This blog isn’t an educational blog post, but it’s more of just my life, and how I have found first year and what will be happening for me over summer.
I currently live in Dundee (which I feel has been a waste of money, as I work at home), but after first year I will be getting a house with my partner of four years. As a 22 year old, I feel I don’t need to go out every night and drink to have fun and my priorities are different from my flatmates. While my flatmates are in classes all the time and drink most nights, I find myself in my room studying, working at home or socialising with my own group of friends. The first year ‘living-in-a-flat-being-drunk-all-the-time’ experience has been overrated for me, and to be honest I feel I just start complaining over tiny things and just wishing I had moved in with Scott this year instead of living in student halls. However, I have met some wonderful people, but for me it’s the new friends in my classes that I get on with more.
University lectures and tutorials have been a brand new experience for me, and this is something I have thoroughly enjoyed! I was at college previous to university, and at Fife College, subjects are taught completely differently. I had never experienced a lecture before, I had never been in a workshop and I have never been so stressed before! I am completely aware it DOES get harder, that I have a long way to go and that I need to take a deep breath, but I think a lot of factors have went into why I have found this first year stressful, which I will talk about later on. My lecturers have been fantastic, and it makes me so excited to have more lectures and workshops with them and I have learned so much in 7 months already, that I can’t wait for the next 3 years! I find my workshops exciting, interesting and it is amazing to have lecturers so passionate about what they do – it makes me want to engage with the lesson and want to try my very best!
Socialising has been so different this year as well. Socialising has been different in positive and negative ways this year and this has added to extra stress too. Back home, I have two best friends, one has moved to Huddersfield to study at the university their, whilst my other friend has a 4 year old and is about to study Sociology at Abertay University (in 3rd year) and for us as friends, we couldn’t be prouder of each other. But having two friends that live so far away from me is difficult, I can’t just drive over like I used to and have a gossip, or study, or watch T.V or play with my friends son. I now have to face time one at a time, and that is even a struggle due to such a bad signal in my flat. However, I have made great friends at university and we get on so well together. We help each other out and we have a good laugh together! The final part of the socialising aspect is the strain it has had on my and my boyfriend. Living away from Scott has been hard because the person I would usually go to with my problems isn’t there to just pop round and talk to. I think it has made us stronger though, and I feel pretty positive about our future (I hate talking about ‘soppy’ stuff openly, so I will stop).
Stressing out is all I seem to do at the moment. I stress about everything and anything, and then stress out more about all the stress. Here is a list, of everything I am stressing about at the moment:
- MONEY!!!
- University
- My jobs back home
- MONEY!!
- Because I am currently house hunting, I am stressing about houses
- Placement
- Essays that are due back
- My elective
- Family
- Summer
- Don’t know if I mentioned, but money.
However, I think a lot of these stresses will go after summer. I will be working 6/7 days a week, so therefore will have money, I will hopefully be in a house, I wont be at University therefore no placement or elective and by the time summer finishes hopefully I will be organised.
I just thought that because I hadn’t blogged in a while, that I should do it and try and get into a routine again. But because I didn’t know what to write about, I thought I would write about me and how I am feeling right now. Hopefully will get back into the swing of it.
