Tour tour tourrrrrrrrr

Tour tour tourrrrrrrrr, how do you like it how do you like it, TOUR TOUR TOUR.

In case you can’t tell this blog is about TOUR :) . I’ve just come back from a weeklong tour in Lloret de Mar with my university netball team! It was a great week filled with many great memories, not to mention trophies and many sleepless nights!!

They say a picture paints a thousand words so I thought I’d use a few of them to describe my week....

Day One- Travel/Surgeons day

This was taken on the beginning of our 25ish hour coach journey there....believe me when I say this was more comfy then it looks!!!

Day Two: Clown dayyy :D

This was actually a really fun costume :D and the sun was actually out for most of the day!!

Day Three- Naked Chef Day



This day we had to go play the first few netball matches where we made it to the final, which we had to play the next day!! I really liked the costumes as well as they came with a really cool apron with the university of Greenwich on :D definitely going use that again!!





NOTE: THIS IS NOT MY ACTUAL BUM :P THEY’RE SHORTS WITH A FAKE ONE ATTACHED :P

 

Day Four - Netball Final Day/Mexican Night

Soooo we won :D we ended up walking away with 1^st and 3^rd place :D our football boys always won 1^st place as well :D so we were very happy!

This costume was not one of my favourites as those hats made it virtually impossible to move in a crowded area :(

Day Five- Freshers Olympics/Tour Top night/Last night :(

Unfortunately for the freshers it was very cold and wet on this day and they had to complete a series of fresher Olympics which involved things like jumping into the sea etc. :P would want to be them :P

We also had to wear our tour tops out that night, which displayed our tour names on the back and we also looked various accessories so we looked like golfers :P

It was our last night in Llroet so it was a sad one, especially as for a few people, like myself, this is going be our last tour.

My friends and I all got various hennas to commemorate it though :)

Day Six: Home time :(

Luckily for me, I learnt from the dreadfully long and cramped coach journey home last year and booked a plane back to London instead :D

Which meant instead of getting home sometime on the Friday, I got home Thursday evening after a lovely day of shopping and food, after everyone else was piled onto the coach earlier that morning :P mwah ha ha.

But yeah :) that was tour...it took me a few days to recover from all the sleepless nights but I would highly recommend going to any sports team, as it really does bring teams together :) and you may even win a trophy or two ;)

Bye for now xx

Happy Red Day

Today is officially the British Heart Foundation day where everyone is encouraged to wear red and donate to support this important charity. Here in the enquiry unit we’ve all turned up dressed in red, as well as eating red themed food and running various competitions throughout the office to try and raise as much as we can :), and if you would like to know more about the charity and do your part you can click on this link which will take you to their website: http://www.bhf.org.uk/get-involved/fundraising/red-for-heart.aspx or alternatively you can donate by texting WIWT24 £XX to 70700 , replacing XX With the amount of money you wish to donate.

On a slightly unrelated note, finally got my grade back for my portfolio that I was stressing so much about. I did in that time where I had 3 deadlines due in 3 days, so I was seriously questioning whether or not I would get a good grade for it or not....BUT I did.....WOOOHOOO :D ended up get a 75 (1^st) which I was over the moon about!! It was worth 50% of my module which now means I only need another 2.5% in order to pass :D definitely a weight of my mind!!

AND the good news keeps on flowing; I also found out that I got the job I applied for as a research assistant working alongside the MET police :D which will be great experience for me!! Additionally, I also have been asked to come along for an interview for another research assistant position next week, but I’m debating whether or not I should go, as I barely have time to manage everything I’m doing at the moment, with assignments, netball, working for the enquiry unit and actually going to uni, I don’t even know how i’m going to fit in this new job let alone another one :/ and i’d hate to go to the interview, get it, and then be in the horrible position of having to turn/let them down :/ it’s definitely something I need to think about either way!!

But yeah, that’s my week pretty much summed up, hopefully all of you have had a good week, :)

Bye for now xx

A year in the life of a first year psychology student...

Rather than my usual blog of tales of my life, I decided to focus this one on what it is like studying psychology and my personal experience of the models I did in my first year, so then if anyone is thinking of choosing psychology for their degree it’ll (hopefully) give them a bit more of an insight to it and what it's actually like. (Although don’t let my experiences put you off....everyone is different after all, and all have different interests!!)

Year One (Fresherrssss).

This was made up of 4 modules; 3 compulsory ones and 1 we could choose.  And was spread over 3 days (Monday, Tuesday and Friday) with 7 hours of lectures and 5 hours of seminars.

The modules were:

Academic and Personal Development (30 Credits).

This in my opinion was probably the easiest module of them all....this one involved working on a lot of the basic skills needed to study psychology, such as literature searchers, essay writing as well as filming a video of us conducting a psychology experiment. This module was helpful as it allowed us to practice our key skills and as I found the assignments relatively easy, this module helped to boost my overall grade for the year.

Introduction for Psychology (30 Credits).

This module was literally what it says on tin, an introduction to psychology; luckily for me I did A level psychology, so I already had a fair bit of knowledge about the key psychology studies, such as Milgram, Zimbardo etc...which helped me a lot with this side of this course, although saying that this was probably the one that I had to work the hardest foras there was just so much information that we had to remember, especially when it came to the mini tests or the final exam.

Research Methods (30 Credits).

This module is probably the most important one of both the first and second year because this one you NEED to pass in order to pass the year, where as if you fail another module, it doesn’t matter as long as your overall grade is above 40. Another thing people were surprised about when we started this module was that it is largely based on statistics; this plays a key role in psychology as statistics help examine the relationship between two variables and is used in nearly every psychology study conducted, and when it came to producing our three lab reports for the year, as well as writing up the studies we conducted, we also needed to analysis it using the appropriate statistics as well as producing graphs and stuff to illustrate the data. On this module we alternated each week between research method lectures/seminars, (which were mainly all about ways to conduct research and the problems with certain methods etc) and statistic lectures. As well as the 3 lab reports we were also assessed using fortnightly statistics tests and method work books as well as an open book statistics exam at the end of the year and a closed book methods exam.

Counselling (30 Credits) or Applied Psychology (30 Credits). 

Here I mistakenly choose to do counselling as I was filled with the deluded ideas of helping people through all their problems etc.....unfortunately for me, when we had to watch the videos of case studies,  I soon realised that I could not stand the idea of sitting there listening to other people go on and on about their problems. I just don’t have it in my personality to sit there and actually listen instead of just saying ‘MAN UP’. And as that’s kind of the main focus of counselling, needless to say I quickly lost interest in this subject. There were 3 assessments on this course, 2 open book mini exams and 1 seen exam at the end of the year, and as it was seen it meant that we were given the exam questions 2 weeks before the exam so we could prepare our exam questions ahead of time...if it wasn’t for that fact I really don’t think I would have passed as if it’s not something i’m interested in I don’t really tend to retain the information as easy as other course. 

But I passed.....so I guess that’s all that matters, and I we don’t have to do it in second or third year, so thats a big yaaaay from me :D.

On the other side of things, we were also able to choose to do applied psychology, which looks at the application of psychology in the real world. The thing my friends loved about doing this module was the fact that there is no exam for it...it’s all coursework based, which had I known before I would have been really tempted to choose this instead, as I hate exams!!!!

But yeah.....Thats pretty much my first year in a nutshell....I’ll write another one about second year sometime in the future. ...but for now I hope this blog will shed some light on what psychology is really like as a degree.

Soooo goodbye for now xx

Another day....another assignment!!

They say Christmas is a time for relaxation and reflection amongst other things. Unfortunately that's not the case if you’re in your second year of Psychology. I had not 1, not 2 but THREE deadlines due in on the 1^st three days back at Uni :’(. Stress doesn’t even begin to cover it!! And after pulling an all nighter to get my essays complete, the night before I had 2 Brain, Behaviour and Cognition essays due, I checked my emails only to find my tutor had given us an extension on it from the 10^th January to the 3^rd of Feb!!!!!!!!!!! Which would have been great, had the email not been sent 2 HOURS before the deadline, when pretty much everyone would have submitted anyway!!!!! GRRRR. BUT on a more positive note,  besides a lab report due on the 25^th Jan, I literally have a whole month freeeeeeee, without any assignments or work due at all!! And I SERIOUSLY cannot wait!!!

Anyway, onto the more funner aspects of my Christmas :). I had a great few days at home with my family, which basically consisted of a bunch of presents and loads and loads of food :D (which was kinda the best bit :P) and then after boxing day I had to go down to Ramsgate to have a second Christmas with my boyfriend and his family :) which again was so lovely!! Although we did want to go cinema and one point, and when we got there it was all sold out so we ended up in the local bingo hall, where I think I may have discovered my one true love!! It was just so thrilling :D despite the fact that we were possible the youngest people there! AND I won a pound LOL which made the experience that much better :D. And for like the first time in about 5 years I stayed in on New Years Eve and got a take away with my mum, which was actually really really nice as I didn’t have any of the palava that I had in previous years of trying to get home from central London!!! Hopefully you all had a great Christmas and New Years as well :)

And now i’m just at work at the Enquiry unit, figuring what the hell this lab report is meant to be on, in between calls (We’re actually really busy today with the UCAS deadline looming....2 DAYS people!!).  Hopefully I’ll have it all figured out in by next week as I really don’t want to have to do work on my Birthday :D. Which is my motivation for getting this done, as my Boyfriend is taking me to see Shrek in Theatres, and it would be nice to go without feeling guilty for not doing work :P

Anyway thats it for now :D 

Byeeeeeeeeeee xx

(my babyyyy :D) 

Christmas timeeeee, mistletoe and wineeeee...

FINALLY the wait is almost over and then Christmas shall be upon us :D. I’m still counting down the days on my rapidly shrinking advent calendar :D

I’m glad I can finally start to relax a little bit and begin to enjoy the run up to Christmas as it’s been a very hectic few weeks...

Firstly we had our office Christmas party, which was fab :) we went to Cafe Rouge and majority of the food (especially the starter) were lovelyyy. We also did a quiz thing which needless to say I failed miserably at :( but it was still good fun, and then we got to do Secret Santa :D :D :D my favourite part of my meal by far as I got a beautiful scarf from my old supervisor Tony which is very much appreciated now the weather has taken a turn for the worst!! And afterwards we headed to O’Neil’s as it was one of our colleagues Dan’s leaving drinks :’( so we had to celebrate/commiserate that :P.

Then I had a seen exam to prepare for...its kinda like an essay assignment and an exam rolled into one as you get given the questions like 2 weeks before the exam and you had to prepare answers for them and then memorise them. I think I did okay...I pretty much remembered both of the essays I prepared, so now it just boils down to whether my essays were any good...fingers crossed!!

Then a day later, my lovely neighbours headed to South Africa for 2 months so as a good bye thing we decided to throw a Christmas dinner/mini party type thing, and me being slightly naive thought that cooking for 8 people would be just as easy/straightforward as when I usually cook for my family of 3...turns out its more stressful than I ever thought!! Eventually though I got a 3 course meal out and everything besides the slightly over cooked turkey was delish :) so turned out to be a really lovely day...although I’ve nominated my mum to cook the next Christmas dinner, much rather just eat it than cook it :D

I also had to sit a mock exam for my statistics course, although my friends and I realised about 10 minutes into the exam that perhaps going out for the Netball Christmas meal the night before wasn’t really the best idea...would never recommend going out the night before an exam as it is absolute torture sitting there for hours when you feel like you want to die...especially at 9am!! I managed to scrape through it though and ended up with 63...so it was worth dragging myself out of bed for...

After the exam I got given my first lab report back...the one I worked sooo hard on....and it turns out I didn’t work hard enough as only managed to get a 62 L its still a 2:1 but its miles away from that first that I really want!!  Although on the bright side it gives me more motivation to work harder on my next assignment!! I’m still waiting to get a mark back on the essay I handed in at the beginning of October!!! It’s been like 6 weeks now but my lecturer still hasn’t finished marking them....grrrr.

Here at the Enquiry Unit I officially finish working Fridays today :) and then I’m only working a few days overtime until we come back so I’m gonna use the rest of my time to work on one of my numerous assignments...we start back at Uni on the 9^th and I have a 2000 word Critical Review due, then on the 10^th I have a 2500 word Portfolio due and then on the 11^th I have a 2500 Biopsychology essay due :( I’m thinking my Christmas may not be so merry after all :( 

Ahhhh well, I’m still excited about Christmas (and food and presents etc..) either way :)

So for now, Merry Christmas to all and to all a good ‘morning’ lol :P xxx

Stress.com

One of the most common reactions I’m faced with when I tell people that I study psychology, is ‘OMG, can you read minds’. Unfortunately for me, I cannot and nor is that was psychology is about!

Although if I could read minds I would be very interested to read my lecturers’ minds and try and find out what I got for my latest assignment I submitted....Slightly worried about it as being a academic-perfectionist I do always liked to aim for the top and achieve a 1st so whenever I submit a piece of work I’m not 100% happy with I do tend to stress until I get my results....so fingers crossed!!

Additionally, I’m finding it a lot harder this year than in first year...I know it should go without saying that second year would be harder I just didn’t realise it would be THIS hard. I was lucky in my first year as not only did I do a psychology A level, I also did a Maths one too which helped me so much with the Statistics side of the course and the majority of work we covered in first year was almost a repeat for me, but unfortunately that’s where it ends, as everything we’ve covered this year is new, and at the moment it just feels like it’s one assignment after another and I’m really trying not to let it pile on top of me...

HOWEVER, IT IS OFFICIALLY ONE MONTH UNTIL CHRISTMAS.

I'm half excited. Half petrified. So much to doooo, so little timeeee, I’ve got so much shopping I need to doooo as well as a festive Christmas Menu to plan, (which I must admit I do love doing!!). Going shopping this weekend though so hopefully I’ll be able to get the majority of it over and done with then :D I have a vague idea of what I want to get everyone so hopefully it all goes to plan :).

Anyways, that’s it for now :)

Cyaaa, xx

OMG!

OMG. ONE. DAY. LEFTTTTTTTTTT!!!!!!!

Until:  BREAKING DAWN!!!!!

Excitement doesn’t even begin to cover it  :D this is like my favourite book and can’t wait to see how they’ve adapted it to the film :D. I’ve just got the Open Day to get through tomorrow and then I’m FREEEEEEE to go and watch it :D

On a less exciting note, after I watch Breaking Dawn I then have to spend the rest of my weekend desperately trying to finish off one of my many assignments due next week  :( whoever said third year is the hardest obviously forgot just how many assignments/exams you actually have to get through in second year *cries in despair*.

Because of the amount of work I’ve had to do, these past couple of weeks have actually been pretty mundane :( ...we did have our Netball initiations though :D that definitely put a smile on my face as since I’m now in second year,  I got the pleasure of terrorising the very unlucky freshers :D (Don’t worry we didn’t do anything TOO bad to them....we are ladies after all :D).  And my team played a couple of matches...unfortunately we did lose them both *boo hoo* but we are getting better with each match we play so fingers crossed for our match next week :D.

Besides that the only other exciting thing I did was to go to this restaurant Cosmos...Seriously, if there is a heaven I imagine that it would pretty much resemble there...Cosmos literally has every single food you can imagine....chinese....indian...thai....sushi....roast dinner....pizza...etc etc :D and then my personal favourite..THE DESERT BAR :D needless to say I practically starved myself that day and successfully polished off about half the restaurant :D om nom nom.

But anyways, hopefully once I hand in this next assignment I will have much more exciting news to share with you all :) but for now it’s off back to work I know....bye bye for now xx