Monday 30 September 2013

September 2013 Summary

A while back I had a regular thing where once a month (formerly once a week) I would post an update about anything interesting in my life as well as plans for the next month. Following the blog restart, I thought I'd bring that back!

September Summary

-Went to Alcon
It was my first time at this convention and I had a brilliant time. I'll add a link to my review when I finally get it up.

-Moved back to Liverpool
Doing this the day after Alcon was probably a bad idea. I've basically covered this in the 'back to uni' posts.

-First classes of the year
It's going well so far. I already have a plan for my screenwriting assignments.

-Back to Anime Society
Sadly I missed the first week but the second was great. I'm glad I went despite being tired and I can't wait to go back.

Admittedly, most of these have already been covered this month, but there it is.
All in all, it's been a fairly busy - and fun - month.

Plans for October:

-Go back to London for a few days
This is planned for the 3rd-6th of the month. It's partly to see my family and partly to go out with my friends as I can't afford to go to MCM Expo this year.

-Create a first draft for all my assignments this semester

-Go back to Anime Society & attend the Halloween social

That's about it for now. At the end of the month I'll also be allowed to give blood again but I'll only do it if I can find someone to go with me in case it ends the same way as last time. I hope I can, otherwise I'll have to wait and hope I can get an appointment some time when I'm home for Christmas.

Hope everyone's had a good September and have a good October! I know I'm looking forward to it.


Sunday 29 September 2013

University Goals for the Year

Every year I try to set a number of goals to achieve before summer. Most of this year's will be copies of previous years, but I thought this would be an appropriate post.

My Goals:

1. Make more friends.
2. Attend more social events.
3. Attend all classes.
4. Get more 1st's.
5. Come up with a plan for after university.
6. Graduate.

I would say I am making some progress toward each of these goals already, but there's a lot of work left to do.

Well, this was a short post but that conclude's this week's 'back to university' theme. There will no doubt be many university related posts to follow but for now it's back to free posting.

Thanks for reading everyone! If you want, tell me in the comments what your plans for the year are!

Saturday 28 September 2013

Shopping Fun!

What does a poor university student with almost no money do when they need something? In my case, it’s a special kind of shopping spree!

Since starting university, September-December has always been the worst time of year financially for me. The September-December rent payment is usually a bit more than the others, for starters, and it seems like there’s always some problem that forces me into overdraft before the money comes in. This year was no different so I thought I’d do a post about the ways I’ve saved money (sort of) and the fun I’ve had living on a budget.

I’ll start with the less exciting bit first. I live further from the city centre now so shopping for food isn’t as easy. I can’t buy too much because I have to carry it home further, and multiple trips are harder than they sound. Buying everything I need in the smaller shops close by would only cost more, so I decided to do my very first online shop. It was the first for food anyway. We’ve done it before at home but then my parents are in charge of it so I didn’t know what to expect. The process was all very easy though. I’m just sad that Iceland online shopping doesn’t deliver to where I’m staying yet. Tesco was my favoured backup. I managed to get over a month’s worth of food for about £40, treats included, just by picking all the cheapest options.

Picking the cheapest options led to some interesting experiences. They have these whole meals in tins, like Spaghetti Bolognese, and I had never been lured in by them before, it just seemed a bit unusual. I’m used to food like that being either homemade, or at the very least, from a box. The tins have been great so far though. Another nice surprise came with the Tesco value microwaveable cheeseburger and chips. Usually I love microwave meals, but I wasn’t sure cheeseburger and chips were meant to be made like that. Well, admittedly it’s not as good as the ‘real’ ones, but I thought it was pretty good considering.

It was also funny having it delivered. The delivery guy called me, and because signal is bad here the phone cut off, which made me worry a little. He called back immediately, the problem being he couldn’t find flat. Again, I moved in two weeks ago, so I still don’t know the whole area. I couldn’t tell him how to get here so I ended up running outside to find him. Luckily, it didn’t take that long, and I got to ride in the Tesco van back to the flat. He was a really nice guy as well.

Now, food wasn’t the only thing I needed here. A week ago, I went on a special shopping trip. I wanted to get some new clothes because I found four outfits weren’t quite enough when some of them were taking longer to dry. Since I didn’t want to spend a lot of money on them I decided it was time to get to the charity shops, and since the way there just happened to pass by Forbidden Planet, I thought I’d take a look in there as well. Of course, I got myself some treats as well. Here’s my little collection from that day:


- Minecraft Poster – £3.99 – Forbidden Planet
I was in the store a few days previously and noticed the poster then. I really wanted it and as it was cheap enough, I decided I was going to get it.

-Star Trek Mug – £5.99 – Forbidden Planet
Just because I need more fandom mugs, especially since my Doctor Who one had to stay behind in London, and Star Trek is my big addiction at the moment.

-Mock the Week Book - £2.50 – British Heart Foundation
I love Mock the Week and every time I see books for any show I love I tend to want it. This one is all ‘scenes we’d like to see’ stuff, which is my favourite part of the show, so this was an obvious buy.

- A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan - £2 – British Heart Foundation
I haven’t actually started this book yet so I don’t know how I really feel about it. It’s not the sort of thing I’d usually pick up to read but it’s been recommended a few times now by people on my course and it sounded good so when I saw it in the shop at a cheap price I thought I might as well try it.

-Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice - £1 – Scope
I read this book ages ago and loved it – and the film is still one of my favourites – so I again gave into temptation when I found it in the shop.

-Trousers - £3.25 – Scope
Originally from Marks & Spencer’s, if anyone cares, I chose these because they looked and felt really comfy. Plus it can hard to find trousers in my size where the legs aren’t too long.

-Top - £4.25 – Scope
Again if anyone’s interested, originally from Dorothy Perkins, a shop I don’t think I’ve ever even been to. This one I chose because I thought it was cute, and it turns out it’s really comfy to wear too.

-Fluffy cushion - £4.50 – Scope
Actually it’s a fluffy cushion cover that came with the cushion inside it, even better. I’ve wanted a fluffy cushion for ages and this one was beautiful. I think it’s a really nice addition to my room.

I’m really happy because I knew I’d be tempted by a lot of things so I set myself a budget for the day of £30 and all this came to just under £27.50. New stuff with none of the guilt!

On the way back I ran into one of my friends and we ended up spending two hours just talking, which was the perfect end to my trip. This post has gone on pretty long now so I’ll leave it at that.
Thanks for reading everyone, bye bye!

Friday 27 September 2013

Fighting Apparent Laziness

I do all my own stunts, you know.


Has anyone else had a really slow couple of weeks? To be fair, it hasn’t really been slow for me, what with moving back to uni, having to buy food and other supplies, go back to classes, but everything outside of that has just been… well almost non-existent.

There’s no doubt that it can be hard sometimes, transitioning from summer back into a work environment. I suppose I should be happy, since this is the last year I’ll likely have such a transition. I still seem to spend a stupid amount of time just sitting in my room watching youtube or reading some useless thing on the internet. I can barely even wake up! To be fair, I have been having some sleep related problems recently, but as someone who usually wakes up at 8 in the morning, trying to get back to waking up at 7, progress has been terrible. Almost every day I’ve woken up to my alarm at 7 only to immediately fall asleep again and wake up around 10 (the one exception thankfully being the day I had a class at 10). This usually leads to a very slow start. Then I’ll occasionally get tired in the afternoon. I’ve never really been a nap person but occasionally I’ll give in and take one for the sake of being able to do more afterwards. Unfortunately the last couple of times I’ve done it I’ve stupidly not set an alarm and woken up over an hour later even more tired than when I laid down, which leads to a lack of anything being accomplished.

I’ve been actively trying to break this cycle, with only minor success so far but it shouldn’t be too hard to resolve now. Yesterday my classes went from suspiciously easy to ‘ah, there’s the work’ when I realised just how much reading I would have to do. I love reading, but there is a lot to get through in a short space of time. I’ve started that now, as well as work on my assignments for the semester, so at least that’s back on track even if I could pick up the pace a little. I also went back to the anime society last night, having missed the first of the year due to tiredness. I was tired last night but forced myself to go anyway and I’m really happy I did. I’m sure in a couple of weeks everything will be back to normal but in the middle of this transition things are pretty rough (even if they are mostly relaxed).

Has anyone else ever had this problem? What do you do to fight laziness when it rears its ugly head?

(Please don’t tell anyone in my writing class I used a cliché!)

Thursday 26 September 2013

My Uni Supplies

I wanted to talk a little about the supplies I brought for my classes. I was going to mention them in my previous post but I didn’t want it to run too long, so I thought I’d do a separate one for it.

First of all, this is the bag I use for my classes. Actually, it’s the bag I use for everything right now because it’s the only one I brought with me. 


I love Soul Eater. I don’t love this bag’s strap because while it can be adjusted, it doesn’t like to stay adjusted, and when it’s filled with uni supplies it has the nasty habit of swinging around and hitting my other leg, which lead to a pretty nasty bruise.

My first year I had a notebook for each class. Last year I had a big one that I wrote everything in. I decided to have one notebook between all my classes again this year (it’s really not bad if you have a big enough one and mark each section properly. It took me until my second class to realise it had a bookmark, which I love.


I wanted to get an academic diary again this year as I had one last year and found it really useful. Then I found this instead and I couldn’t resist. It has separate sections, a timetable which is great for classes and anything else planned at specific times, a to do list for everything else and even a section where you can write down notes, great for homework as well as diary entries and anything else you need to write down. It is shorter though, I’ve worked it out and it will only last until December. After that I may get a regular diary again, but we’ll see when the time comes.



So, I was stupid and when it came to packing I couldn’t find my pens anywhere. I had to run out and buy some. I’m one of those people who needs a specific type of pen. I’m not limited to just one, though I have my favourites, but I like ones that feel a certain way in my hand and ones that I can write easily with. This doesn’t mean I actually know the difference between different types of pens. I couldn’t get my favourite so I bought these because they looked similar. ‘Roller pens’, again I don’t actually know what that means, but they aren’t the easiest. I like the way they feel and most of the time the way they write but they only really write properly if I have the notebook flat rather than at an angle, which is how I often have to write in the lecture room. It has gotten easier as I’ve become used to them though.


Honestly, that’s all there is for now. Undeserving of its own post? Maybe. There were some other things (sharpie highlighters, certain pencils and rubbers) but I didn’t have the time to find them before I left. That is the downside of having a convention right before moving back to university.

I'm also lucky enough that my course doesn't have a lot of required reading. There's a lot of suggested reading, but only two or three we've actually had to read.

Wednesday 25 September 2013

What I Brought to Uni

And now an impression of my cat.

It’s common knowledge that people moving to university tend to take too much with them. My first and second years here, it didn’t matter to me that I would be part of that stereotype. I would be miles away from home for months at a time, I wanted as much of my stuff with me as possible.

Now, having that mind-set might not be too much of a problem if you weren’t going too far away, or if you or anyone in your family have a car as seems to be the case most of the time. But if you’re someone without any of that, the distance is larger and you have to stick to trains or coaches (I gave up on trains a long time ago. £50 one way? No thanks.) then its’ going to be a lot harder. If you fill up your suitcase so much that you have to stop every five seconds and by the end of it you can’t use any of your muscles without intense pain, then that may be a sign you need to change things. Of course, it might also help if you have any strength whatsoever.  

So yeah, this year I decided I wasn’t having any of that. I wanted easy, light travelling. I only wanted what was absolutely necessary (plus a couple of extras for entertainment). The number of each thing I took was cut down significantly and some things were eliminated altogether.

Below is a list of everything I took:

-Clothes – I took all my underwear but only 4 tops and bottoms, because they can be re-worn and if I spaced them out right I wouldn’t have to worry about running out of clothes (new place has washing machine but no dryer so we have to hang them up which takes longer)
-Hairbrush, deodorant, toothbrush, toothpaste and 1 towel (everything else like that was either coming back from storage or could be bought when I arrived)
-Blanket and dressing gown (for Winter, and I wasn’t sure if just walking around in my pyjamas in the morning would be acceptable here, plus I just like having something to wrap myself in)
-3DS and games (so I’d have something to play if I wanted, but restricted to save space)
-3 books (again for entertainment, and justified because I’m on a writing course)
-Uni supplies (I’ll go over these later)
-3 Plushies (because I just couldn’t eliminate anymore, plus one is smaller ayway)
-Camera, phone and laptop plus chargers.

That was all I brought and so far it’s been enough. I haven’t even had time to touch the games since starting class again!

So my advice for anyone about to move to uni (though it might be a bit late for this year) is to only take what is absolutely necessary. Add a couple more things for entertainment if you like, but you definitely won’t need as much as you think you do.


This is particularly true if you have to get the coach and then walk half an hour with suitcase and any other bags to get to where you’re staying. I'd talk about my journey but it was pretty boring. The only notable thing about it was how freezing it was on the coach.

Tuesday 24 September 2013

My New Uni Home

For the first time in my university life, I’m not living in student halls. This has definitely been a change for the better.

I’ll start by talking about how this came about. Now, I know I’m not the only one who had trouble finding accommodation this year! Of course, this happens to people every year but this was my first experience with it and now I know just how scary it is. My first year I found accommodation through my university and the second year I booked a place in the same building again, but this year for a number of reasons I wanted to be somewhere else. I ran into a lot of problems trying to apply for new places and things weren’t looking good when I unexpectedly received a message on Facebook. One of the girls on my course, who I hadn’t spoken to much before, offered me the spare room in their flat. I agreed immediately – it sounded great, it was significantly cheaper than the last place, and generally it was just a definite place to stay, I couldn’t turn that down.

The price is a major improvement and I got to know my new flatmates a little over the summer so I wasn’t as nervous moving in. I’d like to think in the short time I’ve been here we’ve already become friends, which is brilliant. I’ve had bad flatmate experiences and some really good ones, but I’ve never been able to become close enough with anyone to be friends.

The place I’m in now is still student housing but it’s a lot different from the hall I was in before, it’s more like a real flat. It’s really nice, in an area which, on first impression, I thought looked too nice for students to be able to afford. I expected it to be a bit smaller but it’s a really nice size. The living room has a really big window and there’s an archway that connects it to the kitchen. An archway! The oven is electric. I still prefer gas but I’m not complaining because this one hasn’t given me any problems yet. The fire alarm is a lot more sensitive than I used to but apparently people are setting it off all the time so I haven’t felt too bad the couple of times I’ve done it.

The bedrooms and bathroom are downstairs on basement level. I’ve always wanted a basement room, though I have now discovered the downside as it can get quite cold. I have a double bed, which is just awesome. It’s also very comfortable. The bathroom is shared, which is something I had originally worried about when looking at such accommodation, but that really isn’t a problem for me when I know the people I’m sharing with, plus everything is kept clean.

The flat itself is a bit further from the city centre than I was before but I can still get there and to classes within twenty minutes so I don’t have a problem with that. It’s also a lot quieter than the regular student halls, which means no interrupted sleep at night and no annoyances during the day!


All in all, I really love this new place and look forward to the rest of my year here. Here’s part of my room, just to show you all (I’d do a full flat tour but I’m not sure how my flatmates would feel about it).


So, if you’re in student accommodation too, what are your rooms like? What do you love/hate about them? And do you have any tips for decoration?

Monday 23 September 2013

Uni 3rd Year Classes - I'm Suspicious

Is anyone else here in the third year of university? Is anyone else suspicious? Okay then.

Hey everyone, the first post in this week’s back to university theme is going to be my first impression of this year’s modules.

So, a quick recap of what I do. I’m a Creative Writing student. The classes I’m taking are prose, screenwriting and something called ‘Writer at Work’ where we have to develop our own project and then either do it or talk about what we would have done if we were doing it (we have to do at least one work related module or we can’t graduate).


To be honest, my first impression was actually ‘why these colours?’


Are they taking anyone else back to primary school? Who decided these were the educational colours?

The induction for the course came on the 13th. This is where they supposedly introduce us to what we’ll be doing in the year, and it when pretty much the same as the last two years:
‘Here are your timetables.’
‘Are there any clashes?’
‘Any questions?’
‘Okay, you can go.’
It was scheduled for two hours and lasted about 45 minutes (half an hour longer than last year).

It was all very quick and I still wasn’t that concerned, though it did surprise me to learn that this year makes up 75% of the overall grade. I knew it would be worth more than last year, I just didn’t expect that much more, I thought it would be more 40-60 or something. I don’t know why.

Last week brought us out first classes. I’m surprised that this year there’s nothing where we have to write an essay on an already existing film or story. I also didn’t expect myself to be so disappointed about that.

The classes are as they were last year, lectures followed by workshops. The assignments seem almost too easy, hence the suspicion. Yes, they have to be professional quality now but it’s still hard to believe there aren’t any nasty surprises they’re waiting to spring on us.

I already have plans for most things.
I’ve gone completely sci-fi for screenwriting. Over the summer I started watching Star Trek again, for the first time properly since I was a child, and became completely addicted. Already being in love with another popular sci-fi series, Doctor Who, I’ve gone a bit mad for the genre, currently making plans to re-watch all the other old sci-fi shows I used to love. I think it’s probably best if I move on now before I lose track completely.

I’m going a different route for prose. I love sci-fi, I do, but here’s the problem, I watch it. I’ve read a little before but nowhere near enough to think I’m qualified yet. It comes down to this – do I research a new genre now and hope I’m good enough to get high marks by writing it in two months time, or do I go with another genre that I have significantly more experience in and love just as much? Honestly, I’m leaning toward the latter, which would likely be horror, though I suppose I could try a combination. I haven’t decided anything for definite there yet.

I’m not sure what I’m going to do about this work module and I have a feeling it will be the hardest one. I have ideas, but they’re all just small fragments right now, and there isn’t a lot of help available for us in terms of deciding what we want to do.

So there it is. My general view is ‘it seems easy, but it probably isn’t what it seems’.
At least I only have 8 hours a week actually in class, and I still have my three day weekend!

Why I should never be asked to pose. Wanted to add a second picture to this... it went quite wrong. Those eyes look ready to kill.

So, my question of the day is, if you’re studying anything right now, what is it and what do you think of it so far?

Please Bring Order To This Blog

Hey guys! Hope you’ve all had a good summer? The reason I ask that of course is because I’m now back at university (and I haven’t posted a thing since July)! Oh, before I forget, 20 points to whoever gets the reference I was trying to make!

Things are going to be changing around here. There are a few things I’ve said in the past about this blog, specifically that I want to post every day and I want to improve a few things. Well that’s all happening right now!

For a while now, my posts have been sporadic, both in terms of posting and theme. I enjoy writing about a variety of topics but I want them to be more organised. Currently, I’m trying to come up with some kind of schedule, so that I can talk about what I want but still maintain some kind of order.
As another way of creating more order, I’ve removed a majority of the tags, since they were a bit of a mess as well. I kept ‘university’ and ‘lists’ as they are two larger topics I plan to continue with. More tags will come with new posts I’m sure, and others may be added for older posts that I still really like or have proven to be more popular.

To start off, following what I said at the beginning of this post, this week is going to be dedicated to posts on starting my third year at university!

I’ll also give a small list on things I plan to post about so far:
-University
-My life in general (interesting things I’m doing, strange experiences, etc.)
-Reviews/thoughts on things (TV, books, games, etc.) both old and new
-Lists, about anything really

Actually, that’s about all I have planned so far, but I know I’ll probably come up with more.


All my posts will now also be complete with pictures!

I can't tell if that's well placed lighting or not, I just wish it did more to hide my messy bed. By the way, that guy on my head is my new mascot. There will be a special post on him when this week is over.

This is going to be a fun restart.

So if there’s anything you’d like to see here, let me know in the comments!