Spare Time

I am currently sitting in the library on campus, waiting for my English lecture. Unfortunately, it doesn't start for another hour and a half. Therefore, I am at an ends as to what to do with all my free time. This seems to happen a lot during the week, when I have an hour or two free between lectures. What I am supposed to do, on a half empty campus, when all I have on me is a pad of paper and my lunch? I feel like I should accomplish something with all this time but for the life of me, I cannot. I am separated by miles from my laptop, my work and my bed.
Lucky for some, my friend Sarah, who is sat next to me, can work on her notes for her presentation this afternoon. In a group that cannot decide on anything and she has barely met up with - but that is another rant all together.
Is this what my university life has come to? Wasting my time until lunch by writing a half-hearted blog post? That doesn't seem fair. And yet, I will continue nonetheless.
In other news, my memory stick, the one that has contained most, if not all, of my documents for the last three years, got smashed yesterday. The cord was tugged by an unsuspecting foot and the laptop flew off my lap onto the floor, crushing my poor memory stick under it. I believe I am actually in mourning for the poor thing sat on my boyfriend's bookshelf awaiting diagnosis. I cried for my diaries and stories that are now lost for probably the better part of an hour yesterday.
Well, I have successfully wasted half an hour, between writing this and helping Sarah with her presentation notes. Wish her luck and express your condolences for my dying memory stick.

Saint Valentine's Day

Yes, unfortunately we are going to talk about Valentine’s Day. I am one of the lucky ones to actually have a valentine, and I have done for the last 3 years, so I can’t really remember being aware that I was single for Valentine’s Day, considering I would have been about 15 and didn’t really care.

Nowadays, too much importance is put on whether you have a valentine or not each year. If you do, you spend extra time and money on a special day out, a meal, a present or three. If you don’t, especially if you are female, you will stereotypically be found in bed all day eating ice cream and watching chick flicks. Let’s face it, this is mostly true.

But actually, this commercial holiday has a religious basis, one that wasn’t glitter-covered.

The Saint Valentine most commonly associated with the 14^th of February lived under the rule of Claudius the second and was imprisoned for marrying Christian couples. Helping Christians was a crime at the time (ha, unintended rhyming) and he was condemned to death because he tried to convert the Emperor. The Saint Valentine remains in the Catholic Church’s official list of saints, the Roman Martyrology.

Now back to modern day valentines. I will try not to get too mushy on you, Blog. I spent mine mostly in the company of my valentine, my lovely boyfriend of nearly 4 years. We had a bedroom picnic with ice cream and chocolate and I made him watch Bridget Jones’ Diary. A lovely day spent with my love.

I hope, readers, that you have had a nice Valentine’s Day, with chocolate and silly movies and ice cream. But really, we don’t a valentine or an excuse for that.

Caution: Mad Thoughts

I feel as though I should write something. I'm not sure what. But I've started, so I might as well.

Let's see. Sunday afternoon. Typcailly it should be time of rest and relaxation before the hustle and bustle of Monday morning. My Monday mornings are not busy anymore (thank you university timetable). This Sunday afternoon has been spent watching Bones and trying to do some of my English essay.

I have a headache. My sleeves on my hoodie are really beginning to annoy. No, stupid sleeves, I need blood circulation to my arms, stop cutting it off around my elbows!

I apologise for the lack of coherent thought in this post. I am tired. But this is actually a real-life glimpse of the raw, insane thoughts of my (sometimes) working brain. I was going to put noggin, but that sounds... I don't know, almost common or something.

It's February now, isn't it? It was my friend's birthday on the first. She turned 19. Do you know what we did to celebrate her birthday? No, you don't, obviously, so I shall tell you. We went to the Jane Austen centre in Bath, because we are English nerds. We had posh tea in the tea rooms. Because we couldn't afford anything else!

Do you know how you can tell if you are an English nerd? I had a dream a few nights ago about Mansfield Park. That took my English nerdiness to the next level.

Have you noticed how quickly my brain switches from subject to subject? It's actually a little scary. And I'm not even writing everything down! For instance, right now, I have Hurricane in my head because I just watched a fanvid for it; I am also thinking about putting my TV back on to watch Bones - because Booth is hot. I am worrying over my essay because I have to write another 700 words in the next few days and I have no idea when I will be able to. I have a headache; I can't look at the screen for too long because it's making my eyes hurt.

I feel like I've just spewed all over the keyboard and I'm not even finished. Seriously guys, I am sorry for this pathetic excuse for a blog post. But, I have learned that just because you feel like writing something, if you don't know what to write about, then you probably shouldn't. Otherwise, you might just end up with this: a mess of incoherent thoughts and scaring away people. Oh, so kind of like normal then.

My Work Space

Even though I should be working on my essay, or at least doing some research for my independent project, I am writing a blog post instead. This work thing has got me thinking though. I assume most of you, and anyone else who doesn’t read this, have desks to work from. Funnily enough, so do I. I just don’t use it. Usually this is because I tend to spread out stuff I have to do on my desk, which means I don’t have any space to actually do my work. Luckily, there is an alternative: my bed. Yeah, I know, it shouldn’t be. The bed isn’t exactly a structure made for work, is it? And yet, somehow, I mange to get work done. God knows how, because I am very likely to stop midway through a paragraph of an essay and think, ‘I’ll just check my emails quickly, you know, for a break.’ Next thing you know, its half an hour later and I am internet shopping.

Anyway, once again, I am spending my Saturday mornings struggling to concentrate on the work I probably should get done so I can see my boyfriend later but all I can think about is ‘oh, I haven’t checked BlogSpot for a few days.’

How the internet spoils me.

twentyten

 Yesterday, I posted a video on my rarely used YouTube channel, so called because I don’t post many videos and not many people watch them! In the video, I tried to summarize my 2010. It didn’t work very well. As I mentioned, the most important things of my 2010 was finished my A-levels and getting into university. But I did have a good year. Not many extraordinary things happened but looking back, it was a good year. Great, now I sound like I’m talking about wine.

Even though I turned 18 in late 2009, many of friends had their 18^th birthdays in early 2010. I have bubbly, laughter filled memories of friends dressed up on the dance floor, plus birthday cake in English class. Also in January, I had my first lot of exams. Partly because I don’t want to relive the horror, partly because I can’t remember which ones I took when, I will skip this.

Once March hit, many of us realised the count down to final exams had started in earnest. Many free periods were spent in empty classrooms, pouring over notes and textbooks. Then, after we exhausted ourselves of work, we drew on the whiteboards.

The next few months passed in a flurry of paper, revision and exams. Once they were finally over, I let myself enjoy the longest summer I will most likely ever have.

My fondest memories of 2010 were during the summer months. I met up with friends and family, hunted for lions, went to prom, went to Legoland, went to Northern France, shopping trips, cinema trips etc. Relatively normal outings but they were fun.

We have now passed through summer all too quickly, and I needed to start preparing for university. Because I live within a radius of the university, I didn’t need to look for accommodation. But I did need to spend over £100 on set texts – trust me to pick the most expensive courses of English Literature. The last week of September, it was my first week of university. I was terrified. Through pure luck, I found friends quickly and bonded over nerdy similarities.

October now and it was my 19^th birthday. I spent the day with old friends, eating Doctor Who birthday cake. Mother had planned an outing to the theatre for the following day to see John Barrowman in concert. *squee* It was one of the most amazing nights of my life!

October flowed into November. The only way I was aware of time and day was deadlines for essays.

The last month of 2010 and the only difference was that it was freezing. The last two weeks of term was spent huddled close to radiators and trying not to slip on ice.

So there you have it. My relatively normal, if slightly nerdy, existence of the last year. I hope you all had a great 2010 and an even better 2011.

10 Sleep's To Go!

I am incredibly childish in most aspects of my life and Christmas is no different. I adore everything about it: the spirit, the decorations, the lights, the snow (as long as I am inside). Right now, I just can’t wait for term to be over so I don’t have to make an hour’s commute in the cold!

I put my Christmas tree up last weekend. And when I say ‘my’, I mean mine. The four foot tree that’s sheds green plastic all over my floor is now standing proudly at the end of my bed. The ceremony of putting up a Christmas tree is filled with Christmas spirit. As such, I put ‘The Grinch’ on DVD while I tripped up over the multicoloured lights. My boyfriend watched with amusement as I giggled over the little decorations I have collected over the years. My favourite ones include Winnie the Pooh, a flower fairy and most importantly, a bushy-haired Hermione Granger sat on a pile of books.

What I want to know is if you guys have any special Christmas decorations. Anything from a homemade one from primary/elementary school, something you bought as a present or one that was given to you as a present.

Well, this was a very short post. Hopefully there will be something a little more interesting next time.

Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas!

The bane of my very existence...

... is fast becoming presentations. In the next three weeks, I have to three presentations for three different classes. Now, apart from the fact that I literally hate giving presentations because I have major stage fright, normally, I can deal. This is due to the fact that I will not be the only one stood at the front of the class, there will be three other people suffering with me. Under normal circumstances, this is great: share the workload, share the speaking, share the marks. However, if, for instance, I say “we’ll meet up on Tuesday to put all our research together”, I kind of expect people to turn up on Tuesday with their work. What, I wonder, would be worse: everyone turning up but with unfinished work or no-one turning up?

Well, the latter happened to me today. By some miracle, I made it onto campus through the snow and ice, with my work, only to find no-one else from my group there. After waiting a reasonable amount of time (maybe ten minutes) I did what seemed necessary: I bitched to my friends.

No, not really. Well, I did complain but then I took the high ground and emailed them all for them to send me their work, and I would put it together. Because, let’s face it, otherwise, it would never happen.

I can only hope this doesn’t happen with my other presentations. Well, wish me luck!