I would say that the worst thing that can happen to anyone is to be sick around Christmas time. Especially when there is no Mom around to take care of you. Which is what happened to me this year.

Truth be told, Santa has been very generous this year and he brought me all I asked for and a bit more, but it seems that I have not been as good as I thought this year, as I was not well enough to enjoy everything as much as I could have. What's even worse, I was so sick I couldn't even cook Christmas dinner, and we saw ourselves forced to go out to a restaurant (my better half had to work on Christmas Eve in the morning so he could not help). I have only one thing to say to people going to a restaurant for Christmas dinner: Hope for the best, but expect the worst. We forgot to expect the worst and we sort of got it. Note to self, never go to an Italian restaurant to have a traditional English dinner!!

And now that Christmas is over, the time has come to start on those assignments due in the first week after the holiday. I don't know if you've tried to work on assignments of the Christmas break, but somehow the assignments suddenly become a bit more difficult. It's as if the Christmas sprit has a reverse effect on them.

This is how it went so far: I've managed to write about 200 words, clean up my room, wash dishes, clothes, cook and ...ohh, that was not for the assignment. Oh wait, the blog isn't for the assignment either? What did I have to do again? Never mind...someone just posted a picture of their Christmas tree and all the presents on Facebook, and I'd better check it. What was that new song that came out? I need to eat before I take my medicine. Okay, back to work. What? New notification? I wonder what that is about. Fine, I'll check it and then straight back to the assignment. OK, never mind...it's late now. I'll do it tomorrow!

On a completely related topic, I'll tell you tomorrow about the subject of my assignment. It's really interesting and as I'm not allowed to exceed my word limit and I have loads to say about it, I thought I could put the rest of the words here :)

I wish you had a very Happy Christmas and good health, but more importantly, please don't procrastinate...it's so time consuming! :)

Love,
Maddie.

The only thing standing between you and your goal is the [BS] story you keep telling yourself as to why you can't achieve it.

I for one know I can do whatever I set my mind to. My problem? Procrastination... Perhaps it's my ego's fault for that. I've always considered myself above average in intelligence, and not because I was smarter than anyone else, or because I got the highest grades in my class (which I didn't, I was always second in my class), but because things came easy to me. I didn't study much, but I did remarkably well in exams, I always wasted time and yet I always seemed to finish whatever I was doing with enough time to spare before the deadline. Granted that it was not always that good, but it was done! Or so I thought. Therefore, I waste time. I play games, hang out with friends, Facebook, Twitter, 9GAG, you name it and I'm probably there most of the day.

When I came to Uni I set a goal. I wanted to finish Uni with a First, at whatever cost, but more importantly, I wanted to learn. I wanted to come out of Uni filled with knowledge and skills that would make my future brighter. The reasoning behind this is that I'm paying a lot of money for my education, and no one messes with my finances! Not even I am allowed to do that! I will work my ... off and make this investment worth while.

The first three months I thought it would be easy. I had a lot of time to spare (as I did not work) and not many assignments. And guess what I did? I wasted most of the time. I read a bit, did my assignments and got grades between 13 and 16, but I still felt I was wasting time. There is an incriminating picture of me on Facebook posted by my boyfriend. I had an assignment due in two days, and I was playing NFS Most Wanted. The caption of the photo is "One more race and I'll totally start working on the assignment!" Come January I started working, and my days suddenly became shorter. I felt I had no more time to waste, and in a weird manner, I stopped wasting time. The pressure to manage my time as well as possible actually made me manage it. I finished my first year of Uni with an A- average (which is in the First degree category), but come summer holiday, a whole new era started. I had time to waste again, and wasted it was. No matter how many times I told myself that I did not have the commodity of wasting time, the facts said otherwise.

Three months in the second year, I'm still procrastinating and finishing my assignments on the last 100 yards. It seems like a pattern. I hope January, and the quarter of a century that will have passed since I was born will put me back on the right track. I know putting all this pressure on January and my birthday is not fair, as this is all about my state of mind, but it's easier, isn't it?

I'm my biggest supporter and my main drawback at the same time. So what is it you're telling yourself when you are striving for something? Are you the one person keeping you down, or are you biggest supporter?

I'll see you soon.

Love,
Maddie.

Hello again fellow students!

Today I would like to talk to you about problems. 

Remember how I was telling you that time is flying by? Well it is, and if you don't see it yet, trust me...you will. But other than time flying by, you might find that you'll have a number of unpleasant surprises at uni. I know our Uni is awesome and all, but things can sometime get out of the careful hands of our tutors and go completely wrong. What's there to be done you might ask? From my point of view, there are three courses of action:

1. You quietly go to your classes and only complain to your peers about the problems you have and make your life and others' miserable,
2. Go to your Course Rep and provide proper feedback that they can take forward to the tutors so things can improve
3. (and perhaps the most important) BECOME A COURSE REP. Stand up for yourself and for those who a scared to do so. Take the problems you find through first hand experience and what your colleagues feed back to you and try to help the course leaders improve your experience.

Being a course rep will not only help you gain recognition among the tutors (most tutors knew my name even though I thought they wouldn't), be known among your colleagues and gain valuable experience that you can include in your CV, but you can also be nominated for the Student of the Year award. I can't even begin to tell how great it felt to be one of the 6 students attending the Vice-Chancellor's Awards last year.

So stand up for yourself and for others and be a course representative! It will be well worth your time! (to be completely honest, you don't even need to put that much time in ;) )

What will you do?

Love,

Maddie.