ANOTHER YEAR, ANOTHER POST
May 10, 2017My second year of university has almost reached its conclusion, minus exams and assignments that is, and I thought I'd make this small post to reflect on how I've felt over the last nine or some months and document some of the wonderful and important events that have happened to me over the course of these two semesters.
Second year is a lot harder, much more so than I had anticipated. I enjoyed my first year immensely, every single aspect fascinated and captivated me and moulded me into what I felt was a better version of myself. That is not to say that I didn't have a lot of fun this year, I did, but the pressure was a lot greater and the workload a lot larger. I can't count how many hours I've wasted away doing independent study and research, even managing to enter the adult world and detach myself from the virtual, social media world that I've been so engrossed in throughout my teenage life. With that being said, I am extremely proud of how well I've done thus far, with just a few essays standing between me and entering final year, I've passed every module, except one, with first class marks. What makes me even more ecstatic about this achievement is that I've worked a ridiculous amount of hours at my dream job and suffered a real deterioration in my mental health since the beginning of the school year. My dad and mum even admitted to me that they didn't think I was going to do as well as I did last year because of all of these things and I'm really happy to have proved them, and myself wrong. I finally feel like I'm becoming an adult. Studying hard, working hard, living semi-independently and no longer relying on the validation of strangers online to make me feel good about how I present myself. Everything I do, I do it for myself and I can honestly say I never imagined I could get to this point.
I've also learnt that living away from home is tough, and living with a lot of students is even harder. I've always considered myself a somewhat outgoing, but kind of introverted person. Sometimes I do really well in social groups, but most of the time I prefer my own company, and trust me, you don't get too much of that when you live with seven other people. I was also really nervous about living away from my family because we're so close, particularly my dad, brother and I. Although I do travel home every weekend, I have learnt that I can do it on my own too. I can now cook for myself, like actual meals as well as packet pasta, I can work a washing machine and a dryer, and I LOVE to clean and grocery shop, and I know that probably doesn't amount to much in the eyes of some of you readers, but I'm one of those spoilt kids who's been mollycoddled all my life and who thought that they'd be living at home until they turned 25. But I also think that this has possibly contributed to my slight relapse mentally. When there's tension between housemates its impossible to avoid getting caught in the crossfire and sometimes it's over the pettiest thing. If I hadn't have been living with my boyfriend anyway I can guarantee I would have moved out long ago. I don't know if I would ever do it again.
With that being said, I've loved living at the coast. I've always felt an affinity with the beach and the seaside. I've discovered a lot of gorgeous cafes, visited beautiful natural locations and loved nothing more than taking long drives and walks. That's definitely one advantage of going to university in a rural location. Amongst that, I've been involved on campus more so than last year. I was a part of a writing mentor group, treasurer for my english and poetry society, helped organise the formal and I even won prom queen! I've been surrounded by a lot of wonderful people this year and I'm very grateful for that.
All in all, I feel like I'm now better prepared for final year. My boyfriend and I are going to be moving in together by ourselves, the hard work at university is finally going to begin and I'm choosing some really awesome modules to study that will actually count towards my degree. The prospect of writing a dissertation is really scary, especially considering that I have no idea what I want to do it on. I can only hope that I manage to improve on myself over the summer and hopefully that will lead to a more peaceful, relaxed and easier worked through third year.
Rachel x
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