It's been over a month since I last wrote my blog. I know I said I was going to try and write something for every week of my final year at university, but I have to confess that I didn't feel like writing during the last week of my first term. The reason for this is simply that I had bad news, and for a little while I'd fallen out of love with academia. Thankfully, I'm beginning this blog on a happier note, as my return has found me in a bit of a happier mood than the end of the last term.
So, week 13. This is officially the start of my final taught term at university. Hooray! It's also the term in which I find out my exam timetable and my graduation date - all exciting stuff. Over the Christmas break, I managed to not think much about psychology for quite some time, something which I think I needed. It's all too easy to get overwhelmed by plans, and when those plans don't work out, it's easy to get disheartened. In these cases, it's best just to stop for a while, step back, and breathe, and what better excuse than Christmas? Cakes to bake, family to see and presents to wrap. After the season of debt and obesity ended and 2014 began, I resumed working.
Last term, I only had one piece of coursework due in, and that was back in November! While I'd tinkered with my other three essays, I hadn't made an impressive amount of progress, but I had enough of a foundation to mean that I was finished with the majority of my coursework before returning to university for the second term. I have to admit, it's a nice feeling, having coursework ready to hand in a week or so before a deadline. All of the stress is taken away. Although it is important to avoid the public questions of other students, just in case you start to doubt what you've written. In any case, I'm expecting a good grade overall this year, and I can push the current coursework out of my mind for three weeks while it is being marked.
So what else is new? Not a whole lot, I must admit. I've applied for a master's degree at UCL - it seems that to be accepted onto a lot of PhD students you have to be an internal candidate, and thus I was largely unsuccessful despite my grades and experience. I guess all the hard work in the world can't save you from being unlucky. While I was pretty down about this at the time (a lot of soul-searching and finding shoulders to cry on [thanks to those of you who put up with my madness, by the way...] occurred following rejection emails), I think I've slowly moved on. While I'm not overjoyed at the prospect of having to raise £15,000 before September, the MSc programme I've applied for looks great, and hopefully next year I should be in a much better position to obtain my PhD. I suppose everything works out eventually.
In other news, the clinical trial I am running at university finally appears to be going swimmingly, after a lot of false-starts and drama. For the first time, I can honestly say I am enjoying working on the project completely - and being told that "you rock" by the company sponsoring the trial is always nice! I'm also looking at working for another one of my lecturers this term, which should hopefully boost the MSc fund and give me still more research experience. Despite only having four hours of lectures this term, I have the feeling that I'm going to be very busy.
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