room so it was right by the entrance which did get annoying but I managed to get used to the noise. It's quite sad thinking I'll never go back to the flat again especially as this year I'm living on the other side of campus so won't really ever be in that area.
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| 10,11,12,13,14,15
10-11: My second festival of the summer, again I just went for the day. The main reason I went was to see Linkin Park, I went with my mum as she likes them too, we both had a lot of fun even if my mum was paranoid that someone was going to throw a bottle full of wee at her!
12: I spent a lot of time with my cats this summer which resulted in more than one or two cat selfies.
13: I decided to get my hair cut after having it the same length for about three years, it wasn't a massive difference but it felt a lot better after the chop.
14: Visiting Highclere Castle (Downton Abbey) was a lot of fun, going around the house and remembering someone actually lived there was weird as it's so big! (full post here)
15: Reuniting with school friends, I was able to see my friend Emily twice, once at the start of the summer and once nearer the end. I also had a meal with some other school friends such as Kavita who's in the photo above.
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So that's my summer, looking back on it I've done more than I thought, I think it's just because most of the things I did were right at the start of the summer and seem so long ago. What did you get up to over the summer?
Sophie
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