How to De-Stress Your School Year

Well, it's the start of another school year. Those lazy summer days are nothing but a distant memory and it's all algebra, HB pencils and pointless comprehension questions on Of Mice and Men for as far as the eye can see.

Regardless of whether you're a bright eyed Year 7 or a burned out Post Graduate, the school year can easily become a stressful haze of unmanageable homework loads, Chemistry topics that no one (including the teacher apparently) can grasp, indecipherable exam questions and timetables jammed with assignments, re-drafts and extra-curricular activities that nobody really wants to attend, but that you plough through anyway to tag onto the end of the CV you've been putting off writing for the last 3 months.

I've woken up in a cold sweat amongst my colour coded revision post-it notes more than once. I get it. Essays, projects, trying to learn how to be a competent human being...the whole shebang can get extremely stressful. So, for the sake of your sanity (or whatever's left of it), you owe it to yourself to take a little time off every now and then and slow down.

In this post I have a few tips and tricks to help you unwind when the worlds gets too hectic and exam stress starts to turn your brain to mush.

Stay Organised

Prevention is better than cure as they say and that's certainly true in this case. End of year exams will roll around, regardless of whether you're prepared or not. Just a little forward planning, organisation and 15 minutes or so each evening could be the difference between you weeping into a pile of poorly composed flash cards or sailing through revision with ample time for snack breaks and catching up on the new episode of Game of Thrones.

Start out with the best intentions and keep on top of things throughout the year.

• Keep a diary, noting all assignment due dates, upcoming exams and fabulous social engagements 
• Make sure all notes are legible and keep them all together, in order
• Get any homework or assignments done out of the way as soon as possible. Don't leave them until the least minute!
• Keep your mornings as easy as possible by packing your bag and laying out your clothes the night before

One of the best things about being in school is the cute stationery. Pick yourself up a new diary, folders, highlighters...indulge in all the things you need to keep yourself organised and on top of your workload.

I'm Back (And in Desperate Need of a Latte)!

I'm back! I've crawled out from the corporate rock I've been stuck under for the past few months. I've thrown off the shackles of business meetings, conference calls and tossing and turning in a pool of sweat at 3am wondering if my new shoes for the office strike the right balance between 'I'm a corporate highflier' and 'I'm a Margaret Thatcher look-alike'. I'm slowly weaning myself off the 5 gallons of caffeine a day it took me to get through my working day without falling asleep at the wheel (sure, there's still a lot of twitching going on, but slow progress is better than no progress).

 I'm finally starting to feel like myself again!

 It's been a while since I last sat down to write a blog post so I apologise if I'm rusty. It's not that I purposely discarded my beloved blog or forgot about all you wonderful people who enjoy a little dose of my madness every week. The truth is, I was so swamped at work that, slowly but surely, without me even realising it, my blog ended up in in the pile labelled 'things I used to do when I had the time'. It was a hefty pile. Yoga was in there too along with reading, going to the gym, spending time with my fiends and, increasingly, eating meals and sleeping.

 There weren't nearly enough hours in the day!

 

So, I took the plunge (for better or for worse), discarded my 'sensible' boring, black, low-heeled shoes, and quit my high-flying, corporate job. As tempting as the image of myself as a fancy business woman with a bank account healthy enough to justify a closet full of Laboutins was, at the end of the day, I'm not a fancy business woman. I hate graphs. And schmoozing. So in September I'm heading back to university to train as an English teacher. Because what could be better than talking about books for a living? Except, of course, talking about books for a living and getting paid enough to justify a closet full of Laboutins.

 But, hey, you can't have it all!

New Year's Eve: A Family Affair

Happy 2015! Christmas officially feels as though it never happened. It came and went so quickly that I still have a bottle of Winter Jack out in the kitchen that I didn't even get a chance to open. My head is still spinning and there's nothing but a few leftover chocolates and a lingering feeling of exhaustion to suggest that Christmas ever happened at all.

And now suddenly it's 2015. I'm glad. 2014 was an odd year for me, almost like a stopgap, which went by in a blur of confusion and, as we went from November to December, I was happy to get the last few dregs of the year over and done with and start on a new one. I had my annual, "Next year I will sort out my life and transform myself into a wonderful, fully-functioning grown-up human being" pep talk and, after that, New Year's couldn't come quickly enough.

Halloween Havoc!

It's no secret that I love Halloween. There's something magical about the musty smell of a box of Halloween decorations and the thrill of carving out pumpkin guts. Usually my father and I will start planning for Halloween in the Spring. There are props to construct, costumes to put together, themes to imagine. It's a big deal. But this year there was to be no party. My brother was working nights and Ellis and Lauren were going to a Halloween disco with their friends from school so, for the first time in more years than I can remember, there would be no spider webs, fake blood or shrieks of terror in the Wellington household on October 31st.

...Or so we thought...

In fact, the school disco was on the 30th, meaning the kids would have no spooky celebrations on Halloween itself, which, in this family, is totally unacceptable. Fast-forward to the afternoon of Halloween, which I spent in a state of utter panic, searching in vain for pumpkins, hyperventilating at the distinct lack of decorations I had to work with, and edging ever closer to the brink of insanity as I was forced to accept there was no time to make creepy cupcakes.

As if trying to plan an ad-hock Halloween celebration in less than 24 hours isn't hard enough, by 12:30pm Asda had already packed away their Halloween aisle and had replaced all the spooky party supplies and trick or treat sweets with Christmas crackers and baubles. I wasn't the only irritated customer loitering at the end of the aisle in disbelief, wondering why they couldn't have waited an extra 24 hours before snatching all the Halloween themed goodies out from under our noses. Luckily Tesco had a fantastic selection of Halloween themed treats, but, in my highly stressed state, I couldn't resist having a little dig at Asda on Twitter. After all, it was totally ridiculous to pack up all the Halloween stock before Halloween was over and what's Twitter for if not to rant to the world?

"I think I did a pretty good job considering time constraints"

Once my slightly passive aggressive moment has passed, I headed home for some manic decorating and an entirely new problem. What on Earth was I going to wear? The Playboy witch costume I had set aside for a grown up Halloween celebration with my friends was not going to cut it for trick-or-treating with small children. I mean, even if I traded in the stockings for tights, there was no hiding the suspenders.

So I was forced to take my own advice as outlined in my last blog post and rummage around the house to find some odds and ends I could make a costume out of. Personally, I think I did a pretty good job considering the time constraints.

And, despite all the frantic rushing around and the last-minute nature of everything, our little get together went really well. Lauren and I went out trick-or-treating (Ellis and his friend, Alex, are apparently too old and cool for that sort of thing now) and it was the perfect night for it. It was unseasonally warm and the air was dry and still. Whereas usually trick-or-treaters are few and far between, this year the streets were full of children rushing from one house to the next. I felt like I was in a scene from Hocus Pocus! And the bonus moment was when my neighbour insisted on giving me £1 because 'I made such a pretty witch'. I don't understand people who don't like Halloween. How can anyone have negative feelings towards a holiday centred on fancy dress and free sweets?! 

When trick-or-treating was over, we settled down to stuff our faces with pizza and chocolates and watch Hocus Pocus. (Side note, someone please remind me I simply have to dress as Sarah Sanderson next Halloween. Sarah Jessica Parker seriously rocks that look!) It was lovely.

After all the last minute stress, our low-key little Halloween get together was perfect. It was just like the Halloween celebrations we used to have when I was little, before we started bringing in bigger props and planning more intricate games. Bobbing apples and a scary story were more than enough to keep everyone happy.

Unfortunately, happiness quickly evaporated and was replaced with shrieks of genuine terror when Lauren caught sight of the decapitated bride's head we had hanging in the bathroom. I hope I won't have to pay for her therapist's fees one day because of that...

From Public Pools to the Royal Treatment

Everything suddenly came to a screeching halt. No new blog posts, no new Youtube videos, my nails are a disaster and I can barely remember what my friends look like. Over the past month all of my time has been sucked into some kind of vortex and I'm not entirely sure what I've even been doing other than looking for jobs and mourning the loss of my footless and fancy free student days.

Maybe I haven't adjusted to living with my parents again yet. I'm used to waking up to a plan I made the night before or a totally blank canvas ("What's the plan for the day? Four hours of Netflix followed by cocktails and the Sex and the City drinking game with my housemates? Why not?") Last week I woke up to the sound of Lauren scampering into my room.
"We're going swimming!"
I broached the subject with my mother. Admittedly, rather tactlessly.
"Swimming? Nobody consulted me. I could have had plans for all you knew."
"You don't though, do you?" She said, knowingly.

She was right. It was meant to be one of those blank canvas days. Maybe I'd have gone to pilates. Maybe I'd have gone to the pub. Maybe I'd even have finally gotten around to writing my new blog post. But my blank canvas day was snatched away and instead I was heading to the swimming pool with two small children. Still, my soul was, as of yet, uncrushed.

That quickly changed.

We drove all the way over the Swansea, only to find out the gym we're a member of wasn't open to children for another hour. Try explaining that to a four year old diva. So we ended up on the road again, heading towards the public pool in Neath, which, as it turns out (the lady on the phone failed to mention this little gem) is free for all school children after 2pm. Wonderful if you're a ten year old, but not so great if you arrive at quarter to 2 with a small child in a wheelchair and a tiny loon with no patience and find yourself in a queue that winds itself around the building. Especially as my mother had phoned ahead to make sure we could go straight over with the wheelchair with no problems.

Lost adrift in a turbulent sea of scores of screeching children with a worrying lack of manners, I started to lose it. To cut a long story short, the staff at reception made me despair at the state of humanity (and the education system) and I ended up wandering around in a towel looking for change for the locker. This is why I pay a monthly membership for the Village. That and the Village has ample room to do hair and make up when you're done working out.

Anyway, that's the kind of thing I have to put up with now that I'm no longer living the glorified student life. One small mercy is that I had to come back to Exeter for today's exam and I stayed overnight on campus. It was like being a fresher again, brushing my teeth in my little en-suit, collapsing into bed safe in the knowledge that there was nothing to wake me except an alarm I personally controlled. No one tried to make morning conversation. No one asked me to do the dishes. It was bliss.

The red line is the ridiculous route I took

What made it even better was that I was staying in Holland Hall, which will mean nothing to you if you didn't go to the University of Exeter and will mean everything to you if you did. Back when we lived on campus, hearing someone say, "I live in Holland Hall" was like hearing someone say, "My father wears tweed and shoots pheasant...which the servants then cook." At £6988.80 for a 32 week contract, it's officially like the Mecca of Exeter rah culture. Oh the rumours I've heard about that place...

After searching for it for 20 minutes and seeing no sign of it, I was concerned. I'd lived down that end of the campus two years ago. It isn't a big place. I took the most obscure route possible, finding myself lost more than once. ("Wait...why is there a children's park here? Where am I?" And so forth.) I started to worry there was some kind of Hogwarts-style enchantment over the place so that peasants couldn't see it.

And then I found it. Perched on the perfect spot for stunning panoramic views, close enough to campus to crawl there in the mornings with the least amount of uphill walking (a big problem in Exeter), courtyards, an outdoor dining area, a bar, full English breakfast with a selection of cereals and juices on the side...it lived up to all my expectations. Still, a girl like me with a valleys accent and an aversion to gilets would have burned upon crossing the threshold if it hadn't been during the summer vacation.

So call me a loser, but my trip to Exeter to sit my exam has been like a mini holiday. I got to have fried bread with breakfast, didn't have to share my bathroom, and no one ordered me to go swimming. In reality, I'm not really all that hard to please...

There's No Place Like Home

It's been a while since I last wrote a post. I've been slowly sinking in a pool of despair and MLA referencing, but I'm officially half-way through my dissertation and the end is finally in sight. I'd planned out the entire month of April to ensure I had half a hope of retaining what was left of my sanity. The plan was to spend the first two weeks at my desk until I had at least a solid first draft, to go back home to Wales the next week and force everyone to proof read it, and then spend the last week sleeping soundly, minus the looming prospect of antebellum-themed nightmares.

I made it to the 3rd of April before I abandoned that plan entirely and booked a train ticket home.

I decided to be very sneaky about the whole thing and surprise my loving parents by turning up on their doorstep two weeks early. So, last Saturday, after five hours of public transport and a taxi ride, I burst through the front door, ready to spread joy.

"Surprise! Your favourite child is home!"

My father, who had been napping on the sofa, looked like he was caught somewhere between thrilled and terrified. My mother appeared at the top of the stairs a few seconds later and merely said,

"Shh! Your brother's sleeping."

Clearly the favourite child had been there all along and was currently sleeping off his night shift in my bed.

As much as I wanted to collapse on the sofa, enjoying the novelty of warmth and cleanliness (student houses are grim to say the least), it was my cousin's 18th birthday party that night. I had just enough time to stick some rollers in and don some fabulous shoes.

Family gatherings are always eventful, but they are downright dangerous when Dave the Laugh, my older cousin's boyfriend, is there. He lurks around the house, waiting for the opportune moment to swoop in and top up your drink, which sounds great, but, in reality, borders on deadly. On this particular night it led me to declare,

"I'm going to town!"

I do NOT look like the older cousin...

Yes, I was going to crash my little cousin's first night out. And in Station Road of all places. I have plenty of good memories of Station Road. But I was 16 then. And fishbowls were on sale.

Totally unprepared for a night out and two and a half bottles of wine worse off when I thought I'd only gone through one, I had to borrow a handbag. And a phone. And money. But off I went with my cousin and her friends, totally oblivious to the fact that I had somehow become the uncool, old person.

Thankfully, I wasn't the only uncool, old person in Station Road that night. Hayleigh was there with some of our friends. I wish I could describe the level of gleeful screeching that occurred when we spotted each other at the bar. I imagine it's the kind of noise you'd expect to hear if dolphins were reunited after 20 years apart. Dolphins on crack. And perhaps even more shrill than that.

It wasn't long before my cousin had ditched me (I swear, I used to be cool!) and Hayleigh and I ended up in a bizarre after-party in a nearby hotel. It wasn't so much a party as a random collection of people arguing over which drinking game to play while I insisted on slurring through stories about last year's adventures in Europe. All I know is, a Scottish man was wrapped in a blanket and there was an excessive amount of gin.

And, in a nutshell, that's the story of how, on my first night back in Wales, I turned up on my parents' doorstep at 4am and came to spend the entire following day curled up in a ball, cursing Dave the Laugh.


But, before I go back to my cave of despair and dissertation-writing, I'm going to do a little shameless self-promotion. I've set up a Youtube channel (yes, in spite of my technophobia) dedicated to me talking about beauty products, and generally making a fool of myself in front of the camera. So here's my latest video if you want to take a peek.

And, because I have such little faith in my ability to actually use the computer, I'll post the link to the channel...just in case.

Youtube Channel

A Day in the Life: Dissertation Dejection Mode

As the dissertation deadline looms ever-closer and people insist on saying things like "this is what you've spent your whole life working towards" (no pressure), I thought I'd try out something a little different to give you an insight into what an average day is like for me right now. It will mean carrying my laptop around with me (if I bother to leave the confines of my room/ bed), but it's worth it to accurately record all of the mundane details of a student's life when they're in dissertation dejection mode.

10:41am

Not only am I awake, but I've been out of the house already. I had an appointment with the chiropractor at 9:40am, convincing that if I had an early appointment I would have all day long to spend at the library. Unfortunately, all I have done is get back into bed. 

  My back hurts (hopefully in a 'don't worry, it's just healing' kind of way), but my neck feels great. At the end of the session I asked if he wouldn't mind, "doing that thing where you make my neck go all clicky," to which he looked at me and laughed. Apparently I'm one of the only patients he's ever has who has requested to have their neck manually contorted until it cracks. I can't see why. Personally, I love the feeling and the sound. 

On the way home I found out my 3pm lecture has been cancelled, which is going to make forcing myself up onto campus even harder than it was already going to be. I wouldn't have a problem with heading up there right now, but every day last week I spent at least 20 minutes of my time wandering from floor to floor of the library, searching for a seat. Side note - University of Exeter, I appreciate you spending £50 million on the new forum, but I would appreciate it more if you'd trade in the electronic touch screen maps no one has ever used and the overpriced coffee shop (how many does one campus need?) and just put in more places where people can, you know, do work.

When deadlines start inching closer, everything else seems to go out the window. So right now my room is full of empty bowls that once contained My Little Pony pasta shapes, I only have one pair of clean knickers left in the draw, and I didn't even have it in me to apply bronzer this morning. 

All the essentials for work. Pencil case, notebook, jar of honey, magnifying mirror...

12.35pm

Another short story and five more articles done and dusted. Now it's officially nap time.

5:42pm

Time flies when you're forcing your way through a novel about a talking monkey who is driven to crime by his despair at mankind. I can't believe how late it is already. I swear I only napped for an hour so I can't understand where the day has gone.
I made it onto campus, mostly because I knew the campus shop had Milkybar mini eggs in the Easter display and they have now become my go-to dissertation snack. I do not need the extra calories, but they are my new weakness in life and they make the endless hours of research more bearable.
  I can't say that anything particularly interesting has happened this afternoon. On my way here I passed a man talking to his dog. Not the normal "sit," "stay," "for goodness sake get out of that puddle and spit out that mouse" kind of talking. He was having an in-depth, one sided conversation. The dog didn't strike me as a particularly good listener. If anything, he was a little too self-obsessed.
  And now I have to force myself out into the cold to go and sign up for a meeting with my lecturer tomorrow. Ok. Movement. I can do this...

7:30pm

Still sat at the desk in the library. Still reading about talking monkeys. Slowly losing the will to live.
I went to the shop to get something else to eat and it seemed that everywhere I turned first years were talking about their plans for this evening. It's been so long since I've been out on a week night that I can't even remember which of Exeter's four useless clubs is the place to be on a Monday. Stop talking about your amazing, pre-dissertation lives!
  I temporarily made myself feel better by thinking that in eight weeks I'll be done with university work and they'll have another two years to go. But then I realised that graduation is just the start of a whole new series of problems. I'll be living at home with no student loan, trying to find a job, waking up early and being all responsible and those annoyingly chirpy first years will still have another year and a half of carefree student life ahead (and then that six months of dissertation dejection mode, of course).

8:01pm

Library time is over and I'm ready to head home. I just hope it isn't raining. Things are bad enough walking home in the dark through that woodland path. By day it's beautiful and tranquil, a relaxing way to stroll to campus and spot the last of the robins, fluttering from branch to branch amongst the early morning dew. By night it is a terrifying death path where there must be ghosts lurking in the bushes and demons hiding at every curve in the path.
So yeah. Wish me luck!

8:36pm

It was raining. Of course it was.

I seem to be spending the majority of my time researching the southern belle for my dissertation and all I have to show for it so far is this:

9:33pm

I just finished the Jillian Michaels 30 Day Shred and I am a very attractive shade of beetroot right now. I'm proud that after a day of work I still managed to drag myself upstairs to do squats and jumping jacks. Who have I become?
  Before that I had a quick read through The Week Magazine, which I got sent this week to review. I do honestly try to be cultured and knowledgeable, but when I have a spare 10 minutes before class in the morning and I have a choice to either scroll through my BBC news app or my Facebook app, Facebook just always wins out. And we don't have a tv so I feel well and truly cut off from the rest of the planet. Martians could invade and I'm not sure how long it would take for me to find out now that I don't watch the news while I'm eating my cereal in the morning.
  So I was excited to take a look through The Week and find out what was happening in the world. My first thought when I opened it was, "There aren't very many pictures." Yes, I'm aware that I'm a twenty two year old English Literature student who reads Dickens and Austen in my free time so I have no idea where that came from, but it was instantly followed by a sense of deep shame. Clearly I've been reading too much Cosmo.
  Anyway, I like it. I like the way it's broken down into little bite sized pieces. They give you just the right amount of information on a wide range of topics from all over the world. I've never been able to read a traditional newspaper (despite the abundance of pictures), but this was short and snappy so I didn't feel like I was trudging through it. I feel less ignorant having read it and I'm very tempted to start up a subscription. Just in case Martians invade or something. And they didn't even pay me to say that!

10:11pm

Ok brain, bring on the insomnia! I haven't been able to sleep properly for about two weeks (the joys of a heavy workload). I've tried Nytol (which taste like a gone off plant), long relaxing baths, hypnosis apps on my phone, but my brain seems to perk up considerably around the 9pm mark and, no matter how early I wake up and how many naps I deny myself, it'll still be buzzing at 2am.

11:27

Oh no, I just found out that Jillian Michaels has a cheesy American weight loss show. Now I have to watch every episode I can find.

So there you have it. This is what my typical day looks like at the moment. Mundane, messy, and full of diverse forms of procrastination, such as writing this right now. And when my dissertation finally gets handed in, I'm going to party hard! That's a total lie. I'm going to sleep for a week. 

The Not So Fabulous Student Life

I've been back in Exter for less than a week and already student life has become the norm again. It's amazing how quickly you forget about the existence of ironed clothes, general warmth, and a kitchen floor that isn't so sticky it pulls the socks off your feet. And now that the winds outside are up to 100mph and something as simple as the walk to campus has become a nightmare in its own right, I've begun to realise just how un-glamorous student life can be.

1. Student Housing.
When I was in first year I lived in brand new student accommodation that, while luxurious compared with some of the rooms I've seen at the likes of Swansea and Cardiff, was in no way worth the £123 a week I paid to live there. But it was warm and comfortable. Yes, our cleaner used to spend her shift sat at our dining room table, eating our biscuits and insulting us if we walked in instead of actually doing any kind of cleaning, but that was as bad as it got.
When I left campus I entered the world of deposit-snatching landlords, 'house' snails, broadband scams, arguments about when it's acceptable to turn the heat up (apparently, in some cases, only when you can literally see your own breath) and various other student housing delights.
Last year my room had no window. It led onto a badly constructed extension that clearly wasn't up to any kind of building code. It let in the rain and there were weeds growing in it. There was no natural daylight in the room itself...or air.

This year our house is a great improvement. It's bigger, the housemate to bathroom ratio is fantastic, my room has two whole windows and space for my clothes in the cupboard. But we have damp. And, as this seemingly never-ending downpour continues, it's not getting any better. When I got back last week and opened my wardrobe, my shoes had grown a layer of mould. I had to scrape a living entity off my favourite red Mary Janes. The estate agent did not understand my despair.


2. A Ridiculous Life.
It would be a lie to say that ridiculous things only happen to me in Exeter. If you read about my trip to Europe last summer then you will be well aware that it makes no difference where in the world I am. I just attract stupid scenarios. But living at university offers up a whole new realm of possibilities for me to get myself into trouble.

The first time I ever went to the uni
library I was drunk...and wearing
hotpants.

On the weekend I popped across the road to the corner shop. It's conveniently placed right opposite our house, next to the Thai 'Massage Parlour' (which isn't fooling anyone, by the way). I left the door on the latch, only to find when I got back that I'd been locked out. Our doorbell was broken. I banged the door until I thought I might inadvertently punch right through it but, as is one of the fun novelties of student living, someone had music on and no one heard.
It was cold and wet. I had nothing to hand but my purse and a tin of chopped tomatoes. My very will to live was fast slipping from me at the point. I pushed past the shrubs to get around to the side of the house. The gate was locked.
So I scaled the pointed fence. It's a good two feet taller than me and my cowboy boots were of no use in trying to get a decent foothold. Halfway over, shivering, hair frizzy, butt in the air, a man walked up the lane next to the house.
"Just...trying to get back into my house."
He looked in no way surprised to see me crawling my way across a seven foot wall. Has living in such close proximity to students made Exeter residents immune to this kind of thing or do I just give off the vibe that this kind of thing is part of my day to day life?


3. Grunge, Grime, and Tiny Nervous Breakdowns.

In first year we brought a random
cat into our kitchen.

Student houses are disgusting because, generally speaking, students are disgusting. That's why landlords turn the other way when there are indoor snails, indoor weeds, and indoor mould (even when it's on my shoes). Forget dissertations and presentations, the biggest stress in a student's life is usually the kitchen and the fear of what kind of diseases may be lurking there.
Since I first lived in my comfy little flat, kitchens have been a nightmare. Back then it was the guy who would leave his saucepans unwashed for so long he had to throw them out. Now it's the nightmare of having six people share a teeny tiny kitchen...and leaving their stuff unwashed for so long that they maybe should consider throwing it out.
I've gotten into a great habit of washing, drying and putting away my dishes as soon as I'm done with them, mostly because I don't like the idea of them touching the surfaces. In fact, my parents were pleasantly surprised when I went home last week and did the dishes in an almost paranoid way. Yes, dirty kitchens are annoying, but I had no idea how much it irritated me until the other night when my subconscious decided to join the party...in a big way.
It was a normal, quiet evening. I was a normal, quiet human being. Kirsty and I were in the kitchen and I was just washing up a mug.
"The kitchen looks so much better, doesn't it?" Said Kirsty. "I've noticed it doesn't stress you out so much anymore."
"No," I said (still a normal, quiet human being). "I just let it all go over my head now. I try not to think about it too much. But," (still normal and quiet) "one thing that does annoy me is this whole draining board thing. We never have any dry tea towels and then, when we do, people use them to create a second draining board." (This is where normal and quiet started to ebb away). "I mean, we don't need two draining boards. We don't even technically need the one if people would just dry their dishes, but they seem to insist on using it as some kind of communal storage unit! And then, when this storage unit, which isn't even meant to be a storage unit, is full, they make another one instead of emptying the first?! And how do they do that? They use the only dry tea towel in the house so that even if anyone actually did want to dry their dishes, they couldn't! But clearly no one does anyway because otherwise we wouldn't need two draining boards for them to store all their crap on!! But maybe I DO want to dry my dishes and now I can't because of this stupid second draining board thing!"
Normal and quiet had well and truly left the building. Kirsty just stared at me.
"But, yeah...apart from that I think I've really chilled out about the whole kitchen thing..."
Kirsty quickly removed all of her kitchenware from the draining board.


So those are just a couple of examples from the last week I thought would highlight some of the more...challenging aspects of student living. As well as these there's the mountain of Dominoes boxes, the battle of who will take out the bins, library fines, attempting to navigate the amory building (you will not understand the horror until you've tried), student loans not covering the high price of alcohol in Exeter, Student Finance Wales in general, MLA citations, the way Arena smells like feet...oh good grief, I'm having another 'draining board moment'.

But, despite the grim realities of student life, we are some of the few people who can drink midweek without being judged, lay in bed until 2pm, leave the house in whatever happens to be clean and pretend we're being 'hipster' and generally enjoy all the perks of independent living without the drag of having a job. And, most importantly, at the end of term you always get to return to your parents house, where it's dry and clean and the wall is only 2 foot tall if you ever need to scale it.

My Mini Meltdown...in the Most Festive Way Possible

Jingle All the Way, staring Arnold Schwarzenegger, is one of my all time favourite Christmas films, even in spite of its being mostly ridiculous...and staring Arnold Schwarzenegger. In the film his son wants a Turboman doll for Christmas. It's the main event, top of the list, the most important gift of all. But our dear old Arnie has left it until the last minute to buy it and the film is all about his crazy antics as he scrambles around the entire city on Christmas Eve, searching for a toy that sold out months ago. It isn't your typical Santa story, but I've always found it funny.

"I became the Arnold Schwarzenegger character..."

That was, until I became the Arnold Schwarzenegger character. (At 5ft.4. And a girl.)

My Turboman doll was the new Wreck it Ralph Disney Infinity character. Disney Infinity (like Skylanders, which was last year's must-have obsession) is a video game with an endless amount of characters, all of which have to be bought separately. You are never done buying them! There will always be more!
Any character my nephew didn't already have went straight onto the list for Santa and right at the top was (my now enemy) Wreck it Ralph. Eager to be the best-loved family member, I convinced my brother that Santa could stand let me get this one. I wanted top auntie points.

So it went on my shopping list. And stayed on my shopping list. Deadlines came and went, our trip to Bluestone came and went, and still I hadn't started my Christmas shopping.

"Don't leave that Wreck it Ralph thing any later. You might not be able to get it." Words of wisdom from my mother.

Panic set in quickly when the first shop was out of stock.

"Can I help you find anything?" Asked the man working in Game.
"I NEED Wreck it Ralph!" I half screeched, eyes wide, a Vanellope figure in one hand and Mickey Mouse in the other. (I tend towards the melodramatic at times.)

No Wreck it Ralph in Game, no Wreck it Ralph in Argos, no Wreck it Ralph in Tesco, no Wreck it Ralph in Toys r Us. I checked online. The nearest one was 124 miles away. I was beginning to feel a whole new level of sympathy for Arnie. Poor guy didn't even have the internet to help him out. Thankfully I did and managed to order the make it or break it, must-have toy online...for three times more than the normal retail price.

"I wanted top auntie points."

And even now, with Wreck-my-bank-account-Ralph dispatched and certain to arrive in time, I can't seem to shake the holiday stress. People have no festive cheer. They just elbow you out of the way in the overcrowded streets. I almost lost a limb in the Christmas market the other day. I actually had to queue to get into the Card Factory today just to buy wrapping paper for the Beacon's present. And Kirsty thought I was on the verge of some sort of breakdown when I couldn't find any red ribbon in Wilkinson. But they had pink! And turquoise! Even black! In whose world are those festive colours? (No, I am still not over it.)

So it seems that this is a grown up Christmas. Overpriced, crowded, stressful, and with nothing but black bows to wrap your presents in. But, then again, as freaked out as I may get by the queues and the price tags, I'm still a great lover of Christmas. And I will never forget the true meaning of it.

Baileys. Baileys is the true meaning.