Generic Snow Blog: March 2013

'Everyone needs to run out to their cars and get out whilst they can, because the pavement is FAR too slippery, so walking is ludicrous, and head to the nearest hill, but this has to be done at 5mph, y'know just to be 'safe', and abandon it halfway up, because you just can't quite make it. Gritters can't come out until at least 6am tomorrow morning, because coming out BEFORE the snow settled would have been ridiculous! Probably best to stop all the buses as well, but lets not close any of the shops, 'just in case' a customer comes in, which they will because clearly we're all going to be snowed in and starve to death if we don't immediately go to the nearest supermarket and bulk buy everything they have on the shelves and barricade ourselves in our homes, because we don't know how long this is going to take, who knows how long it'll be until the half an inch of snow outside melts...'

Today, the snow is falling once again and as usual everything has stopped. I'm happy to be home, because the need to abandon your car is horrible, especially for such a pointless trip! The likelihood is that most of us will be able to return to normality in the next few days, so the bulk buying of food is unnecessary, particularly when it's a week later and you still have 2 loaves of bread and 8 pints of milk that need to be used up by tomorrow. But  as ridiculously unprepared the UK is to deal with such an insignificant amount of snow, this gives us a great opportunity to sit back and breathe. I get stressed easily, and when I get stressed I get insomnia and become so unproductive it's painful. So tonight, instead of having a ridiculously busy evening comprised of various events, I'm going to sit back, have a proper dinner, and catch up with some work. Then perhaps I'll actually get a proper nights sleep

It's so easy to get wrapped up in everything that's going on as an individual, it's humbling to see how little control we actually do have when something like this happens,

XOX

3.5 months

3.5 months seems like a long time if you put it into perspective:

- It's more than the length of 1 trimester in pregnancy
- Over a quarter of a year
- The length of 3 lunar cycles
- The length of or longer than some prison sentences

But that's how long it is until I finish the second year of my degree, and I'm really starting to realise how difficult this year is actually becoming, and after some mediocre exam results (but still much higher than average for the modules!) it's looming on me just how much I have to do in these next 3.5 months until I complete this year. This semester I have to:

- Cement the 2:1 I'm currently sitting on to give myself a chance to get into med school
- Prepare for the UKCAT/ GAMSAT
- Organise myself some more work experience, including preparing a trip to Thailand
- Turn 21! (Not so much I have to do, more as in it's coming!)
- Talk to my personal tutor for advice on getting into medical school
- Pass this year!!!

Therefore I'm going to work so hard this semester and get organised, because it's only getting harder from here, wish me luck!!

Providing all this needs to happen, 3.5 months really doesn't seem that long...

XOX

Let it snow! (Or not)

I always feel so Scrooge like when I say that I hate snow, but I do, I hate it. What's there to hate? I love how pretty it looks, how you can take some of the most amazing photographs (see below), spontaneous snowball fights, and wrapping up in woolies. And I loved all of this until I started driving.

Driving in the snow is one of the most terrifying experiences I've ever had to endure, firstly, as a child you're blissfully ignorant to how dangerous the snow actually is, not just for cars, but the increased fall risk, the risk of the cold in certain groups of the population, the risk the ice poses to anyone. But driving is terrifying, the first time anything bad happened it really wasn't that bad, I was driving to sixth form, but before I even got out of my road I span round, it happened a few times until I managed to turn around and go home.

Yesterday, I got stuck getting out of a side road next to my house, and would have been completely stuck if it hadn't have been for the help from 3 strangers who were absolutely amazing! But today was something else

I had an exam this afternoon, and the plan was - Go to uni, do my exam, go and grab some food, go back to uni and revise until late and go home. Which in essence worked until it started to snow near the end of my exam. So I finished the exam and found Sarah. We looked at the snow which was falling a lot but just melting as it hit the ground, which, for a 10 minute round trip, really shouldn't be that much of an issue, and I'm one of these people who don't believe that a little bit of the white stuff should grind everything to a halt.

But apparently it does, with a country so unequipped to deal with this kind of situation (and to be fair, it doesn't happen very often!) a 5 minute trip can turn into 50 minutes, to which this point the snow had began to settle on the ground and mixed with the general wetness of the situation to form a thick slush, so after a LOT of shouting, panicking and general crying, we managed to coerce some strangers into pushing my car safely onto the pavement, it was far to dangerous to continue and I couldn't release the handbrake without the car sliding backwards.

It turns out we wouldn't have been able to proceed further anyway, we passed a bus at the top of the hill diagonally blocking the road, and with reports of a bus at the bottom of the hill which had basically split in half (a bendy bus, not actual metal!) we were absolutely stuck.

So at this point, we're both wearing pretty inappropriate shoes, and with a walk home ahead of us we needed to stock up on supplies for warmth and food resources, but what we met at Asda was emptiness, with the few people who were there panicking about how to get home, because Hollingbury was basically cut off from the rest of Brighton

In all honesty, the walk home probably would have been nice in better weather, and we had some amazing quotes come out of it like 'why did we bother with a car, trolley is clearly the best way to travel!!' and not only am I so glad I wasn't alone, but being with Sarah not only made it bearable, but almost enjoyable :)

An hour and a half later, and almost 4 hours after we left uni, we're home. After walking basically 4 and half miles in the snow.

And this is why I hate snow,

All because some white stuff fell from the sky!!!

XOX

The abnormal, acute stress reaction, by me....

Todays been a bad day, today I've just wanted to cry.

I wanted to cry because things kept going wrong, I didn't have the right notes on me, I'm far too chubby for someone of my height, that no one would help when I was almost dropping all my stuff down the stairs, the fact that I know that would be different if I was attractive, the fact that I've had to de-ice my car twice today, that there's ambiguity and I know the lecture slides are wrong but I don't want to be penalised for writing the wrong thing, that I have coursework due in tomorrow that I have no motivation to complete, because someone scratched my car, because I don't work at tesco anymore nor can I look at my club card points because my privilege card expired, because I don't know how well I can do in theses exams.

And I know I wouldn't be bothered by any of this if I wasn't ridiculously stressed out,
I do my best work in exams because I work well under pressure, but psychologically I'm falling apart slowly so I'm going to have a nice (lukewarm) shower and get a film in, some dinner and do the last few questions without any pressure and I'll submit the one due in Friday tomorrow as well

15 days until its all over, see how I fare then!!

XOX

Observations from the library :D

Pretty standard for working here but here goes

1. Somehow it's been an hour and a half since I last looked at the time
2. The multitude of pages I just wrote turns out to only be 6
3. Somehow it got dark since I last looked up
4. And I didn't notice someone take the chair away from beside me
5. Now I've stopped my arms are aching more than they do after a work out!
6. 2 of the 4 electrical devices i bought with me have run out of charge, with the other two being dangerously close
7. There's a lot fewer people here than when I last looked up
8. And I need to be home in 15 minutes if I'm going to be at all productive tonight!!

But in all seriousness I've actually got what I wanted to get done :)

The joys of exam time!

XOX

Tomorrow, Or Should I Say Today?

Tomorrow is a big day, Tomorrow is approaching too fast, I'm not ready for tomorrow. So what do I do? I sit here at 2am, completely awake, completely unable to sleep. My mind is racing about the gravity of the amount that I need to do and I don't know if I can actually physically cope with it.



I'm probably being dramatic.



Tomorrow brings the beginning of my fifth term of this course,  out of a potential 9 that I will experience in Brighton. And it starts with exams. If any of you have read my blogs from May then you'll know exactly how stressed I get about exams and now is no exception. But this time I'm going to do things slightly differently. I'm setting myself on a rigorous schedule of doing 8 hours a day for 6 days a week, spanning through the rest of January doing either assignments, lectures or revision, and I'll be doing this in uni. Here it is:

1. Get up at 8am, this is achievable by setting the alarm for 7am
2. Spend time with God in the morning, prayer is going to be so essential, and I won't get anywhere on my own
3. Make sure I have breakfast
4. Get into uni for around 9, stay there.
5. Make sure I have lunch
6. Make sure I have dinner
7. Sleep at a decent time (ignoring the fact that I'm currently blogging at 2am!)
8. Make sure I get to the gym 3 times a week, the increase in fitness will help to increase productivity as well as getting a break from academic pursuits.

All of these seem small, but at the moment, as someone who has no routine, who eats only when she is hungry, and seems to have a total lack of discipline, then this is going to be difficult for me. And with the increased pressure of the grades I'm going to achieve here not only impacting on my final degree classification but my chances of getting anywhere with my application to medical school.

Wish me luck, I'll update soon,

XOX

Resolutions, family, presents and too much turkey..

Belatedly- happy festive season!!
I've had the most amazing few weeks, beginning with a lovely early Christmas dinner with my 2 favourites, to going home, to having an amazing and very sober beginning to 2013!

Of course nothing seems to go without some kind of hiccup, and mine was £110 worth of repairs to my car, but also a solved mystery to why I've had so many problems and I'm now entering 2013 with a non clunky sounding car that runs like a dream (definitely the first time I've been able to say that!), but it meant that I couldn't drive down to south wales as originally planned therefore my car hasn't yet celebrated her 90,000th birthday.

I'm entering 2013 full of hope, because 2013 is going to be a big one. This year will see me apply for medical school after 5 years of anticipation, it will see a new phase to my currently 4 year relationship, because after what seems like an eternity of being stagnant, this year we will at least have to start looking towards the future both as individuals and as a couple. This is the year I turn 21, which seems so adult! But I think it'll prompt me to mature further to be able to take on commitments and mentally prepare for the possibility of becoming a doctor. It's the year I'll take the UKCAT, and the GAMSAT, which is frightening, on top of completing my second year, but I'm so much more ready now than I ever was when I was 17. The advantages of applying to medicine later in life is that you have the added responsibility and maturity, which I now see as necessary and I'm so glad that I'm here in Brighton first, because it feels so destined that I am here. I no longer resent the decisions I made when I was 16 but see them as something that was admittedly awful at the time, but its led me to where I am now and I'm so thankful for that. This year im going to at least look into where I'm going to live for at least the next few years of my adult life, and im excited! Finally this year is going to be a big one in my relationship with God, I don't know how yet, I just know it's going to be huge and I'm so excited by it!!

Now on to resolutions:
1. Take more photos, this is going to be a momentous year, and I want to document it, I will be doing a photo a day for a year which I will document on tumblr, of which I will put a link on here
2. Read the bible more and seek God whole-heartedly this year, because then I will learn to rely on him more completely, and because I can't do this alone
3. As always lose some weight, increasing my exercise will increase my productivity, essential for this year! And I need to develop a more healthy relationship with food to improve my overall health, I'm equipped to do this, I just need to not be so sedentary in this area.
4. Become better with my finances, at least more aware. I'm a student so I should budget like one, instead of having a too laid- back attitude because 'it's fine, I have a job now...'

And to everyone who reads this blog regularly or randomly stumbles across it, happy new year, may it be prosperous!

XOX