Pages

Thursday 30 October 2014

Defining YOURSELF

A couple of weeks ago during one of my introductory seminars, our lecturer went round all of us and asked us to tell the group our name, where we were from, and any fact about ourselves, or what we wanted to do with our degree. It was pretty standard really; people talking about their ambitions, why they're at uni, and what they want to get out of the course. I talked about how I want to go into publishing or teaching because I love both industries bla bla, you can imagine what everyone's responses were.


Then it got to one girl who told us her name, that she was from South Wales, and her fact about herself was that her boyfriend fences for England. Her boyfriend fences for England. Really? She doesn't fence for England, her boyfriend does. Her fact about herself was actually about her boyfriend. She is literally defining herself by her boyfriend's achievements. I don't care how much you love someone, how much you care about them, how much success they've had - you do not introduce yourself by talking about them. Because what does that say about you?


This girl is actually really, really intelligent. She knows all the answers, she grasps concepts we're taught before any of us do, she's always one step ahead. She's bubbly and funny and confident and charismatic, yet she defines herself by her boyfriend's success. First it kind of pissed me off, but then it made me sad. Like, I know it looks like I'm reading way too much into this - and perhaps it's really none of my business to comment on it - but I wanted her to talk about herself. I wanted her to show me and the rest of the seminar set that she actually has ambitions for herself and that she could talk about them. Because she can.


I don't really have a way to sum this up properly but I hope you can kind of see what I'm trying to say? In the least lame, least cheesy way possible, be proud of who you are and always present the best version of yourself to other people. That never has to involve defining yourself by someone else, be it their success, or what you are to them, or anything other than who you are individually. 

(#Lame)

Monday 20 October 2014

A Magical Hoody

The Primark here in Chester is amazing. It's huge and has so many sub-sections... even a Harry Potter section! There are tshirts for each house, socks, scarves, bags, you name it - it's there. I bought a Quidditch hoody purely because I couldn't resist and for £12, it was a bit of a bargain.




I haven't actually worn it out of the house yet but maybe I'll don it when I go and watch one of the Quidditch team's games - it looks so intense and physically exhausting! I'm loving da uni life right now. It's amazing how quickly this new life becomes the norm and how quickly I'm calling this place home.


My boyfriend (still so weird saying that!) came to visit from Cardiff this weekend and I was kind of proud to show him the city and the campus because it's all so lovely and I think I've definitely made the right choice coming here. I hope you're all loving life too and that your motivation for blogging is considerably stronger than mine!

Sunday 12 October 2014

English Autumn

Uni: week two

The lack of posting I'm doing on here stresses me out a bit, but I've actually been so crazy busy. We've been thrown in at the deep end and I'm kind of worried because I know the second and third years of uni are going to be absolutely killer compared to this. I've had two lectures and four seminars, and I've probably done about ten hours of extra reading this week. And we're only at the beginning!


I'm keeping this short and sweet - not a day by day account like last week - and it's going to be picture-filled so I don't have to write a lot #Slacker!


My housemates and I met Charlotte Crosby from Geordie Shore on Monday, and asked her to do an ugly face with us. I whipped out the iconic slug face and we had a great time laughing about it afterwards. I'm so happy that I've magically been housed with girls who are so similar to me and have a lot of the same interests. Chester Accommodation Team, you did good.



I don't really remember a lot of what else I got up to this week that wasn't lectures, seminars, reading or taking notes. I had a particularly wild night out on Friday which resulted in lots of vomit and therefore a little bit of embarrassment. I did go for a little midnight ride on the elephant though, and I think my face says it all.


Shout out to BFF housemate Amy for sharing her pizza and indulging in some crap dancing with me.



Even though I was hanging like heeellll on Saturday morning, I went into town with my other housemate Georgia to pick up some Halloween decorations and birthday presents for Amy. All hail Pound World! We got back when it was raining so we snuggled up inside with a 60p pizza from Tesco and 89p curly fries from Aldi. It was so cosy. Then we decorated the house and the front window for Halloween:





Week two of uni has been fabulous and I'm excited for the rest of my time here. I don't miss home too much, but I miss my best friend and boyf lots. He's coming to visit in five days (!!!!), my mum is coming in 10 days (!!!!) and my best friend is booking time off work to come up soon. All is good! Hope you're all loving uni or sixth form or work and that you're happy and healthy (an apple a day makes you feel so good about yourself, even if you're eating fried chicken the rest of the time).


Song of the day:


Monday 6 October 2014

Uni: week one

Well, I'm here! And I'm kind of liking it actually. It's amazing how quickly everything seems to fall into place and how quickly this becomes the norm. This is my life now. I've been here for eight days. I've fallen more in love with the city of Chester; the buildings are beautiful, the shops are amazing, the night life is great, the people are wonderful. I'm living on the edge of campus in a little close which has fourteen houses in it. They're all student houses and we're all first years so everyone's in the same boat. I'm in the upstairs flat of a house with a lovely girl from Blackpool called Emily. Downstairs, there's two girls Amy and Georgia who I'm probably closest to out of everyone I've met so far. They like a lot of rock music and basically their whole downstairs is like Roxy's room from a New York Minute. There was a Spanish exchange girl living with them but she couldn't hack their mess in the kitchen and she moved out after six days.


When I arrived on Sunday, I unpacked everything and went to look round campus with Georgia. We went back to the house after a couple of hours of wandering and met Amy and Emily. I don't even remember what we made for dinner but we did take a quick trip to a one-stop shop to pick up bread and drinks. We started predrinking nice and early downstairs, accompanied by pizza, and then headed out to the student union bar. It wasn't that great there so we went straight into town and found an elephant statue (!!!!!!???)


We had free entry for a club in town so we went there and took advantage of the free candyfloss and cheap drinks. I treated everyone to my shit dancing and singing and we all had a great time.



On Monday, we went to one of the most boring introductory talks there has ever been at a university. Honestly, I don't even remember what they said. Pretty much everyone in the hall was hanging too so I don't think anyone was properly awake. We went into town afterwards to pick up some necessities we'd forgotten like little bins and laundry baskets. We also swung by Tesco express and I bought totally unnecessary things like peanut butter and Pop Tarts. We played Ring of Fire that night and had a pre-club McDonald's pitstop before going into Rosie's, apparently the best club in town. It was okay, but I preferred the previous night.


On Tuesday morning, I met with my friend Milan and we went to an English language introductory lecture, followed by a meet and greet with all the English tutors. It was scary because I've not really thought much about the actual work side of uni and I feel really unprepared. There was also a mini seminar where I met two lovely girls called Noura and Megan. Everyone seemed to know things that I didn't and I've never felt so inadequate. I got an A in English language at A level and most people here got Cs, and some even got Ds. It's proving that exams don't show everything and I really need to up my game. I had my transfer interview in McDonald's that evening so we took the opportunity to have a dinner of burgers and chips. None of us felt like going out that evening so we had a movie night in Amy's room downstairs with the Hunger Games and lots of marshmallows. It was a nice break from going out. It makes me wonder how I managed it in Zante, going out seven nights in a row. Mental.


On Wednesday, we went to the Fresher's Fair. Stupidly, we only got there ten minutes early, but some people had been queuing for hours. We had to wait two and a half hours in the rain but it was worth it because we got three slices of free pizza each, plus milkshakes, vouchers, mugs, everything. It was freebie heaven! I also learned a lot about what the uni has to offer. Fresher's Fairs ruuuuule! In the evening, we went over to one of the other houses in our close for predrinks and to actually make friends with other people, something we'd managed to avoid so far. I made a babe of a friend called Charlotte who let me ride drunkenly on her penny board round the house. We played Jenga and card games and laughed a lot before heading back out to the first club we went to, Cruise. I saw quite a few people I recognised because it's a tiny uni and you're always bumping into the same groups.


I had a free day on Thursday so Amy and I took a trip to Aldi and did our big weekly food shop. I managed to get everything I wanted for just £15. Aldi is amazing. I might do a post soon on student meals and stuff - not that I'm an expert - because I'm learning and I want to show that! We also went to Aldi again later with Georgia and her kind-of-boyfriend Kris, but this time in Amy's car, praise da lawwd. I know this all sounds really mundane but it's helping me remember what I did and I can read back on this in a few years and remember my freshers week. Yet again, we stayed in Thursday night which was nice. I'm actually really liking this system of one night in, one night out!


Friday morning was the Sports and Societies Fair. For someone who used to be really into sports, it's amazing how little I care about them now. I did picked up a leaflet for women's football though. I've played for nine years now and this past year has been the first year ever that I didn't play a season. I've kind of missed it a bit - not just the playing, but more the social side. I think girls that play football are a certain type of people and I love that. I'm trying to work up some courage to go along to training tonight! I also had a group meeting with my Personal Academic Tutor on Friday which again scared me because it turns out that I hadn't done any of the summer reading (to be fair, most people hadn't). I'm freaking the fuck out about my lectures and seminars. Georgia, Rachel, Amy and I went shopping in the afternoon to pick up some costume bits for a zombie schoolgirl themed night. After yet more predrinks and card games downstairs, we headed to an amazing club called Phoenix. It's really tiny in there and all they play is rock and screamo, but I had a surprisingly good time. Everyone was dressed up in school uniform with wild zombie face paint. It was great.


Saturday was open day at the uni and I had stupidly volunteered to show hordes of people around our house. Little did I know that there would be literally thousands of people queuing up outside our front door throughout the day. I must have walked up and down our stairs hundreds of times, but I was given a free lunch and £35 worth of Tesco vouchers for the day's work, so that's my next two weeks of shopping paid for, woohoo! I stayed in again on Saturday night but Emily and I took a quick trip to the chicken shop down the road with our student discount vouchers. Who knew a chicken burger and a hash brown between two buns could taste so good?! Amazing. We then spent hours cutting up our collection of coupons we were given at the Fresher's Fair and organising them into piles. So productive.


Sunday was also a chill day. I went with Georgia and Amy to the laundry room and watched them wash and dry their clothes - I didn't feel I had enough dirty laundry to justify paying £2.50 for one wash. Maybe I'll start handwashing my clothes because all this launderette business is going to make me poor. We had cups of tea and beans on toast in the evening before coming up to my room to catch up on The Great British Bake Off. I was SO upset about Chetna leaving, you have no idea. I had a jacket potato for dinner and Emily, the babe, made me chips later on. We've also created a Baby Phil Mitchell out of a fire extinguisher downstairs and we're all becoming rather fond of him.



On my nights in, I've been having phonecalls with my mum and my best friend, but also Skype calls with my um, boyfriend. It still feels really weird to call him that. Honestly, Skyping him is what I look forward to when I don't go out and we talk for like three hours at a time, or whenever we need to go to sleep. We even did that really loser-ish thing last night of leaving Skype open and going to sleep with our laptops next to our beds. It was nice though because I woke up to see him pootling around his room and getting ready to go to his lecture. I'd recommend trying that because as lame as it sounds, it's actually really lovely.


This brings us up to today where I'm about to wash up, meet aforementioned new friend Noura, and go to our very first lecture together. I'm kind of excited, kind of shitting myself. Ahhh! I hope you're all having a wonderful time, whatever it is you're doing.


Song of the day: