Monthly Musings: September!

Do you ever have one of those months that just feels like a brick in the face? That was how September was for me. Don't get me wrong, it was a great month. My birthday is in September and I got a new job, I finally managed to catch up on Game of Thrones (although I have no idea what I'm meant to do with my life until the next season comes out!) and the weather was uncharacteristically pleasant.   

But boy was it intense! One minute it was the first week of the month and I was happily knocking back Jack Daniels and blowing out birthday candles and now all of a sudden it's October and I've somehow become a sleep-deprived business woman who can barely account for the last three weeks of her life. 

But, whether I can make sense of it or not, September is over and it's time for some monthly musings!

Obsession of the month...

This month I have been obsessively listening to Charlie Puth and Meghan Trainor's new song, 'Marvin Gaye'. On repeat. Sometimes for hours on end. Of the 73 million views the video has had on Youtube, 10,000 or so of them are probably mine. Yes I'm aware that I could just download the song on Itunes, but that would be far too logical. That's simply not how I roll.

Accomplishment of the month...

This month my greatest accomplishment was getting myself a fancy new grown up job, which involves wearing blouses, pretending I know how to use an Ipad, and occasionally popping into London and getting utterly lost on the Tube. I never thought I'd end up in the corporate world (being more into rainbows and smiles than pie charts and firm handshakes) but I guess that's the beauty of my bizarre little life. There is absolutely no knowing where I'll end up next.

Thing I am most ashamed of this month...

As part of my fancy new job I got a fancy new company car. The low point of the month was definitely getting stuck outside Dominos Pizza for 15 minutes because I couldn't work out how to put the car into reverse. #epicfail

Book of the month...

The book I've been slowly but surely working my way through this month (and will no doubt be working my way through for a good few months to come) is Middlemarch by George Eliot. Now don't get me wrong, I love Victorian novels. I don't mind getting entangled in the enormous descriptive passages or trying to keep tabs on the seemingly never-ending cast of characters (yes, Dickens, that one was aimed at you). But so far Middelmarch hasn't really grabbed my attention and the next 636 are looking pretty daunting right now. Wish me luck.

Youtuber of the month...

I've been subscribed to Stepanka for a long time now, but for the last few weeks I've been binge-watching her videos like some kind of weird stalker. Maybe I find comfort in knowing there's someone out there who seems to end up in as many random and bizarre circumstances as I do. But if you enjoy my weird and wonderful annecdotes then you'll probably love her channel.

Things ticked off The 2015 List...

An accurate depiction of how I currently look/feel

This month I continued the theme of accomplishing absolutely nothing on The 2015 List. I'm nothing if not consistent after all.

Next month I will aim to...

Fit in some time to sleep! This month has been so hectic that the bags under my eyes have become a permanent feature, so deeply engrained that there's not enough concealer in the world to help me. Trust me, I've already gone through a whole bottle!

The Job Hunt

Once upon a time I worked in a Call Centre. Customers swore at me and made me cry and I was gulping down Kalms as if they were Skittles on a daily basis. But I look back at that time in my life with a kind of wonder. Back then I had a monthly income. True, I also had no self-esteem and a great many nights where I woke up screaming about PPI, but I had money for YSL make up and Cosmopolitans and an endless amount of shoes. Three years later I have a BA, a great gaping hole in my bank balance and no job on the horizon.

I knew the job market wasn't great, but I didn't think a girl with my qualifications and infectious laugh (scrap that, it’s more of a cackle) would be finding it so difficult. I haven’t limited my options. I’ve applied for waitressing, admin, retail, secretarial…true I didn't apply for the grave-digging job my friend went for, but you have to draw the line somewhere. But, if nothing else, I've come away from my various failed interviews with experience…and something to write about.

The first interview I went to was for a sales position for a high end beauty brand. I sent off my CV, highlighting my sales experience and beauty channel on Youtube (I knew they’d want a girl who knew her way around an eyeshadow palette). A few weeks later, joy of joys, I was invited to an interview. At this point I genuinely thought it was in the bag so long as I could get my hair to lie flat on the day of the interview.

But when I rounded the corner of the department store on the day of my interview, I couldn't believe what I saw. Over a hundred girls were queueing up outside the door, all dressed in black. Either there’d been a tragedy in the shoe department or we had all showed up for the same interview. I joined the queue, prayed my feet would last in my new shoes, and looked around in despair at the hordes of girls. Faces all around with kohl eyes, red lips and hair that was lying flat. That day I queued for 2 hours and 15 minutes for my interview. Soon the queue was wrapped right the way around the side of the shop. On at least four occasions people approached me to ask if the shop was doing a giveaway.

But eventually it was my turn. It was worryingly similar to the kind of quizzes you get in magazines for teen girls. I kid you not when I say that at the end the interviewer added up a score to see if I’d passed or not. I did. I’d be called back for a follow up interview…some time between April and June. After wasting an entire morning and getting blisters on my feet, all I had was a vague promise that, some time in the future (no one knew when) I could come back to try and impress them all over again. My nine year old nephew runs his loom-band business better than that!

Then there was the job I attempted to apply for in the new coffee shop in town. The manager didn't look pleased when I turned up.

“I have got a job going, but, to be honest, I really need someone older who has experience and isn't going to just work here for six weeks and then quit. I don’t want people wasting my time. I’ve had enough people wasting my time.”

“Oh…well I know I look young,” (10:1 he thought I was in secondary school) “But I’m a lot older than I look and I…”

“Yeah, but I need someone who knows how to run the place. I've had people in here who can’t even turn the coffee machine on. If you haven’t got experience don’t even bother. I won’t even read the CV.”

“Actually, I've worked in a coffee shop before. I know how everything works and…”

“Yeah, but the thing is I've already hired and fired seven people. I just don’t want people wasting my time.”

“Ok…so do you have an application form or…?”

“No.”

I'm not entirely sure whether that counts as a failed interview or whether it’s just an indication of how strange some people in Port Talbot can be.

Then there are issues with my qualifications. Because, what they don’t tell you when you’re revising for your GCSEs is that it’s possible to look too smart in a CV.

“I know you got an A in Maths, but we do everything on the calculator here anyway so it won’t do you any favours.”

“I’ve seen your qualifications. But this job isn’t rocket science, you know.”

And so the job hunt continues and my treasured student life seems all the more fabulous by comparison. Instant noodles and mouldy bedrooms beat this job hunting malarkey any day. 

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.