Food for thought...

Everyone goes on about what to eat when your revising such as lots of vegetables, smoothies, lots of water and all that..

Why can't be reward ourselves with chocolate? With coffee?

Does anyone REALLY and I mean really, stick to just eating vegetables and salads when your revising? Do you really only touch water in the weeks up to the exams and don't touch some sort of energy drink, coffee or tea?

If you are one of those people who are super healthy when revising then I applaud you but... you're crazy!

If I'm revising, my head hurts, I'm people watching and I've eaten all my snacks in my bag - where am I going to go? The vending machine and the cafe for a cafe latte or maybe I'll journey for a Starbucks.

Let's be honest here;
A) it's a break and a walk around - plus, it's a sneaky little chance to look at the fitties at the library - please don't pretend like you don't do it, we all know you do
B) it's a little reward to ourselves because we're actually in the library, we are honestly trying to revise and we need a lil pick-me-up.

So you know what?, I'm sitting here with a lovely medium Costa Mocha in my hands, practicing a past paper exam (I should be writing because I'm supposed to be timing myself but this just popped into my mind), I've done my little walk around and rewarded myself so I feel better instead of crunching on boring ol' carrots telling myself that I will feel less stressed if I eat them.. because I feel real good with my Mocha right now.

Plus, if we're going on a money thing - it's costs just as much for a bag of carrots as it does for a Mocha. I know which one I'd rather pay money for and I'm broke.

Right, back to revision.

Go treat yourselves to something nice guys, you're revising and revision sucks.

Survival of a University Student =) Tweet

Budgeting Sucks...

No one really likes to budget, especially me. But as students we have a limit on how much we can do with our money. Savings from over the summer plus, grant/ loan money and maybe the part-time job is all we have to keep us going for a year.

Personally, I’m going to start of budgeting for each week even if budgeting each month will save me more money; I’m one to spend, not save.

I had been thinking of doing a budgeting blog post for a while (but it seemed too hard), so when SaveTheStudent.org asked me to one - I had more motivation to actually do it.

Second Year

As a second year I:

• Can’t control my rent and my utility bills will vary month to month – which throws a spanner in the work.
• Have to cut back on my nights out due to my very hectic schedule this year. (A lovely looking fourth year told me to go out as much as I can at the start of the year because second year gets hard and gets hard fast. A hint for all you first years’.)
• Save money on travelling into university as I can now walk it in.
• Will be doing all my food shopping online to resist the temptation of getting snacks.
• Must only buy things that I can justify on; my best examples of this is when I go out shopping and come across something I want (i.e. a dress), I think of all the possible reasons for buying it and how much I will use it. If I have up to 5 good, proper reasons: Dress = bought. 
• Made myself a money jar to save up for my placement year in 2012. All those coins must add up over time… 
• Am trying to find myself a job…

Breakdown

Money coming in: My loan comes in every term, money saved from working over the summer and a lovely overdraft.

Money going out: clubbing (incl. taxi’s to and from, entry fees, drinks), food (incl. alcohol), rent, bills, travelling home, getting snacks on campus.

Goals

I’ve also decided to have goals this year. It just means that I know for myself what I’ll try to cut back on.

1. Trying not to spend much while on campus. A very limited budget of £4/ a meal deal a day – or rather, just under £10 a week. 

2. Food. I personally, cannot get my food shopping bill right. I try but I always fail. So I want a limit of £30 for two weeks’ worth of food, and that will include alcohol.

3. To spend a maximum of £20 on a night out. But before you gasp on whether you think that’s high or low, this covers my taxi’s (to and from), pre-drinks, entrance fees, and for that very drunken night, a cheeky subway.

4. To allow myself 4 takeaways a month (gasp!). Yes, this does mean the cheeky drunken subway too. 

5. Beauty/ clothes: to spend under £30 a month on all things beauty and clothes.

So, I plan ahead.

Budget for week commencing (10/10/11 – 16/10/11):

Monday – Campus – 70p

Tuesday – Campus – £0-4

Wednesday – Beauty – £5, clubbing – £20

Thursday – Campus – £0-4

Friday – Campus – £0-4/ travelling back home – £5/ Meal out – £30

Saturday – Clubbing – £40 (including pre-drinks, drinks out, entry fee)/ Travel – £10

Sunday – £0

= +/- £100

Real Budget:

Monday – Campus: 70p

Tuesday – University supplies: £3/ Drinks out: £5

Wednesday – Travel, beauty, food, clubbing: £30/ TV license: £24

Thursday – Campus: £0

Friday – Meal/ Travel: £30

Saturday – Travel: £5.30

Sunday – Meal: £10

=  £106… (oops)

Analysis

Looking back on the week, I spend most of my money on nights out but I already knew that.

I shouldn’t have spent that £5 on Wednesday on food (chocolate, tissues, fish fingers, milk) and I won’t have to think about the TV license again

Saturday was my most expensive night out because it was a birthday so I won’t be doing that again for a while which also means that I can justify it.

You know, this budgeting thing might just work out after all….

Survival of a University Student =) Tweet

My Event (part. 2)

Our event is over and done with, now a couple of weeks ago I gave you a low down on my 90’s themed event and here is my newest post telling everything that it’s over!

The 90’s night was, thankfully, a huge success – even though we were up against Bedlam – and now here is my chance to actually give you in full detail how this night came about.

According to my group mate, this idea came about by watching the Spice Girls on a laptop and from getting very excited about our childhood and what we remembered from it, Voila! The 90’s night was born – under the original name of “Death of Pop!” It was meant to celebrate the year that Pop died… but as time went on and the confusion of others, the name changed to “I <3 Pop”. Unfortunately, this had to change again to the final “Saturday Night – born in the 90’s.” Expressing the Whigfield classic (don’t act as though you don’t know the dance…) as well as giving the obvious information about the event, it was going to be held on a Saturday and of course, born in the 90’s the main theme.

Promotion and marketing went hand in hand together and for our event our main aim was to bring back nostalgia to students. We bought rainbow dust, ultra violets and lollipop sweets as a giveaway when handing out leaflets.

We held a promotion day with a gazebo in the middle of our university campus blasting out very cheesy tunes from the gym next to us and with hand-made t-shirts (made by our very own marketing manager and her boyfriend) spent most of the day handing out flyers and dancing along to tunes (see pictures). I’m not going to lie to you, I would like to say everyone got involved but it was just me handing out flyers… everyone else was cold and it was freeeeezing!!

We had 8.45am starts handing out flyers at the gate to university, promotion flyerring on the various club nights held at our venue and every night selling tickets at the university halls.

Then, came getting people to come. Now, as we all know, Saturday is a day of doing nothing for the fellow student and we are rarely seen out on a Saturday, unless it’s a house party or there is something ‘Student special’ going on, or, you have money and like a Saturday night out. So, when the news that it was a ‘Reading week’ for a lot of students (which means a week of students all going home) did frustrated us, especially when our whole group trekked around all of halls to sell tickets (myself and a group member getting escorted out because it was deemed as “business” – don’t worry we talked to the warden the next day and she let us come back in).

We had 300 tickets available at the Student Union shop, 100 online and then another 100 or so with us at all times. We hardly sold any tickets with a week and a bit to go. We were stressing, plus, it didn’t help that our lecturers were starting to worry too.

But not to fear, we knew that like a Friday night out most students only ever bought tickets a day or two before the event and most of them would probably get them on the door. However, for our event we had hardly sold 300 in the student union shop two days before our event. Everyone would pop into the shop to ask how many were left or constantly refresh the online ticket page just in case it ever went down.

As luck and life would have it, Thursday saw us go down to 50 tickets online and we put another 100 up by 1pm that day – it did annoy us at first because, naturally we wanted it to go down to a lot less before we put more up, but by that evening it had gone down to under 100 which resulted in us having to put more up on Friday when we realised we had sold just about 400 tickets.

By 8pm on Saturday, our group could only put just under 100 tickets online. Can you believe our luck – I couldn’t explain how it all happened from selling just over 200 on a Wednesday to the Saturday being able to say that throughout the day our total had risen to 700!?

We had spent Saturday dragging our friends/ boyfriends who had come down for the day, redecorating the whole of the club in bright neon cut-out words, CDs, 90’s CD cases and bright coloured cassettes. V.I.P sections decorated with sweets, our brilliant posters and pictures of the 90’s.

Leaving the venue at 5.30pm and coming back for 8.30pm we waited anxiously for our first lecturer to assess us and that was even before everyone else turned up! Thankfully, she was overly impressed with our group – I have to admit, truthfully, we do get on together really well, because we all wanted the same thing - for the event to be a success. If there were ever anything we weren’t happy about, we could always talk about it.

So imagine, 800 of your peers once hearing the song that was a big hit, everyone knew the words to because it was a guy and a girl speaking about a popular girls toy (huge hint)… would you say that everyone erupted with joy and screams and shouts or that everyone turned their head in disgust?

Because if you wanted to go for the latter; you wouldn’t have come to our event. Every so often a classic song would come on and everyone would erupt with excitement! It was crazy!!

Unfortunately again for our group, we couldn’t drink and though we enjoyed the night we couldn't exactly go out on the dance-floor and boogie on down like we desperately wanted to.

By the time our second and final lecturer came to us, it was 1.30am – yes! I’m being serious – I was the one in charge of showing him around the venue and keeping him entertained until he left. There was no way I could not dance to Take That – Never Forget and out-right told my lecturer that I simply loved this song there was no way I could'’t put my hands up when the chorus came on. My lecturer however did not mind at all claiming that the 1990’s were his Master years and he would go out clubbing to the 1990’s music. Result! He even volunteered to come to our event.

He left at 2.15am. Champagne hit our table at 2.19am.

The night ended to us hugging, chanting in joy and congratulating ourselves. We had pulled off a sell-out event!

I’m not going to say that I went to bed that night exhausted but happy but tired and I collapsed in bed with a smile on my face. OH NO! I came back to my house – everyone asleep from already been and gone to my event – shouting at how great my event was. I walked into my bedroom my best friend who had come down just for me in my bed sleeping – I woke her up screaming at how well my event had been, how my lecturers had said to me congratulations to me and was very happy with his stay!!

I WANTED TO SCREAM ABOUT IT! I WANTED TO JUMP ABOUT AND TALK AND TALK AND TALK!!

I had even driven my cab driver crazy talking to him about what he had done, how it had gone and the wreck the venue was after everyone had left.

It was surreal over the next couple of days where our peers are still organising and stressing about their events yet to be put on and ours was over and done with!

The next meeting with our client was the most anticipated… he loved what we did, he came down to see our event and was astonished at the outcome, and more than that, he wanted us to do it again!

Us, second year events students, and a real client wanting us to recreate our event again so more people can come, more profit, more 90’s!

Our client had said to us that he was already going to make profit with his bar sales so the ticket sale profit could go to us. We were almost at the point of fainting we were so happy!

And that’s where our story gets a little confusing because, most of the second year events are for charity and the profit made would go straight to them. But this was different and even though our client said we could keep the money – University laughed at the idea; of course we couldn’t keep the money it’s the clients!

So we’ve been pushing to have the profit of the ticket sales invested into the next event – which is what our client suggested.

Its' not our fault and it's not exactly my university's fault either. According to our client, any of the events that have been put on at this particular venue has never made enough profit to cover its budget. So, this has never happened before - which we all need to take on board as a huge compliment - however, we're all still buzzing off this amazing news and this amazing night that we organised and ran as successfully as we could. We've had heated discussions with administrators who is completely clueless and because we are too - we're all going around in circles because they are leaning towards giving all of our profit away to charity – which is all well and good but not when we can half that money to invest and the other half to a chosen charity of ours.

We've got to wait until Monday so she can figure out what is best. From the talk I had with her, the profit that was made is wholly the clients and so what they do with it is completely up to them. Which then makes us say – then why can’t we have it, because he said he could have it!? But as a university, again, they’re saying “oh my! Oh no! Of course you can’t have it for yourselves…” but then they get stumped… to which we want the rest of that sentence and they can’t give it to us. Legal stuff, contracts, permission etc., it’s all in the way.

So we wait until Monday.

If you wanted to ask me what I learnt from this, it would be that I really think I can do this as my profession. Which sometimes as students I think that’s hard to say. We study a degree in something we like and are good at, something we are interested in but really it’s not what we see ourselves doing in fifteen years’ time. But as an event management course, it’s not something you can just say that you didn’t want to do for the rest of your life because it’s not that kind of course; it’s like a marriage or I guess, more permanently, a tattoo. As well, it’s your personality as I think event managers as much as they can be taught – it’s a hard profession to get into and the person has to be willing to do it.

So what I’ve learnt is that, I cannot wait to do this event again with some great people and hopefully with some money to help us. I’ve learnt to overcome my fear of being in charge of finance  and even though, I’m very slow with numbers and it takes a while to get my head around calculations etc., etc., I think, personally, I’ve done really well in keeping it all together and working out everything in a way that everyone can understand and not lose any money!

I’m overwhelmed at how well we have actually done, I had given up hope of a sell-out event (even though I made a £5 bet that it would), I was happy with about 350 people so we could break even. And I guess as well, for university to know what to do if this sort of situation ever happens again.

That, all our effort, our good team work and just the hard work and thought process we put into every single detail of the event, paid off in such a exploded way that has seemed to dumbfounded everyone; us, the client, our university and now it’s all about how we can all go about this in the correct way that we all win.

Survival of a University Student =) Tweet

My Event

As you may or may not have known for my second year Event Management course, our assignment is to put on and run an event. This event will be about 40% of my grade and on the night I'm being assessed by my fellow lecturers too so with the help of five others (who are great!), it will all run smoothly.

Get ready for: SATURDAY NIGHT - BORN IN THE 90'S!!!

Yes, that's right, a 90's night. Forget Calvin Harris' Born in the 80's - it's always been about the 90's!

So it got me thinking about the 1990's in general. And so, I've come up with a whole bunch on things fantastic and not so good about the 1990's:
Now, we all remember getting up early on a Saturday morning to watch cartoons, reading Goosebumps, playing either Playstation Sega or Super Nintendo. We loved CD players, danced the Macarena in our school discos, we would spend hours on the stairs with slinky's, Space Jam was the coolest movie you'd ever seen and then Cool Runnings came out and now you're torn forever.
You probably owned a Furby, a Beanie Baby and a Tamagotchi whilst drinking Sunny D and putting the alien thing in the fridge so it would have a baby - it never did.
You remember your parents owning a brick of a mobile phone or, the grey huge boxes we called computers playing solitaire.
Pokemon cards were not allowed to be played at school anymore, but we did it anyway because Pokemon was cool!
You may or may not have kicked your younger sibling in the head trying to imitate Power Rangers or Ninja Turtles but you'd run behind the sofa when 'Are You Afraid of the Dark' came on.
Before a time where we would just press the record button, we owned a hell of a lot of VHS tapes (Lion King being one of them), you literally had to jump on the bus and it cost you 20p to get somewhere.

Going on a bit ain't it?

Anyway, here is the low down to the 1990's:

News:
Nelson Mandela was freed and Apartheid in South Africa ended
The case of O.J Simpson
The Channel Tunnel opens
Prince Charles & Diana divorced
Princess Diana died - okay, that was horribly sad and the whole nation mourned
Michael Jordan ditches Baseball for Basketball - but then retires from basketball
Aryton Senna is F1 champion twice - later to die in the San Marino Grand Prix with Rolan Ratzenberge
Michael Schumacher take home the first F1 title twice
Gulf War starts
EuroDisney opens in France
The World Wide Web (or the internet) goes public
George Foreman is still winning titles at 45
Deep Blue is a computer that won chess match against a human
Dolly the Sheep - who can forget the first ever clone!!
We kinda went mad on Mad Cow Disease
Mike Tyson bites off his opponent's ear
Bill Clinton's sex scandal
Google!
Hurricane's Andrew and Mitch rear their heads
Napster is created and uploaded
oh! in 1999, the 6th billionth person is born
Tiger Woods goes from strength to strength

Movies:
Pretty Woman was released along with Ghost, Kindergarten Cop and Home Alone. Clueless, Goodfellas, Silence of the Lambs, Beauty and the Beast, Father of the Bride, Addams Family, Hook, Boyz N the Hood, Thelma and Louise (introducing Brad Pitt to ladies around the world).
Sister Act, Wayne's World, Unforgiven, Basic Instinct, The Bodyguard, Aladdin, Batman returns (Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman).
White Man Can't Jump, Schindler's List, Mrs. Doubtfire, Sleepless in Seattle, Indecent Proposal, Cool Runnings, Jurassic Park, Lion King. Forrest Gump and Pulp Fiction.
Four Weddings & a Funeral, Natural Born Killers, Shawshank Redemption, Santa Clause, Toy Story 1 & 2, Pierce Brosnan as 007, Jumanji, Pocahontas, Se7en, Casper, 101 Dalmations, Independence Day, Jerry Magure (you had me at hello), Scream and Trainspotting.
Edward Scissorhands, Austin Powers, Men in Black, The Matrix, Titanic, The Full Monty, The Fifth Element,  I know what you did last summer, Good Will Hunting, My Best Friend's Wedding, Armageddon, Mulan, Dr. Doolittle, A Bug's Life, Godzilla, Blade, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Rush Hour, Truman Show and The Wedding Singer.
Blair Witch Project, Sixth Sense, Notting Hill, Tarzan, Star Wars (the one with Natalie Portman and Ewan McGregor) and Cruel Intentions.

Music:
We had music like Madonna's Vogue, New Kids on the Block, B-52's, Vanilla Ice and Kriss Kross.
Deee-Lite, Mc Hammer, Snap!, REM, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Massive Attack, Salt-N-Pepa, Nirvana, Bryan Adams, TLC, En Vogue, Genesis (goodness..).
U2, Beastie Boys, House of Pain, The Cure, Bon Jovi, Whitney Houston, Annie Lennox, UB40, Wu-Tang Clan, Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre, Rage Against The Machine, Toni Braxton, Tori Amos, Beck, Green Day, Soundgarden, Rednex, Mariah Carey.
Smashing Pumpkins, Weezer, Shaggy, Coolio, Seal, Spice Girls, Oasis, Tupac, Chemical Brothers, Backstreet Boys, Take That, Fugees, Jamiroquai, The Prodigy and the original Puff Daddy.
Blur, Erykah Badu, Smash Mouth, The Verve, Hanson, Aqua, Fatboy Slim, Placebo, Foo Fighters, Brandy, Monica, Lenny Kravitz, Areosmith (I know which song you started to sing), Celine Dion (again, do the actions with the singing), Lauryn Hill.
Limp Bizkit, Sixpence None The Richer, Britney Spears, NSync, Korn, Sugar Ray, Jennifer Lopez, Enrique Iglesias, Bloodhound Gang, Lou Bega, Ricky Martin and Destiny's Child, and Blink 182.

Television:
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Power Rangers, Rugrats, Live and Kicking, Dinosaurs, Baywatch, Jerry Springer, Home Improvement. Pokemon, Fresh Prince, Barney, The Real World (when reality TV was new and people didn't really watch).
Diagnosis Murder, ER, Friends, Ren & Stimpy (I still don't know what animals they were: red body, blue nose big eyes. long ears/ small body, pink out-y eyes.), Ricki Lake, Blossom (so good).
Sabrina, The Teenage Witch, Moesha, Saved by the Bell (top 5 TV shows ever), X-Files, Doogie Howser - M.D, Ally McBeal, Simpsons, Boy Meets World (my ultimate favourite).
Buffy, Will & Grace, That 70's Show, Dawson's Creek, Charmed, the Powerpuff Girls (!!), Dexter's Laboratory, Spongebob Squarepants, Family Guy, Futurama and The Sopranos.

Fashion:
Grunge is born (think baggy), Boob jobs were acceptable, the 'Rachel' haircut, Floppy curtain hair, Doc Martens, sheer clothing, fluffy cuffs, pointy kitten heels, pigtails, lots of plaits.
Goth came alive, Fanny packs, tank tops, really baggy trousers, jean cutouffs, a load more tattoos (around the bicep and around the belly button), short skirts, the supermodel was born (Naomi, Helena, Christie, Kate, Cindy).
The short crop for girls, coiffed hair for boys, glorious hand through your hair look, Nike ticks in the hair, the 'Caesar' (think pre-grey George Clooney in ER), the goatee (Kurt Cobain), beach blonde hair, showing off the midriffs, belly button piercings, lots of black and lots of flowers.


How long was the 1990's?! - you'd probably answer well, ten years long.. (oh. ha. ha. very funny) but seriously, maybe one day someone will do a blog on the 2000's or the 2010's - but let's face it, let's get real... 1990's was an alright ten years to have entered the world in (especially that 6th billionth kid).
So if someone decides to disagree, just start singing the Spice Girls, put a hand in their face (you know, 'talk to the hand') and say you obviously weren't a kid growing up in the 1990's (but just in case they were, give them a slap and redirect them to this blog).

Oh! the whole reason for this blog was to try to get people to come to my event! So the 11th Feburary 2012 at the Old Fire Station, Bournemouth. There's no other place to be on that night. No excuses.

I'll blog about it all when it's over. :)

Survival of a University Student =) Tweet

It's a new term!

Right now, Jezza Kyle is playing in the background, living room is an absolute mess, I'm wearing lots of layers with a hot chocolate by my side. Tuesday already.

I've been staring at my laptop screen for the past hour and a bit trying to write more covering letters! It's highly frustrating.

January is a weird period for students - Students have to get back into the routine again, you've been away from university for a whole month - back to your parents cooking for you, washing done, saving every penny possible, all your mates back again, its great! You miss university life but you can do with the relaxation and the liver could do with it too!

The new term is greeted to you by assignments deadlines, assignment marks handed back, exams, deadlines approaching sooner than you think and hopefully, your timetable has gotten very very better or a lot worse!!
For me I have three/four deadlines around the same time but my timetable is great which means more time to do work and more team meetings.

I have a 'enjoyment window' where I can go out and enjoy myself for two weeks (I'm not happy) before the hard work really kicks in and I have to actually do some work - not saying I haven't been doing any work now, I'm just easing myself into it. If this has been written down on this blog, it means that I have to keep to my word (huge sigh).

So to the first years who read this blog, I thoroughly wish I was you and I want to stress to you how much jealously I hold for you.
For the second years, go out and enjoy yourself for however long you can before every weekend and every spare time you have is spent in the library or locked away in your bedroom furiously typing. I salute you.
Oh, and for the third years/fourth years, what can I say... how do you do it?!! Tips?


Survival of a University Student =) Tweet

Placements

Universities try to help you get placements - which is great, however, when you try and get your own... what the hell do you do?

Yes, talking about placements now is a little late (but only a tinsy teeny bit late) but I'm just one of hundreds of thousands who are applying around this time (so don't judge me).

Again, yes, I am a twenty year old, second year student maybe I should have a handle on this kind of stuff, but that doesn't mean I know most of the answers.. it just means I'm asking more questions.
You know what's going to happen, don't you? I'm going to know what exactly to do AFTER my placement. Brilliant.

So what I'm doing is writing a email to Whatsonstage.com (apparently they're brilliant, my friend loves them) and Twickenham, Wembley, and maybe other festivals, oh! maybe restaurants/ hotels.
But I don't really have the courage to do it and if I have no courage on email, how can I do it face to face? (See how my previous post about Networking is slowly going down the drain).

Wish me luck.
I'll be maybe, hopefully, planning draft emails to send off tomorrow to companies.

Oh goodness.


Survival of a University Student =) Tweet

LinkedIn, You joined yet?

So  LinkedIn  is the newest social media to be on. It's the world's largest professional networking site with over a 135 million members from over 200 countries, and it started in a living room in 2002.
You won't see any of these guys on Facebook posting their pictures of them bring sick inside a taxi.  LinkedIn  is for professionals; directors, managers, people looking for jobs wanting to get to know more people like them to network with.

What is up with this word network?
University drums it into you, lecturers are definitely drumming it into me and lord knows, I do need to know how to network. But, it's a silly word and my class mates and I shiver at the word now.
Net working. NET  WORKING.  N E T  W O R K I N G !!!
However, it works. If you know the term: 'It's not what you know, it's who you know.' Then networking sums that quote into a perfect symmetrical circle. And if we took it one step further and put it onto the internet, then  LinkedIn  is that and 135 million members cannot be wrong.

According to Belbin apparently, I'm good at networking. I have the personality for it. That definitely took me by surprise, yet I do have my glorious moments of being quite sociable. I like knowing what's going on and where. But we get shy in front of new people and I struggle to ask questions so instead I smile and try not to create an awkward silence.

So, anyway, back to  LinkedIn , I've joined it - to help with my networking. I'm doing well on my contacts (thought I've been told it's not a competition); I've joined all the groups I should, following the companies I should and started rambling on to my friends about going on it too. The problem is, I haven't got the courage to post anything into any of the groups.
I have a really good idea too, that if I put a sentence about trying to get companies to encourage more placement students that maybe, just maybe, someone will take me on. Because quite frankly, I have NO idea what I want to do as a placement yet.
I need something unique, interesting and since the last company I applied to rejected me I'm a little stumped.

LinkedIn with their 2 million Company Pages and people signing up faster than two members of staff joining a company every two seconds. It's got to lead somewhere hasn't it?
If you haven't joined yet, why not? There are 14+ million graduates and students joining and if that's on the 'About Us' page on LinkedIn then that's got to mean people are taking into account that students actually have a purpose and we're not always getting drunk somewhere (even when we are).

So LinkedIn, network with people we know, post something, network with people we don't know on the group discussions, get a placement.. Deal. Deal??

Any ideas? Maybe I should just keep blogging about this type of stuff and then I might get a placement.. Well, I can dream, can't I?


Survival of a University Student =) Tweet

1st December!

I know right? that time already!? It's my 20th birthday on Saturday and I still have no idea what I'm doing fully on that day... and that's because; I HAVE DEADLINES.

So many DEADLINES!

People and Performance
Financial Appraisal
Consumer Behaviour
Event Management;
include into this, CV, cover letters, placement search, job search, birthday plans, Xmas plans, tattoo plans, money saving... all in TWO WEEKS! 

It's 1.13am on Thursday the 1st December. I have a lecture at 11am. And I'll let you into a secret: I haven't even started my People and Performance essay and it's due in Friday 2nd December at midday.
It doesn't look like I'm going to go to bed anytime soon, does it? and I was thinking about getting into University at 10am...?

I haven't actually got anything useful to say. Except when your talking to 2nd year students rolling your eyes when they stress to you how hard 2nd year is because you were out the night before and you thought year two was a whole year away yet.. I knew they weren't kidding but I just thought that I would have cracked the whole 'time-management' thing (like my lecturer always stresses to us about.. blah blah). Turns out I'm really not a time-management person...

This post is just to say, I'm trying my best not to panic. or stress. or cry. or get too excited about my 20th (!) birthday and forget my bloody deadlines!

And with my time-management out the window, it's back to waffling on this damn essay.

Survival of a University Student =) Tweet

How to stage an all-nighter

So this is probably my fourth time staging the study all-nighter. First year I was notorious for them; a assignment due the next day but you'd been too scared to complete it? pull an all-nighter. Been out way too much and you finally realise that you have to do some reading before the lecture tomorrow? pull an all-nighter. Way too much on for you to handle; you just started working and before you know it it's midnight but you can't prepare yourself to stop? pull an all-nighter. Simple.

So it's not good for you to not sleep for a day but this is university, you're not supposed to drink excessively but we do it anyway. Everything in moderation, I say.

At the moment, it's 7.46am on Wednesday morning and I've been up since 10.30am Tuesday morning. I have a 500 word literature review on economic impacts and a 2000 word essay on Entrepreneurial Development. I've finished the ED essay (however it's 3000 words) but I'm struggling very muchly on the literature review.

My all-nighter has consisted of 40minute study time and the occasional 10minute spider solitaire break. I've watched both the brand new Glee's and have been trolling through YouTube looking for anything to keep me up. As well as eating a hell of a load of chocolate bourbons; I'm surprisingly, on my second cup of coffee, stolen some Sugar Puff cereal in a mug and gone through three packets of tissues. Oh, plus the odd posts on Facebook - about absolutely nothing at 3am in the morning, then again 40minutes later thinking it's been about an hour since I last posted.

However (this is the good part), I've been to university, had a thorough talk about placements, emailed people about placements, looked at placements and part time jobs, emailed people about the fundraiser I'm organising, seen my friend do a open-mic set and do most of my review and essay.
See! Useful! All in a actual full days work.

So here are the tips I've stuck with on pulling an study all-nighter:
1. Do work. Your supposed to be studying, don't end up downloading movies and watching crap TV (even if I watched two new Glee's - I had been working really hard before that)
2. Comfy? Make sure you're comfortable. Nothing's worse than being up all night, done all that work and you've been in the most uncomfortable position that you can hardly stand... Talk about nightmare.
3. Coffee. Caffeine. Sugar. You're gonna need it. I've heard a disgusting recipe today for Red-Bull and Berrocca, can you imagine..? Pro Plus can help, so can coffee, Red Bull, Monster, Relentless.. and water helps too!
4. Time yourself. Saying you're going to study consistently for the whole night is unlikely and stupid. Give yourself a break.
5. Again, Sugar. I always think something sweet (like chocolate) gets me through the night..
6. Stretch. Stiff neck, stretch; aching back, stretch; cramping fingers, stretch.
7. Tiredness. There will be a bit where you think "Forget this, I can't stand it anymore, I need sleep." Push through, get up and walk about for a bit, drink some more coffee. Remember that this is all about getting the work done, you can sleep when you've finished it.
8. Water. Definitely have water by your side.
9. MUSIC! click through YouTube like never before, find music on your computer that you completely forgot about so you can head-bang/ mime/ sing along. Anything to keep you upbeat and lively.
10. Mood swings. You've been up all night what did you expect?
11. Reward yourself. By what else? sleep.

Really, you even considering or completing an study all-nighter means you're not very good with your time management so in actual fact, you should be ignoring this post... because you've already completed all your work right?.. RIGHT?!


Don't worry, I won't tell if you won't.

Survival of a University Student =) Tweet

2nd Year!!!

Whoop Whoop 2nd Year!

So Survival of a University Student is becoming a 2nd year!
I am practically mourning my Fresher days already.
No more doing silly stuff just because I'm a Fresher, no Freshers fair; I feel so old!
However, before I declare myself a grumpy old student with no Freshers flair in me, I have three Freshers starting this year and that helps tremendously. Which means that, they will or I hope (after much persuasion) tell me the best Fresher parties so that I can gate-crash.
I'm still coming down on Freshers because if we're being honest here, these three weeks are the best you'll have at University.

So I have decided that until the end of October, I shall party. After that, I will put my head down, and I will study.
Whether this plan will last since my course is quite demanding and knowing them, I'll be emerged into a swarm of work.

On the subject of work and my course, I did well on my exams but I had to resit one.
There’s not much else to say about resits. They suck.
You do your best in an exam, you wait a month and a half and then you see the dreaded words of: Need to resit module.
But at least you can do them.
My motivation towards the exam wasn’t the best; I had work, volunteering, a social life and the thought of having to re-do an exam that I had already revised for… I didn’t want to do it.

But now, second year, I’m going to balance a job, work, volunteering and a social life. This can be done. I will do it.

Anyone got any tips?

Survival of a University Student =) Tweet

Reflection of my first year at University

I’m about to go into my last exams which start next week (wish me luck!). So, I’m going to ‘reflect’ on my first year, of course the word reflect is silly and I hate having to do it but alas…
As you may or may not know, I started a little bit late at University. I missed ‘arrivals week’ and came into university just before ‘Freshers week.’
My housemates were brilliant at first. When I pressed that doorbell to see two housemates, and I’ll never forget their faces and my house-mate calling to the others that ‘Lauren was here!’ I’ve never seen them run that fast before, even to this day.
My room was large, bare and in the attic. The rest of the night consisted of getting drunk playing Ring of Fire and learning about my 6 other house-mates. I remember collapsing into bed that night thinking that this had been the “right thing to do and why the hell had I even doubted coming to university in the first place.”
The nights out were something to remember. No longer was I in Croydon, I was officially a university student with money to spend, a house with six great people and a course that I was sure I would like.
University was different than I expected; I found out what lectures were really like, seminars were definitely ones not to miss and try to get to know some of my course mates.

I got a job early on, in hindsight, I shouldn’t have done it but I can’t regret it. I got to work in a retail job, something I hadn’t done before and to really see what happens in a shop. Though I didn’t really meet a lot of friends and I really hated it, I tried my best to do a good job. But being a student in my first couple of weeks of starting University I didn’t want to miss out on anything. I would go out with everyone on a Friday knowing I had to get up at 6am the next day. I had done it before back in Croydon, I could do it again but, sometimes you wake up drunk at 6am and stumble into work a state; hung-over included.
I think after the incident with a night out and a week old pasta I re-evaluated everything that I was doing. I stopped going on nights out on a Friday and concentrated on getting more sleep but I think by then I was already really jealous of my housemates being at home relaxing on the weekend.

I may have had a four day week of university but to me it was like I couldn’t ever really relax. Even when I was at home I was still working, I was still in ‘university mode’ I could never switch it off. I thought that having a weekend I could maybe switch it off and actually have some me time.

Maybe I should have planned it out differently, maybe I can’t handle two things at once or maybe a retail job really isn’t for me. I know for a fact that that job didn’t treat anyone nicely – even the managers complained how much they hated it. Mainly it was because I was only a Christmas temp. They weren’t going to keep any of us so why bother helping?
I can probably go on all day about how much it bothered me and though I put it to the back of my mind that I wasn’t going to be let go – it was inevitable. I did get some good things out of that job, the other Christmas temps and some of the younger staff were actually quite nice and I was complimented on how good my customer skills were by the customers. Shame my bosses didn’t see that and only noticed I was putting in the voucher codes wrong…


*
UNIVERSITY WORK
University work turned out to be tougher than I thought, I was struggling early on and it didn’t help that everyone around me were doing well or wasn’t doing anything at all.
Even though I had group work, my first assignment did well but I had the horrible feeling that my group didn’t like the fact that I was so casual about it all. They freaked while I told them that we were doing well. As the weeks went on and the assignments kept on coming with other groups and I learnt that everyone was taking this a lot more seriously than me.
I missed lectures, I missed Financial Reporting a lot and only turned up to seminars and group work because apparently this was fine according to second year students.
They literally told us to get all the late nights and bunking off lectures/seminars done now for second year is a completely different story.
So that’s exactly what I did.

The first year of university doesn’t count towards our final grade; you just have to pass it. All the second year students told us “you’ll sail through first year.”
So why was everyone panicking? It wasn’t until later that a fourth year student told us that in our course you couldn’t just ‘sail through,’ you work hard in all four years.


*
MAKING FRIENDS
I did have this idea that I would have loads of friends in my course and that I would go into Uni a different person. As much as I think I have changed, I didn’t really get the friends in my course.

I suppose it doesn’t bother me too much, I realised that everyone had much better and stronger personalities than what I was used to but also that I was quiet. I mostly listened and smiled a lot. I did get to work with many of my course-mates on group work which got me to talk more and to contribute more. Don’t get me wrong I’m not a loner, I do talk to a lot of my course-mates, we all sit together in lectures and I will always say hello.
If I’m going to reflect, I would say that actually does it matter if I haven’t made best friends with my course-mates? Well yes, because that’s why you take that 20minute journey into University but on the other side is all your housemates that make you smile and it’s not as if I haven’t got other friends elsewhere. I have friends through my housemates and my friends back home.
It’s just that little idea I did have before I came to University had been popped.


*
SECOND TERM
I had made my mistakes and revelled in my good grades by Christmas and after the two week break I was back on form to do the best I could. I still missed lectures but I made it into the hard subjects like economics and financial reporting (the subjects that I should really never do, because I can just about count on my fingers).
I hadn’t gone into my overdraft yet (big smiley face), I was happy to be back with my housemates and the two week break I realised that I didn’t need my parents as much as I thought, most of my mates from back home had stopped talking to me so what was the point? I was happier than I had been in ages.

However, my life was a soap opera. I felt like I lived in Hollyoaks. Drama happened left, right and centre. My grades were still good – I had had two really bad nights out and had been sick once. Little things started to happen though; I was really struggling with economics and financial reporting was a bore.

But you do what you can and you carry on.
University timetable was five days a week, three nine am starts. However, my timetable was four days a week (maybe five), with maybe one 9am start – if I hadn’t turned off my alarm in my sleep.

*
THIRD TERM
By March I was a tad homesick which surprised me. I wasn’t one to get upset about missing home however, I was talking more to my friends back home and little habits my housemates had would bug me.. So going home for the month of April really helped.

I was doubting about going returning to the next year of University though; I had changed my mind about what I wanted to do for a career (something I had had planned out since I was about 14/15 years old). It started when all my lectures and my friend stated this out for me: none of the guest lecturers, people we were supposed to aspire to be like, had degrees or any kind of experience in the field they were working in. They just worked their way from bottom to top. So why was I struggling over a degree when I could go out and gain that experience, working my way from the bottom to the top?

Additionally, it was little things like relatives asking me how my course was going and when I answered “hard,” they all rolled their eyes as if to say that I was obviously lying because University wasn’t hard.
It was weird but I was sick of always doing some sort of school work. I had been doing it since I was 5 and now at 19 years of age, I was sick of it. Irony.
It took some time; my parents freaked out just a little and a horrible career interview (while a tad hung-over, I’m not going to lie) for me to really have a look at what I was doing with my life.
Since then I’ve decided to stay. I’ll get the experience and the degree under my belt and then from there, I can look at where I want to go.

It just takes me a look at my grades so far to tell myself that I’m not actually struggling. It’s just me over thinking it. I’ve got a 1st in Financial Reporting (when two days before I had run down to the beach in a state because I thought that I would fail the test) and I haven’t gotten less than a 2:1 (yet…)

So in reflection, I have a house for next year with five (almost) great people and I pray that my course gets interesting in the second year, come September/ October. I’m gaining a really good experience with good friends, cheap nights out and the only real responsibility is to not kill myself with my own cooking.

So here’s to good grades in my four exams. But most importantly, a good summer getting drunk.

Survival of a University Student =) Tweet