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.

The part-time job is most of the time the solution to a student's budget. But is it really a solution for the student experience?

While I do agree that without a part-time job I would find it very hard, if not impossible to continue my studies, sometimes I feel that my part-time job is actually creating more issues than it solves.

First of all, I spend 20 hours per week on my job. That is 20 hours less of studying, or going out, or just resting after an exhausting day at Uni. Because of this, I sometimes find it hard to give 100% of my potential to my assignments. Second of all, I am always tired after I come home from work, and it takes even more of my time to recover, time during which I have no interest in studying, doing some extra curricular activities or just going out with my friends.

In my opinion, the three / four years spent in University are supposed to be enjoyed to the fullest, by getting involved in societies, representing the students, going to conferences, doing your assignments properly, going out, creating the basis for a career that you enjoy. Can you really enjoy all the perks of being a student while having a part-time job as well?

On the other hand, without a part-time job during Uni, how will you ever get the experience needed to get a good job after you graduate? To be completely honest, we all know that very few employers will hire you just on the basis of very good academic results. You need some experience to back all that up. But can't you accumulate the basic experience needed to land a perfectly good job by putting more time and effort in the University? There are many voluntary roles in which you get involved and gain that coveted experience.

As I said before, some of us don't really have an option, so it's either Uni + part-time job, or no Uni at all. But if you had a choice, what would you choose?

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.

Last year today, at about the same hour I was trying my best to go to sleep, but the excitement of a second day in Uni kept me up for the most part of the night. You cannot even begin to imagine what lengths I've had to go to make my face look even remotely similar to what it normally does. But that's not really the point here... 

This post is about time flying by. 

It seemed like I was still trying to work out what I want to write in my personal statement just a couple of weeks back (now it seems more like a couple of months ago :) ). And then suddenly my application was submitted for five universities I did not know much about. I must tell you that coming from abroad (Romania) makes it just a bit harder to choose a university. Hardly ever will anyone from a foreign country will go for campus tours, for Open Days, or anything that might give you a first hand idea of what the place you'll be spending the next 3-4 years in will be like. I therefore based my decision on the highest employability rate after graduation in my area and the prettiest prospectus (when I say pretty I mean reader friendly and not so serious looking) which included exactly what I wanted to study, in almost the exact wording : Advertising and Marketing Communications. Waiting for the good news seemed to last ages, but after that I feel like I just blinked and then somehow I was already at a cool Fresher's party. Putting all the paperwork together, sorting accommodation, packing my life in a suitcase and a half, boarding the plane, setting up and actually starting Uni didn't really seem to have happened. And I honestly can't say that I know when the first year in uni has gone. I just hope the second one stays with me a bit longer!  

Did you notice your time passing by? And how did you choose your Uni?

Love,

Maddie.