I hope you're having the time of your life

I’ve definitely noticed a different feel to the second term of Uni. An ease in manner exists between everyone. The nerves and extraordinary excitement Freshers brought the first time round isn’t there to add flare, but then it isn’t there to stunt relationships either. After living with everyone for nearly 3 months before Christmas, coming back felt like returning to a school term where you’ve known your class mates for years. Except perhaps that’s not a worthy comparison.

University isn’t like school – I think I’ve stated this many times through the progress of this blog. It’s a life choice. It’s about standing on your own two feet and making a decision to not only study something you enjoy but to take a personal and social journey alongside. It's about the people you share it with. To me, the connection of all these things is University.

So yes, I’m back and ready to start blogging again. There are a few Christmas photos up on my Tumblr (as well as some Sherlock related bits and pieces and nerdy things) if you fancy checking them out (link to the right). I am also undertaking the 50 book challenge for 2012, so I’ll put some stuff about that on Tumblr too. I am planning on interviewing some of my friends and posting the results on this blog so you can get to know a bit about the people I live with! So if you have a burning question for me to ask them please put it in the comments. I’m going to ask them to come up with questions anyway and we will see what I can compile!

Here’s to another term!

Thank you, as always, for reading. xxx

So I've decided to start a Tumblr

This is just a very brief post – I will do another about end of term Christmas antic s soon – to let you all know that I have decided to start a Tumblr to run parallel to this blog. As you have probably have already gathered University is a busy place and I don’t get to write full length blog posts as often as I’d like to. I have therefore decided to set up a Tumblr account (for those of you who don’t know Tumblr, it’s just another blogging medium) to let those who are interested know about the smaller, less significant things I get up to/think about. Tumblr is great for images, videos, short paragraphs and quotes so that’s what you can expect there. Of course, this blog will always be my priority and if you don’t like/hate Tumblr or don’t really want to know the finer details of what I get up to then I completely understand. Tumblr will also be a medium where I can talk about things I held as interests before Uni – I’ll probably end up discussing literature, games, TV, films and other nerdy things, so if that is your thing, come and say hi!

As always – thank you for reading. My Tumblr link is - http://notjusthewordsonthepage.tumblr.com/

xx

The days blur into one.

I’ve decided I’m going to stop apologising for late blog posts as it seems to have become a bit of a theme – there just isn’t enough hours in the day! However, I’m being good. I’m sitting down and going through all the little outstanding things I needed to do and this, of course, is surely the most important one. I’ll set the Uni reading aside for a moment and fill you in.

So I shall begin at Halloween and Fireworks Night. Back home, Halloween isn’t a particularly big thing for me. We are one of those families that hands out sweets to the children down our road, but after a certain time turn the lights off and pretend we aren’t in. At University, Halloween is an event that just gives an excuse for us to party. The eclectic mixture of costumes shows student imagination at its best – a giant gingerbread man, teletubbies and Colonel Gaddafi to name a few.  Fireworks Night was lovely – a group of us trekked up to Tyler Hill, not far out of the University, and become Canterbury locals for the night. This is very much a town event and not organised by the University. After wandering down a country lane in an organised mob we came upon what came only be described as a quaint and hidden field filled with people. Not only was there a bonfire, there were fair-ground rides and attractions, candyfloss and hot food. Reversion back to childish glee commenced. All in all it was a lovely night spent with lovely people and a great way to kick off November.

I’m lucky that Kent has a theatre on campus in the form of The Gulbenkian – I feel so fortunate to just take a 2 minute walk to this cosy and compact little building (which does great hot chocolate) to watch some theatre. I’ve seen three very different plays since I’ve been here.  The best one has to be a fantastic production of ‘A Clockwork Orange’ by the theatre company Volcano. It blew me away. Having seen the Kubrick film in the first few weeks of Uni it seemed a good one to go and see – they really did a fantastic job.

Exploring Canterbury has also been great fun – whether it be a quick trip down to the local Poundland or getting lost in the back streets filled with small, unique shops it really is an incredible place to live. Every time you happen upon something different, whether it be a reptile shop, a second hand books store or a specialised nerdy shop, every single time feels like a discovery to be treasured. An adventure really.

As time passes, it feels strange that I’ve been here for over 2 months. I have to say it feels a lot longer. I think it’s to do with the people I’ve met – because we spend most of the day interacting with each other life just becomes such a breeze. It’s great to be around people who accept you for who you are and to share such an amazing experience with them. I wouldn’t change the late Mario Kart games, the hilarious Articulate sessions, the films, the random dinner conversations ,  the jokes, the laughs, the hugs and the smiles for the world. Thank you to all my Uni friends who read this – thanks for making this first term an absolute blast.

Here’s to what’s to come.

Once again, as always, thank you for reading.

So I walked into the haze..

I suppose I should start this blog post off with an apology – I’m an awful human being who promised she would post soon. That was 3 weeks ago. I do have an excuse – we had a sudden first batch of assignments due, so I found myself with 4 essays to contend with in 3 weeks. The entire University essay process is very different from that of school too. You have to do extra research unless specified, referencing and bibliographies are crucial and plagiarising is the biggest sin you could possibly commit. No one is there to bug you about deadlines, or remind you to plan and the handing-in process can feel like a trial in itself. However, I managed the task, I’m back and, until Wednesday, am assignment free. I have much to relay and I hope you enjoy it

So, last time I blogged I was about to go home. Ironically, I’m actually going home this Friday, but I’ll tell you a bit about my trip back.  I went home on a Thursday as I had a reading week for one of my modules (I don’t get whole weeks off, only certain days because the reading weeks for the modules I do don’t overlap). The journey was easy, but pulling into Guildford and then Godalming was the strangest experience. You start to realise that University can be such a bubble and that life back home has carried on – people are still living their own lives like you, but you can’t help have that little selfish notion that they should stop and wait for you to be there to. I was greeted with no major changes in my village but I definitely felt more appreciative of it as home.

When I got back to my house, I ended up standing in the middle of my living room and just taking a deep breath. It was the oddest feeling – disorientation and familiarity. It’s difficult to describe. Seeing my family after almost 5 weeks was amazing – after experiencing such change in my life it felt almost nostalgic to go back and just have a family ‘discussion’ in the kitchen, to eat my parents cooking and to argue over what to watch on the TV. Not being able to see my little brother is really hard too, so just to catch up with him was more than I could possibly ask for. You really take your life before Uni for granted too. For example, objects I didn’t know I would miss – dishwasher, sofa, washing machine that is free to use, TV, being driven in a car suddenly become luxaries. Either way, my trip home was lovely, but it was good to come back to my second home in Kent. And it really has become a second home. I wouldn’t be without both lives now in a second.

I’ll blog again towards the end of the week to fill in on the rest of what I’ve been getting up to. Until then, thank you for reading and thank you for waiting.  As always, it means the world to me.

xx


The title of this blog post comes from the song Spanish Sahara by Foals which I was listening to while writing. :) Also, I don't think I've mentioned that I have Twitter on here. I do - I'm @charlydrwhomad. (I'm a nerd, I know).  Feel free to come and follow me :)

[insert blog post reminding people you're still here]

Hello!

I know this post is long overdue – I’m sorry, University seems to take on a completely different pace of life to being at home. Even though I spend less time actually being taught I feel busier than ever. It’s so different from school, definitely in a good way, as it starts to feel more like your time is your own.  It just so happens that the past week has had me rushed off my feet – in the best way possible.

A good friend asked whether I could blog a little bit about the degree I’m doing, so if literature isn’t really your thing, you might switch off a little for this bit. Sorry. I’m doing an English and American literature degree – its single honours and consists of 4 modules, two are compulsory and two I picked. The first module (compulsory) is Romanticism and Critical Theory which I rather love – Romanticism is fascinating – of course you get the Byron, Coleridge, Blake, Wordsworth and Keats, but I also study lesser known Romantic figures and ideas – post colonialism, the idea of the ‘Orient’ and the ‘Other’. The critical theory is probably the hardest to get to grips with, mostly because the reading material is so dense but interesting to a literature nerd nonetheless. My second module (also compulsory) is Critical Practice. It basically does what it says on the tin and teaches you how to ‘close read’ texts – the reading for it is very diverse, from Beowulf to Marvell.

So if you’ve fallen asleep thus far, sorry, 2 modules left. Now, these two I picked. I was given the choice of doing a ‘wild module’ in a different subject, but decided to stick with modules the English school provided for the first year. The first module is ‘Readings in the 20^th Century’ which I think provides the most interesting seminars and is my favourite. At the moment I’m studying modernism, but one of the highlights of the modules is exploring literature of different cultures – T.S Eliot and Virginia Woolf, Kafka and the diaries of Gauguin. The literature is then studied alongside art and film – I’ve watched King Kong (the original), Ridley Scott’s Alien and a fantastic little Soviet film by Vertov called ‘The Man with the Movie Camera’. The module really shows how literature can play into everything and the fact all arts interweave. The second module is ‘Early Drama’ – basically everything that came before Shakespeare. The first recorded theatre in England.  My favourite part about this is overlap into theatre and the strong historical content.

The amount of reading for English is of course a lot. You’d be stupid to enter into an English course, albeit any degree, and not expect to read. The work does feel like a step up from school, but definitely in a good way – it’s a challenge.

OK, I’m sorry for boring you all, but I’d just like to draw your attention to two things. ONE. I know I mentioned this already, but my lovely friend Sarah is also doing a blog about her gap year. 6 months of which she is spending in Disney land and then she is off on all sorts of adventures! So go and read it. And leave her lovely comments. TWO. My friend from Uni, Mr ICOEPRproductions (Sammy) is very close to hitting 2,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel – so what are you waiting for? SUBSCRIBEl Links to both of them are over there, to your right.

That’s me signing off for the mo – I’m actually off back home next Thursday, so I have no excuse not to blog next week. Once again, as always, thank you for reading. xx

I build a home.

The news of the weekend has done a lot to knock me off track this week. I realise this isn’t a normal occurrence for every Uni student’s life, but I wanted this to be truthful account and sadly things like this do happen. What has spurred me on though is this. Before writing I checked the stats for this blog. Not only are there people reading, but quite a few of you too! Smile = very firmly on my face.

Well, I’m nearly half way through my second week and a massive factor in University life, in case you hadn’t already guessed, is independence. A bucket load of it. Everything is completely down to you – from making sure you feed yourself properly, to doing laundry, getting to lectures on time and even managing your money. Of course ‘work hard, play hard’ is the cliché I could drop in here, but I think the experience you have depends heavily on what you, and only you input into the huge life style change. If you sit in your room and lock yourself away, then you probably will feel homesick and isolated. It’s amazing what just propping your door open can do.

 Making a home for yourself is so important – it puts you ease straight away and allows you get on with the important stuff.. People say one of the things they worry about the most in University is making friends and getting on with the people they live with. All I can say is, from my experience, if you are yourself (and that’s very important), throw yourself in and meet as many people as possible, even after Fresher’s Week, it’ll make those little anxieties that bit easier.

As for the degree programme, in my case English and American Literature, I couldn’t ask for more. Sitting around and discussing books, poetry and criticism with like minded people feels like a bit of fun rather than studying. Picking a degree that you know you hold interest in is so important.

Sorry if this feels a bit generic – I think it is – this medium takes my mind off the obvious. It’s a pleasure to be able to write this – if I could hug every reader individually I would (I wouldn’t at the moment though; I think Fresher’s Flu Point Two is on the way). They say time is a great healer – I couldn’t think of a better place to play that time out than where I’m at now. Thank you to all (especially Uni peeps) who have made the past few days a little easier – you’ve helped more than you could possibly imagine.

Once again, thank you for reading xxx

In memory

I made this blog as a means to recount my time at University– truthfully and honestly. I feel it appropriate to therefore leave the memory and essence of someone I love here.

Yesterday I received the news that, after a battle with cancer, my Grandad passed away peacefully in his sleep. Dealing with something like this at University has its pros and cons – pro definitely being that everyone is so supportive, lovely and willing to lend a friendly ear – I’ve only known the people I live and study with for 2 weeks and they have only made this time easier. Con, obviously, is the want to be with family, to leave the University ‘bubble’ just for it a bit to take a breath.

I didn’t see Grandad before I went to University, but he knew I was going and he knew I was going to study something I love. I think the best way I can honour his memory is to make sure these next 3 years are some of the best times of my life. I hope you come along for the journey.

Thank you for reading.

Keith Edward Wright – died 30^th September 2011. Rest In Peace