So the September update was pushed aside in favour of moving in catching up with old friends and making new ones, oh and university work I guess. Here's a joint September and October update...
Any time snatched away for myself in September was mainly spent sleeping or exercising. So September has come and gone and its properly autumn now. The leaves outside my window, which were green and vibrant when I moved in, have slowly turned yellow, they’re settling on the pavements around Exeter too, making any wet walk into campus slightly treacherous.
It’s been odd, being back for second year that is. I’m back in my university town, back in my house of ten, and there is so much that I still can’t do. There’s no more late night study sessions in a quiet library, no more group trips out, no more meeting new people in seminars. As a university student, missing out on so much whilst paying £9250 as well as accommodation and living costs makes it a frustrating time. Especially when someone works out that, with your reduced contact hours, its £275 per lagging online Microsoft Teams meeting. It can be easy to lose sight of the wonderful and joyous little parts of life that made me decide it was worth coming back to second year in Exeter rather than staying at home. I try to look at the positives in terms of education, its more flexible, I’ve had an increase in independent research work, I’m developing better time management skills and techniques.
But it’s also the little parts of life itself that are important, the little interactions and moments that make me feel that it’s all worth it. The best friend who comes in every morning and lies in my bed to catch up, the coffee dates to work that get us out of the house, the joint cooking and all the hilarity that entails, the late night conversations and inside jokes that you can only understand if you were there, the bare and open bravery of admitting things in the dark with a friend, the screaming at the TV while sport plays or a horror movie haunts you. Yes future me will be in debt and will be stressed with work but this, this makes it feel worth it. I can survive the awkward mic failures in a meeting or the fear I look weird on camera for these delightful moments of joy persist despite it feeling like the whole world has turned on its head. Even the 5 minutes at the start of a seminar when people ask how you are or the awkward first group interaction over a Facebook chat are so human and the loneliness of isolation or lockdown seems to seep away for a moment or two.
So here are the things keeping me going:
Second year = lots and lots of work. As a result I've been studying a lot and here are my favourite study playlists from September/October:
- feels how coffee tastes
My darling best friend up in Newcastle sent me a copy of Dolly Alderton's Ghosts and I adore it. We both fell in love with Dolly's writing after her first book Everything I Know About Love. We decided to share books while interrailing so that book came on trains all around Europe with us and was read in carriages with strangers, on station platforms and in tucked away coffee shops. That was well over a year and a half ago now but we still both have our own dog eared, well worn copies at university with us, I even sent two copies to friends during lockdown.
I'm currently juggling a lot of university work so I made a post about what I'm using here.
I'm also currently slightly obsessed with the app Co-Star. I can't help it when the notification comes up, I'm straight to the app to check how my day looks and most of the time it genuinely applies and makes me question things. For example, today it asks if I'm 'conflating co-dependency with security' and it does make me ponder on my relationships, and sometimes, just the prompt to think about and reflect on things like that is important in my opinion.
I've recently been rewatching Grey's Anatomy, which is available in the UK on Amazon Prime. I adore this show and whenever I'm stressed out I just chose a season or a favourite storyline to rewatch. Sometimes I do just feel it's easier to rewatch shows where you know what will happen, I am one of those people after all that sometimes likes to look up the plot of a movie to see what will happen while I'm halfway through watching it.
I think I'll end this update with my favourite COVID sign off: I hope you're staying positive and testing negative.