A sigh of relief

Hello again everyone, I hope you are well. I have finally finished all my assignments for my undergraduate degree! All my deadlines have now passed, and all my work has been submitted, including my dissertation, and let me tell you what a relief that was uploading it to TurnItIn. After submitting that, I felt as though a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulder. Hopefully all the hard work I put in will pay off. Although it was a stressful time, I found the whole experience very interesting, and I learnt a great deal about motivation, the subject of my dissertation. I found that praise had an effect on how people are motivated, as well as reward (money, or benefits).

All that being said, it’s not over yet sadly. I still have three exams left which I am not looking forward to. I am not very good at exams, and they always make me super stressed. Revision over the upcoming weeks is going to fun… but after those three exams are over, I will be finished, and will have graduation to look forward to. I most likely will also not have much of a social life until my exams have finished, but it’s not that long to go now.

I will however have one thing to look forward to in the next few weeks. Next week a friend of mine is coming back to the UK after spending 9 months in the Caribbean on a sandwich year work placement, so my friends and I are throwing him a welcome back party. It will be nice to see him again after all this time, and hopefully it should be a good day. I often wonder what it must be like to live somewhere completely different for a long period of time, and it is something I would like to do some day once I have completed my education, although I plan on continuing my education for as long as possible, I believe lifelong learning is essential.

Well that’s it for me this time, I hope you are all working hard and are up to date with all your work, until next time everyone! 

Dissertation (Almost) Completed!

Hello again everyone, I hope you are well. I am going to jump straight into the title of this blog entry, my dissertation! As the title would suggest, I have indeed (almost) completed my dissertation! I am now in the final stages of it which means all that is left is proof reading what I have done and make any necessary changes to make sure it all makes sense. Being at this point in my dissertation is such a relief, and I feel as though a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders. However, that is not the end of my dissertation, I also have to complete a reflection of how my dissertation went, which I would rather do in person, but it is a requirement. I also have a presentation and 3 exams to look forward to… yay! The above picture is a good representation of how I feel right now.

In unrelated to university updates, some of my friends are planning a day trip to Paris upon completion of our exams as a day out. This should be something nice to look forward to, and shouldn’t cost too much either. I think it would be nice to just have a relaxing day out in a different city and get some sightseeing in. I have been to Paris a couple of times before, but they say you always experience something new when you revisit a place. Although it would mean getting the first and last Eurostar making it a long day, it should still hopefully be worth it. And even if I do sleep the whole of the next day, all my exams and coursework for my degree will be over! I will be sure to update you on it when I go.

Going back to university related updates, I booked my place at my graduation ceremony in July, and on my next pay day I will order my graduation robes. I can’t wait to put it all on and have my degree certificate, it’s so close!

As always I wish you the best of luck in your coursework and revision. Until next time everyone, take care!

Not that long to go!

Hello everyone, I hope you are well. I can’t believe that in less than two months, my degree will be done, finished, over! In less than three weeks my dissertation is due; as are the other assignments I also have to do. Then my exams begin on the 28th of April, which in my opinion is super early, but come the 12th of May, it will all be over.

I think the stress of it all the work I have to do is making me unwell. I have a flu like cold at the moment which is something I could really do without at this crucial moment in time.

Being so close to the end is quite a sad thought as well. It will be weird not seeing the friends I’ve made over the past few years on a daily basis. I’m sure we will stay in touch, but it will be weird. I should be back here next year to do my master’s with some of the people on my course, so I will at least get to see some people. Getting to the point of finishing is reminding me of when I left sixth form, not to be sad that it’s over, but to smile because it happened. One of my favourite Dr. Seuss quotes.

I will always remember being told that my time at university will go by in a flash, and not believing it, but it truly has flown by. It only feels like yesterday that it was my first day, and I was moving into halls, and now I am nearly at the point of graduating. I mean it’s the middle of March, when did that happen!? This takes me back to my first point of all my assignments coming to an end.

I wish you all the best of luck with your upcoming assignments and exams, until next time!

The shortest month

Hello again everyone, I hope you are all well. I can’t believe that February is almost over! I know it is the shortest month of the year, but it doesn't help at this time, as in a month, I have nearly all of my deadlines! The other day I came across some interesting information as to why February is the shortest month of the year, and is mainly because of the Romans and February being classed as an unlucky month. This is probably why they wanted it to be as short as possible. It may not be fact, but it was an interesting read nonetheless. February also held the half term for schools. I sure miss half terms, a week off from school, those were the days… at least it meant for me there were no school kids on the buses in the morning! Yay!

As you may know, travel is always a consistent topic in my entries, and this update will be no different. When I was in the USA last summer, I managed to earn myself over 11,000 air miles (or Avios as British Airways calls them) which for me means a free return flight (plus taxes) as far north as Bergen (Norway), as far south as Marseille (France), as far east as Prague (Czech Republic), and not much is west from the UK. I did recently discover though that I can earn extra air miles by shopping at Tesco from the points earned on my Clubcard. This means that I am now 1,600 air miles away from 15,000 Avios, which can take me as far as Helsinki (Finland), or Algiers (Algeria), as I now have 13,344 Avios points.

Whilst on the subject of Tesco, I have also recently discovered the Natwest Cashback Plus scheme applies there, which means that for every purchase at Tesco I use my debit card for, I earn 1% back! It may not sound like much, but from just doing my usual shopping, I have earned £0.29, which over time will add up and for not doing anything I wouldn't normally do. So there are two good reasons to shop at Tesco.

Until next time everyone, and as always, good luck with any studies you may have!

Master’s degree!

Hello again everyone, I hope you are well and don’t have one of those colds that seem to be going around that I have. I am going to go straight onto the subject of this blog entry today and talk about the master’s degree I applied to – MA Personnel and Human Resource Management. In which I have only gone and gotten myself an offer for! It’s only a conditional offer, and subject to me getting at least a 2:2 in my current degree, but in order to qualify for the funding for this programme for money off, I need to obtain at least a 2:1, which I am currently on track for (fingers crossed).

All I need to wait for now is notification to see if I have the available funding, so again, fingers crossed that hopefully I should get that as well. It means that I am trying to save as much as possible to cover the cost of it, which is proving harder than I expected because things cost an awful lot. One thing that should be saving me money each month is my phone contract. I had to have an issue resolved a few weeks ago, and when I was on the phone, the person I was speaking to said that I appeared to be on an old tariff where I was paying £37.50 per month, but she could move me to a new tariff where I will get the exact same deal, but for £27 per month, and I would still keep the same upgrade date as well. It was an unexpected, but appreciated deal!

I can tell already that this term is going to be a long one, not only do I have my dissertation to complete (getting questionnaires back is proving to be harder than I thought) I also have several other assignments to complete alongside my dissertation, so hopefully I should be able to manage. I do have a friend though that is always asking for help the day before the assignment is due (mainly because they haven’t started it yet) and I have decided that I am no longer going to assist, I have my own degree to focus on, and they should manage their time better.

Anyway, I hope you are all managing your time well and not relying on other people to carry you through your degree (I’m sure you aren’t) but I wish you all the best with any work you may be doing, until next time everyone! :)

Finally some feedback!

Hello there everyone, I hope you are well and settling into the new term. As you may remember from my last blog entry, I was complaining about not having received any grades back for this year so wasn’t sure if I was on track or not, but since that post, I have received two grades back, finally! And I am pleased to say they are both rather good, 70% and 72% respectively. If I can keep receiving grades like that, then I shall be very happy indeed! The grades that I have been waiting on, however, have still not been put up, which is slightly frustrating, but at least I have some kind of feedback.

An opportunity has also come up for me to complete a master’s degree that comes with quite a good discount. I have been thinking about doing a master’s degree for a while now and in a previous blog (last year I think) I mentioned about studying one in Sweden as it was free, but I would still have needed money for living costs. I will still need to save up some money in order to pay my tuition fees, but I don’t think I’ll get another opportunity to do this again at such low a cost. Although I would still like to travel, I am not sure if I can afford to be able to travel and save up for a master’s degree at the same, so my travel resolutions for 2014 may have to be postponed until the future. I mean I may not even get an offer, so I do not know what the future holds.

Whilst still on the subject of feedback, I have my dissertation feedback session today, which I will discuss with my tutor the next steps for my dissertation, scary stuff! It should be interesting nonetheless obtaining my own research and writing about it. I’ve never written anything near 10,000 words before, so it should be interesting to see how it goes.

Until next time, and make sure you wrap up warm when outside, and good luck with any work that you may have to complete! 

Happy New Year!

Hello there everyone, and welcome to 2014! I hope you are all well and had an enjoyable break. Are you all ready to embrace term two? I know it’s probably cliché to talk about new years’ resolutions, so I will keep it brief. I have decided that this year I will not have any resolutions because I never stick to them. This means that instead of being annoyed at myself for breaking a resolution, I will simply continue my life as normal. If I were to have any, I would just like to travel more. Something I have mentioned multiple times in previous blogs.

In university related news, I am a little bit peeved that I haven’t received any coursework grades back yet, so I have no idea how I am doing this year in terms of performance. Hopefully I am doing well, but I won’t know until I get them back… I think that the expected turn around date should be the same as a coursework deadline. If we have to submit by a certain date, then the people marking it should return it by a certain date. If students submit late we get penalised, but what happens when they are marked late? Nothing! For one piece of work, they are over a month late for the expected feedback return. Rant for this blog is over.

Hopefully not many of you are in the same position as I am and are on track and have good grades. It hasn’t quite settled in that I am due to graduate in June, a little over 5 months away! Scary stuff! Until next time everyone, take care and I look forward to keeping you up to date on my next entry.