Uni: Being an Undergraduate

I wanted to blog today but really didn't know what to blog about.. I thought instead of doing a review of a product or a wish-list, I'd write about my university life and my course. Some of you may find this quite boring but I really just wanted to write and to 'chat' today.

Well I'm a Public Relations and Media student at Sheffield Hallam University. I'm also from Sheffield and decided when I was applying for my courses that it was between staying at home or going to Newcastle, where the course didn't really interest me that much and I was worried about leaving home, knowing it would cost more money, I'd lose contact with my friends and family as I'm a very family/ friends orientated person and one of the other important things was my boyfriend, he would have understood my decision to leave Sheffield and I'm sure we would have tried to make it work some way, as other people manage to do this! I also had a great life in Sheffield so why leave all this behind?

Many people sometimes wonder why I chose to stay at home and live at home, the simple reasons are because it saves me money in the long run and I didn't want to be in more debt than I will be anyway and it just suited my lifestyle more. I'm not a typical 20 year old as I don't really enjoy going out and drinking 3-4 times a week like some university students do. I prefer odd nights as it won't get boring and in my eyes they just seem to be much more fun.

I'm currently in the second semester of my second year and the stress levels are starting to increase even though I'm only a week into the semester. It just feels like there is so much pressure as we have to start thinking about our dissertations now and I'd rather not think about that yet tbh. I love my course public relations is definately the route for me, the media part I don't really enjoy but I'd being doing this since secondary school so it only made sense to take a degree which included this in. 

So back to my second year, this is the year that begins to count and parts of the marks which you achieve go towards your degree (for my course anyway). For some reason I struggle to write essays, I really have to put alot of effort and hard-work into writing a good essay and getting a good mark for it, in my first year I'd been getting 50s-60s which yes is good but I wanted to push myself and get the better grades that I could be properly proud of and be like yes that shows how much work I've put into this essay.

 In the last few weeks I have shown my potential and have realised that I can do good essays as I've been getting mid 60's and 2:1's which is what I eventually want to graduate with. Yes it takes me 24252 hours to do an essay, reading books, internet journals etc and then hours of reading through and correcting essays to get good marks but I wouldn't change any of this because I want something to come of my degree and I will continue to pushing myself to get the degree I know that I can achieve in the long run. 

I'm at the stage where I'm sorting out my career and life plan, but then part of my worries about this, when I graduate in a year and 4 months time, will I enter the working world and never be able to get a job in the PR industry? I'm currently looking for interns and work placements that I can do over the summer in order to get myself some experience and in order to bulk up my CV and to be able to stand out from the rest that might apply for the same position. I've been in education for 10 years (2002 I started secondary school) and that is a scary thought, what if this doesn't pay off and I'm stuck doing something I don't enjoy. At the moment I'm also looking for volunteering opportunities as I don't want my summer to be boring when I could be helping better myself and my CV.

I hope you all enjoyed reading this, I know it all seems a little bit disjointed but this is what was in my head and I'm wanting to become more personal with some of my blog posts so expect alot more of this!

Thank you for reading, I hope your all having a great week so far! If you have any questions about anything I've mentioned either comment below or don't hesitate to send me an email :)

ox