Weekend at the library and a productive week

Hello all! I hope you're all having a great weekend so far!

As I'm writing this it is about 1PM on a Sunday afternoon and I'm currently at the university library ready to do some work. Yes, in university at a weekend. The fact that the university has a 24 hour library open 7 days a week is extremely helpful as it means I know I always have somewhere to study in silence whenever I need it. Also at the weekends it is usually quite empty in all of the learning resource areas so I always know I will be able to access the books that I want with ease or get to a computer in any part of the learning resource area that I want.

This week has been a good, productive week. I've finally got my dissertation questionnaire online and am currently getting participants for my study which is really exciting - there is no bigger feeling of relief than making progress on your dissertation (apart from perhaps finishing your dissertation, but we've still a long way to go until then!) I have also been researching the assessments for this semester and doing reading which will hopefully help me to write them.

I have also had some grades back this week meaning I have now got all my results for semester 1 and have definitely passed semester 1 units! However it does mean that I have spent an hour or two in total this week playing on the award predictor to figure out combinations of grades that I need to get to reach my targeted degree classification. I am still trying to work out whether the award predictor is a blessing or a curse, I cannot spend longer than a day without going on it (a lot like flappy bird).

Next week I am going home for the weekend to visit my family and to celebrate my sister's 18th birthday, I am really excited about it because it's the first time I'll have been home since the start of January so almost 2 months without seeing my family. I can't wait to see my family and friends from home!

Thank you for reading, see you next week for my next post!
Robyn

Tutorials and not so spare time

Hello all! Hope you are having a great weekend!

This week I have started my tutorials for the second semester and am now also two weeks into the lectures. It has been a fairly busy week and the time has just gone so fast. Now that the January deadlines are just a distant nightmare, I have made some time to catch up with friends this week and even see my sister which was lovely.

Whilst I have no looming deadlines for the next month, it is very easy to forget about them and to think that I have lots of spare time at the minute. I definitely do not have spare time. From the previous two years at university I have come to notice that the work load is ever so much harder in the second semester and with a dissertation to produce this semester I know that this will be the case this year. The next couple of weeks will be concentrating on my dissertation and trying to get as much of it as I can done before other deadline dates. I am attending a workshop tomorrow to learn how to use the software that I need to write my questionnaire which is very exciting and also means I can start data collection tomorrow! Very exciting.

I have noticed that this semester there is more work expected of you to prepare for tutorials than the last semester. Whilst rarely we were set work to do to prepare us for the tutorials, this semester we are set reading that must be completed otherwise we will be asked to leave the tutorial. Although this sounds quite daunting, it is also reassuring because you have no choice but to do extra reading and ultimately it will only improve your grades.

This week I have also found myself counting down to dissertation hand in date. As of today, there are 74 days until Thursday 1st May 2014, my dissertation deadline day and also the deadline day of my health assessment. After this day, I have only 2 exams until the end of the modules and the end of my undergraduate degree, I can't tell you how scary it sounds to me!
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See you next week, where no doubt I will be panicking again how little time I have left at university,
Robyn

First week of the second semester.

Hello again :)

This week at university has been my first week of new modules, and it is all very exciting. Because this week has been about starting up new modules, I have had no tutorials. Also this is the first time in about two months that I have been free from deadlines being very close, so it constantly feels like there is something missing and that I have been forgetting about something really important that needs handing in. 

I do not have any deadlines coming up now until the 20th of March which seems like a long way from now, but I know that each year at university seems to pass faster than the others and so deadline season will soon be round again.

I've spent this past week thinking of ways in which I can improve from the previous semester and how I plan to arrange my time to avoid having lots of work to do in a short space of time. Whilst I have no deadlines very close, I am trying to keep on top of the reading which I have been set and to try to read as much as I can around the topics now so that I am not panicking when it comes to revision. I am also planning on trying to do as much work on my dissertation as possible over the following weeks so that there is less to do when other deadlines start to crop up.

This week has been very much planning time management for my final unit choices, it is terrifying how close it is until the end of university now! It has also just been about keeping up with essential reading and trying to remember that it is okay, there is nothing I have forgotten to hand in. 

Next week will be much more eventful as I start my tutorials and the lectures will follow on from the introductions, and also I start my new plan to try even harder for my final units.

Thanks for reading, see you next week!

Robyn

Halfway through final year!

Hi guys

Finally January is over and all the deadlines and exams are done! (For a little while). Tomorrow is the start of my new modules which means one thing - halfway through the final year! This is both a terrifying and exciting prospect. I'm another step closer to graduating, and another step closer to stepping out into the world and trying to make a career.

Today I thought I would talk a little bit about the new modules I am taking for this semester which will also be my last semester if I graduate in July. The great thing about your final year is that you get to choose some of your modules so they're more tailored to the things you are interested in. Because I am on the C800 Psychology course which is just the basic Psychology degree I was able to choose two for the first semester and two for this one. For this semester I am still carrying on the compulsory Research Dissertation module but here are the three new ones and what they will be about.

Applied Health Psychology
This is a unit I've chosen because in second year we did health psychology as a compulsory unit and I loved it. I am very excited to have the chance to learn about health psychology more in depth. Here are the main areas of this module.

• Health promotion, behaviour and disease prevention
• Health communication and intervention
• Stress, illness and the healthcare system
• The role of individual differences and social factors in health and illness

Psychology of Mental Health
This is the other unit I have chosen and I'm so excited to learn about this! At A-level this was my favorite topic and I cannot wait to learn about it in more detail. This will be looking at areas of mental health such as schizophrenia, anxiety disorders, personality disorders and more! This is my favourite aspect of psychology and the module I am most excited to learn about.

Cognitive Neuropsychology
This is a compulsory unit, but I am very excited to learn about it and look forward to the first lecture! It will look at  the history of it, the methods and assumption and research an application into the real world. I've not learnt anything before about neuropsychology but I'm very excited to start learning about it tomorrow!

Thanks for reading, see you next week for my next post!
Robyn