Graduation!

Hello! Hope you are all having a great weekend!

On Monday 21st of July I graduated! After three years of hard work and late nights, I finally have a degree to my name! I was within the graduation that started at 5.30pm and so we were a late afternoon group. I arrived at Luton with my parents around midday and after signing in with the hotel that they were staying in, we had a last trip around Luton town centre before catching one of the buses that were running from campus to campus at around 3pm.

We arrived at Putteridge Bury campus at around quarter past three, leaving around an hour and a half before we had to be seated for graduation. Putteridge Bury campus is a beautiful campus and I was so happy that I got to graduate there. After registering and getting my rented gown, my parents took many, many photos. I then bumped into some of my friends, all in their gowns and very excited about graduating. It was nice to get the opportunity to show my parents the friends that I had made over the past three years who they had heard so much about but in most cases had never had the opportunity to meet.

The graduation ceremony itself was wonderful. Luckily it was in an outdoor marquee, which was brilliant because it would have been unbearably hot indoors on such a sunny day. As much as everyone who I spoke to was worrying about tripping up the stairs to the stage, nobody I saw tripped or fell out of the almost 300 people that were graduating that day. The guest of honour, Professor Frederick Toates, is a professor of Psychology who gave a wonderful enlightening speech concluding the formal ceremony.

Following the formal ceremony, I spent more time with my uni friends taking lots of photos and appreciating the time with them. Graduation was a wonderful day and a wonderful chance to spend time with some of my best friends who now live far away.

Congratulations and well done to everyone who has recently graduated! Good luck to everyone who is going to uni this year and are currently still in the process of getting offers confirmed, I promise university will be the time of your life!

See you next week for one last post!
Robyn

Recieving my degree classification and 8 days until graduation

Hello, hope you are all having a great weekend!

This week one major thing has happened, I have received my classification for my degree! Well done to all my uni friends that have also received their classification this week too. After three years of hard work and dedication, I am now definitely graduating university with a second class upper division psychology degree! For a few weeks now we have been given our provisional grades but it was not until Monday that we received the grades we will be graduating with and then later a letter in the mail to confirm our grades on paper.

Filling out psychology jobs and being able to put a confirmed grade down onto the application forms is certainly a great feeling, and it makes all those years of hard work worth it. Getting a 2.1 means I now have the classification that will allow me to go on to further study in psychology which I plan to be able to fund in the next couple of years. It also means that I can apply for jobs such as assistant psychologist, so I am very happy with my classification.

There is now just over one week until graduation! I have my gown hired and photography booked, the only thing left to do is to sort out a graduation dress! Next Week's blog post will be all about preparing for graduation and how much I am looking forward to seeing my amazing uni friends again (and hoping that I don't cry saying goodbye to them). Good luck in whatever stages you are at in your UCAS application and also in any results you are soon to receive! See you soon!

Robyn

Things I wish I had known before starting university

Hello! Hope you're having a great weekend!

I have finished university and have been living back at home for quite a few weeks now, and have been thinking about what I wish I had known before starting university now that I have completed it. There are two main things that I wish I had known before starting university in regards to a psychology career; volunteering is essential and things might not go as planned, but that is okay.

Volunteering is essential
I am now starting to look for jobs within the field of psychology, and its only now that I'm realising how important volunteering is and am starting to wish I had done more volunteer work sooner. I am currently filling out application forms in the hope of getting onto a course to become a trainee psychological wellbeing practitioner, and whilst I will have the degree I need, the only problem is the lack of volunteering that I have. In an application form that I am filling out, it is desired to have at least one year of volunteering within mental health (which I do not have). I now know that I could have been volunteering with the Samaritans for years and have all the volunteering experience that I need within mental health. Its never too early to start thinking about volunteering and to look around at what is best suited to what you wish to do in the future.

Things might not go as planned, but that is okay
Before starting university, I had my career path all planned out. I was going to go to university to study psychology and do some volunteering alongside and then soon after get onto the doctorate course for clinical psychology. However, I did not fully understand how competitive the doctorate course for clinical psychology may be and how quickly time can pass by without realising you have not managed to get the volunteering you had been planning to do. As my course progressed, I realised that my career plan would not be as smooth and simple as I had hoped, and that it would take more years of work than I had first thought. Currently my plan is to get a full time job (preferably the trainee psychological wellbeing practitioner) and save up money for a masters degree in either health psychology or neuropsychology and eventually after several years have the relevant work experience, volunteering experience and higher qualifications to apply for the doctorate of clinical psychology course, but my plans often change. Rather than having definite career plans and being disappointed if they do not go the way first planned, its okay for career plans to shape, change and adapt as you continue through your course and learn more about what you wish to do.

Hope this has been of some help! Good luck to anyone finding out any university results soon and college assessment results, see you next week!

Robyn

Almost Three Weeks To Graduation!

Hello! Hope you are all having a great weekend!

It is approximately three weeks and one day until graduation! I am so excited! I am now in the stages of sorting out hiring my graduation gown and sorting out my plans of what I will be wearing on graduation.

I have decided to hire my gown rather than buy it, but am currently in the stages of deciding what photography package I would like (and what my parents would like). I never knew there could be so many choices for photography packages! However, like many people I know, my thoughts are now mainly on what to wear for graduation! The dress code is academic wear and so now I have the fun job of buying a new outfit for graduation.

Although I studied at the main Luton campus, I am going to graduate at Putteridge Bury campus which I am very excited about! I visited the campus during a conference at the end of my second university year, and loved the look of the campus. I am also very excited to see my university friends again! I am really looking forward to spending time with them at graduation and celebrating all the hard work that we have put in throughout university (and am going to try not to cry when saying goodbye to them).

Good luck to everyone with their UCAS applications! I know in the next few weeks my sister will find out whether she has got into university with her diploma so good luck to anyone getting results in the next few weeks which will impact your UCAS application!

See you next week!
Robyn

What am I going to do after uni?!

Hello again! Hope you are having a great weekend!

This week has been pretty much the same as the last, mainly focusing on doing lots of work and catching up with friends. I also saw my younger sister's presentation for finishing college this week. It was a very proud moment to see how well she has done in the past two years and now in September like many of you reading this will be is going to start university in September!

Aside from work and seeing my sister finish college, my mind has been focused on my dream future career and the steps I need to take to get started into a career in Psychology. I have now finished my Psychology degree, and it terrifies me. There is nothing I would love more than to be able to go back to university in September and start studying Psychology again with all the friends I have made at university. However this is not the case, and I need to begin to look into how I plan to get a job and career in Psychology.

Currently, I am looking into getting volunteer work within Psychology that will improve my chances of a good job and will show my commitment to the subject. During my time in Luton I was volunteering at Headway in Bedford. It is a wonderful charity and I thoroughly enjoyed volunteering there and so am trying to get similar volunteering closer to my hometown. I am also trying to get volunteer work more closely related to mental health although this is a lot more difficult to find. I have also been looking into potential jobs within psychology in which only a degree is needed. I would love to do postgraduate study on the future and plan to save up with my earnings from a job. I still need to look more in depth into my future plans, but now I have lots of free time to decided what future path is right for me!

Congratulations to everyone who has finished exams/ final assessments! Good luck to everyone that is sitting final exams! I know the time between exams-university is a very nervous time, but you can only do your best so enjoy the rest of your summer! 

See you next week!
Robyn

A week of being home.

Hello! Hope you're having a great weekend!

I have now been living back at home for a full week. At the moment it does not feel as if I have left university as I am in the same routine that I have been for the past two years after finishing the academic year. It just feels as if I am on my summer break and that in three months I will be back at university. I am however already starting to miss my university friends and am very much looking forward to seeing everyone again next month for graduation.

This week I have started back at my summer job and so have been mainly working. After spending the last year working extremely hard on my studies, the almost three weeks between finishing my studies and starting back at my summer job has been a long enough break and I am happy to be back doing something productive with my day. I have also been using my free time to spend some time with my family and to also do leisure reading - its s great feeling to pick up a novel after spending months of reading textbooks!

I have also been looking into getting some volunteer work in my hometown within Psychology. I have sent emails of interest to several volunteering companies and have received some information about volunteering applications. A few days ago I also received an email giving me the time of my graduation! The thought of graduating in just over a month is very exciting! I need to start worrying about hiring my gown soon.

So this week, I have been very happy to be home, and am becoming increasingly excited about graduation!

Good luck with any final exams/assessments that you have left! See you next week!

Robyn

Moving Home

Hello all! Hope you are having a great weekend!

 

This week has been a fun but quite emotional week of preparing to move home. I've tried to make the most of my last week in Luton, spending as much time as possible with my university friends and visiting towns around Luton and also going to parts of Luton that I have yet to visit.

 

 

On Monday, me and my friend Divya went shopping in Milton Keynes which is just a short bus journey away and after visiting there I was so gutted that I had never been to visit earlier - it was so much fun! On Tuesday I spent the day in Luton and went to visit the Wardown museum in Wardown park. It was great to learn about the history behind the town I had spent the past three years living in and be able to tell people a little about what I had learnt about the town we had all been living in. On Wednesday it was my last day at volunteering at Headway in Bedford. I had a brilliant time volunteering there and will miss the volunteering and the people I have met. On Thursday me and Divya went to visit our friend Saphia who commuted to Luton and so lives a train journey away. It was the last time we would be able to see her until graduation and so it was both very fun but very sad to say goodbye. Finally Friday was spent packing and having a final trip to Luton town centre and saying goodbye to friends.

 

Yesterday, after very last minute packing, I moved out of my student house and back to my hometown. I was expecting it to be a sad occasion but I didn't realise how sad I would be. My friend came round for a few hours in the morning to help me finish my packing and stayed to say goodbye until I left. Saying goodbye was very difficult, especially to my housemates who I had been living with for the past year and who were some of the first friends I made at University. 

 

 

In the three years that I have spent at University I have met some amazing people and made some incredible friends that I know I will be friends with for life. I did not expect to make such great friends and to become so attached to a town when I moved to Luton almost three years ago (also thank you to my Dad for teasing me all the way home about how sad I was.) Now I have graduation to look forward to and sorting out what I am doing for the rest of my life!

 

Good luck to everyone doing final exams and assessments, it is almost the end of exam season!

 

See you next week!

Robyn

Undergraduate Research Conference

Hello all! Hope you're doing well and the exams and final assessments are going well too!

It has now been over a full week since my final exam and therefore finishing all the work I need to do for my undergraduate degree in Psychology. In this last week I have tried to make the most of my remaining time in Luton; spending quality time with friends I am going to miss very much, volunteering and I also went down to visit London for the day which was very fun!

On Friday, it was the day of the Undergraduate Research Conference for my Psychology year group. The Undergraduate Research Conference is a conference organised by our lecturers in which we were able to present posters of our dissertation work, a selected few were able to present oral presentations of their dissertation work and guests from outside of the university were able to come and look at the work we had done.

It was an incredible feeling to have my dissertation presented in a poster form and have people read it and talk to me about and take an interest in it; all those months of late nights and early morning trying to make my dissertation the best it could be was suddenly all worth it, and it was really fun! You could tell when going to look at other people's posters too that they felt exactly the same and were so proud to show off the hard work they had done. It was a brilliant opportunity to have a look at other people's work and learn a little about different aspects of Psychology that I had not studied much on and to hear what people had to say about their own dissertations and the findings they had found.

Six people were also given the opportunity to give an oral presentation of their dissertation research to all those who attended the conference, including three of my friends (well done Mo, Diksha and Shona, your presentations were great!) It was a brilliant opportunity to hear more in detail about the research people from my year had done on their dissertations, and to hear the great lengths they had gone to conduct their research; there was one person who had conducted research using school children meaning that the ethics were very difficult and had taken many months to get the ethics right.

It was a brilliant and fun day, a lovely way to celebrate the hard work of the three years together and to spend time with the friends we had made over the three years. It was also slightly emotional. It was last day that I would be at university with my friends and saying goodbye to them adding "I'll see you at graduation" rather than "I'll see you after the weekend" made me realise that university life is now over aside from graduation, and that the next time I will see most of my university friends will be at graduation!

All in all, it has been a great week and I am very lucky to have made such good friends at university that saying goodbye to them is such a difficult thing. But now I have graduation to look forward to with them and lots of visits to see them!

Hope you're all having a great week and any work that you are still doing is going well!

See you next week!
Robyn

Last day of exams

Hello! Hope you're all well and that the exams and other assessments are going well too.

I've finished! All my compulsory university work is over; no more exams, no more assessments, and no more lectures and tutorials, so I'm taking a couple of weeks to relax before moving home for a while and starting back at my summer job.

The past week has been a mixture of many emotions; nervous for exams, excited to complete my degree and also nervous, happy to spend time with friends whilst revising together and then sad that soon I will be saying goodbye to them. For this blog post though I would like to focus on Friday - the day of my final exam of third year.

After some last minute revision in the morning, I was prepared to sit my exam in the afternoon. After finishing the exam, and therefore finishing my university degree, I wasn't sure how I was feeling. I met up with some friends after the exam

had finished and after a little walk around the mall we met up with around twenty other people from our year of the Psychology course for a meal. It was a lovely way to end what had been a stressful day but also a lovely way to celebrate with good friends all the hard work we had put in for the past three academic years.

Me and two of my friends also bought little books for people to leave nice goodbye messages in. It was a really good idea so I can look back happily over nice memories that I have made. Later on in the evening we went to a local bar where everyone was and celebrated finishing three years of university. In the end I was far too happy to celebrate our achievements with good friends through the meal and meeting at a local bar that I wasn't sad at all because of all the happy memories I have.

The only thing left is the student conference so we can show off the hard work we put into our dissertations and of course GRADUATION DAY! The conference is on Friday and then graduation in July where I will say the sad goodbyes to my friends. To all my university friends reading this, thank you for the past three years and I look forward to seeing you at the conference and graduation! To the people who are reading this who are in the middle of exams and final assessments, good luck! I'm sure all your hard work will pay off.

See you next week!

Robyn

 

Exam Stress

Hey guys! Hope you are having a great weekend and your exams are going well.

Tomorrow is the 19th of May which means its my first exam! I had been pretty calm and okay about it all until yesterday when the panic finally started. So for this weeks blog post I thought I would talk about exam worry because I'm sure I'm not the only one who gets it.

Healthy eating
Healthy eating throughout the exam period is said to help with alertness and concentration. As a student who is currently spending most of my time in the library at the minute, it is very tempting to live off junk food and take out because it is very easy to quickly buy from town but if healthy eating improves your concentration, it is one less thing to worry about.

Take a break!
If you feel yourself becoming stressed out, take a short break and do something to completely take your mind off it for a few minutes, such as going for a quick 10 minute walk. If you're stressed, you won't be able to absorb the information as well and so breaks will help you study better.

Phone a friend
If you're struggling with exam stress, don't struggle alone. Ring a friend or family member that will reassure
you that you're doing fine and everything will be okay. Whenever exam stress or assignment stress get too much, I give my Mum a quick ring to tell her how I'm feeling and she seems to fix everything.

Sleep!
Make sure that you get enough sleep. It is very tempting to stay up late and cram in as much work as possible but if you're too tired then you'll not be able to work efficiently. Also relaxing and getting a good nights sleep the night before the exam is said to be very important.

Don't talk about the exam
Also a thing I was once told by a teacher was to never talk about the exam once it was finished. We're all guilty of going straight to our friends after coming out of the examination hall and comparing answers that we had given in the exam and how we felt it went, but usually you're still filled with anxiety from completing the exam and talking about possible answers you have messed up on only makes you feel worse. So if you're a worrier this will only make you more nervous, so try not to talk and dwell on the exam. Once you come out of the exam room there is no use worrying about it because worrying will not change anything.

I hope that this has been helpful! Good luck in your exams, I hope they are all going well and also to anyone doing final assignments I hope they are going good too!

Best of luck with all the hard work that you are doing at the minute!
See you next week
Robyn.

Revision has started!

Hi guys, hope all your revision and assessments are going well! Not long now until all your hard work will pay off!

After going home for the bank holiday weekend to spend a bit of time with my family and to see McBusted, I have had a busy few days of volunteering and revising. Since half of my modules this term have no exams, two of my modules now are completely finished! This means that I don't have many lectures left and I have finished my tutorials! I have one revision lecture for Cognitive Neuropsychology and a Mental Health lecture left and then all of my lectures and tutorials will have finished for the degree!

This means that by Monday afternoon, all my lectures and tutorials for this degree will have been finished and I will have just two exams to go and plenty of time to complete all the revision I need to do. As I am sure is the case with most of you reading this, my week has been mainly about revision and trying to figure out the ways in which are best to revise.

Personally for me, I revise best in silence or with very quiet background music because I get easily distracted, and when I do get distracted I give myself a quick five minute break or move onto a different way of revision to keep my brain engaged. I have been trying to figure out the ways in which I take information in the best and have realised I am a visual learner and so notes in different colours, mind maps and methods similar to this are the ways in which I revise best. There are also other methods and information I have read up on about revision that might be helpful.

Teaching others
It is said that your remember around 95% of what you teach someone else, which is a lot! So a good way to revise may be to teach someone the things that you have learnt and revised. Not only will it help your revision, but it may help someone else too!

Testing yourself
Testing yourself is also said to be a good way to recall information. It will allow you to see the areas you are better at and the areas that you are worse at which will help you to see where you need to focus your revision at.

Relax
Relaxing and taking regular breaks is essential to your revision, you can't take information in if you're too stressed to function properly. Short, regular breaks are said to be the best way to overcome this.

Revision Timetable
Make a revision timetable and stick to it so that you can get all the revision you need done and at the same time not miss out on the things you enjoy doing. (In my case my revision timetable is based around being able to watch Eastenders).

Revision not cramming
Finally revision is about learning the information, not memorising it. If you try to remember information rather than learn it, it will not be useful when you have to use it in the future.

Hope this has helped! Good luck to everyone sitting exams and doing final assessments, I hope it all goes well!

I'll end this blog post on a happier note with a musical song about procrastination as a reminder to revise not procrastinate

See you next week!

Robyn

Dissertation is finished!

 Hello again! If you are a regular in reading this blog you will know for the past six weeks or so there has been one main thing I have been in constant worry about and that is my dissertation. However I am now very happy to say that it is completed and handed in, and I was even so happy with it that I got a copy bound to keep for myself!

My dissertation is on religion and it's potential role in psychological wellbeing and health behaviours. Many months of planning and hard work went into it, I was required to do reading around the subject I wanted to focus on and find a supervisor who was an expert in the field to supervise my research. I had to send off a form about the research I was planning to do and how I planned to do it to make sure it was ethics approved, and complete an assessment on my progress which counted towards 10% of the module. I had to, with the help of my supervisor, put together a questionnaire from previous questionnaires, collect the data and analyse the findings, and then do the write up! 

So now I have just a few lectures left, two exams and then I have finished university! It's a scary thought but a few days ago I got emailed my date for graduation which is giving me so much motivation!

Next week will be all about revision, so for this weekend I am taking a well deserved break before starting revision! Currently on my way to see McBusted tonight with my Dad before revision starts tomorrow!

See you next week!

Robyn 

Back in Luton and Dissertation Deadline!

Hello again!

In my last blog post I was talking about getting ready to come back to uni, and now I am back in Luton. Ready, prepared and excited about being back for my final term! Final term of final year, its both so very exciting and so very terrifying! The next four weeks will be full of hard work preparing for my final two exams, however at the moment I am focusing all my time and energy on Thursday. Thursday is deadline day, the hand in date of my dissertation report which I have been working towards throughout all of third year! 

In just days I will finally submit the most time consuming assignment I have ever written. Months of planning, thought, data collection, writing has gone into this assignment, and more! As I am finishing off my dissertation and preparing for the submission, I am feeling both nervous and excited. I am nervous in that I am hoping I have done enough work to get the grade which I want as the dissertation accounts for a lot of my final grade. I am excited in that it is a piece of work I have enjoyed researching, writing, even finding positive results! To see the end result of my own research is something very exciting, and to show off that I have managed to do my own research is something even better! As I got to choose what I did my dissertation on, it has been something I have thoroughly enjoyed, and a lot less scary that I imagined in my first and second year! I hope to anyone who is reading this who is applying to uni now I have helped to calm any fears about what writing a dissertation is like, I promise it isn't as bad as it sounds! I have around a week of lectures and tutorials starting from Monday, meaning that I have only one week of lectures to go of my uni course, and after this Thursday I will have only two exams left of my degree! The end of uni is uncomfortably close! 

So dissertation deadline day is just 4 days away! The next blog post I write I shall have finished my dissertation and will be looking forward to seeing McBusted! I hope that it is all going well to all of you who are currently choosing first and second choice offers for universities, and I wish you the best of luck! 

Hope you all have a good week!

Robyn

Easter Break and Preparing for Final Term

Hello all!

Easter break seems to be going past far too fast for my liking, there is not much time of it left at all! Time seems to
have escaped me and each day that brings me closer to term 3 makes it seem so much daunting. Term 3 will be my final term of being an undergraduate student. When I go back to uni I will have around a week or two at most of lectures and tutorials, and then I will have just exams to go after May the 1st when my dissertation and a couple of other assessments are due in.

This week I have been working on my dissertation and have finally got my first draft ready to show my supervisor! I've also started my other assessments which are due on the same day as my dissertation and have even managed to fit in some time to see my friends and spend time with my family, so it has been a busy week! The next week is going to be about preparing to go back and start my final term! As well as trying to fit in lots of uni work and packing ready to go back to uni, the next week I'm planning to spend some more time with friends and family over the next week.

It was around this time three years ago that I was receiving my offers for university courses at the five university choices I had put down. The task of choosing the offers I wanted as my first choice and as my insurance was a very difficult task. What mainly helped to aid my decisions was thinking back to the open days I had been to and deciding which of the universities I felt would best suit me. I also spoke to my family about the decisions to see what their opinions were on the universities I was thinking of making as my first choice and insurance choice. 

Speaking to friends who were also going through making uni decisions also helped a lot to see what they were using to prioritise their choices. For me making the choice of my first choice was to base the university on my predicted grades and how much I enjoyed the open day and the facilities I had seen. Making my insurance choice I chose a university  with grade boundaries slightly lower than my predicted grades in case I did not manage to get the grades I had wanted, and based on my visit on the open day and the facilities I had seen. I knew quite quickly the choices I wanted to make but the thought of rejecting conditional offers just terrified me and I must have put it off for at least a week before typing it in on my UCAS. 

To anyone who is currently choosing between their offers, good luck! It's a scary time but it is one step closer to starting university!! The advice I would give would be to choose the offers which you feel are right for you. Uni will be a huge part of your life for at least the next 3 years, so choose somewhere that is right for you! 

See you next week!

Robyn

My Week of Being Home

Hello!

I have been home for a full week now, and it is so nice to be home! Coming back home for a few weeks makes me realise how much I have missed my family, my friends from home and of course proper home cooked meals. So far this week I have been working on my dissertation, spending time with my family, meeting up with friends I haven't seen since new year and enjoying my time back in my home town. 

My plan for the week was to arrange my plans around the times I have set to work on my dissertation. However, it has been all too easy to do this the other way around and plan my dissertation work around impulse plans with friends,  not what I really wanted! I am still managing to get my dissertation work done though, more than I expected to get done and I am on schedule to finish my first draft within two weeks of deadline like I have hoped!

This Easter break is the final break of my undergraduate degree, and it has put into perspective how close I am to the end of my course! Aside from coming back for a couple of days to see McBusted with my Dad in May (which I am incredibly excited about), the next time I will be home will be after I have finished my final exams and am waiting to find out what grades I have. The draft exam timetable is up and if it does not change within the next couple of weeks, it means I will have finished all the

work towards my degree by the 23rd of May and will have just the undergraduate conference on the 30th and my graduation in July to go at university!

The realisation of how close it is until I finish uni is starting to kick in and it has made me realise how close it is until I leave Luton and move away from all the fantastic friends I have made. The realisation has made me quite sad because I never expected to make as good friends as I have at university. 

That has been my week so far! My aims for the next week are by Thursday sending off my first draft of my dissertation and also starting work on my other assessments!

18 days until dissertation deadline! 

41 days until my final exam!

See you next week!

Robyn

Easter Break (and worrying about how close dissertation hand in is).

Hello!

Today has been a busy and exciting week. I have finished my final assignment for this term and now have only one report, my dissertation and two exams until I have finished all the work to graduate! Its both very scary and very exciting. I have done two afternoons volunteering this week at a brain injury rehabilitation centre in Bedford which was really fun. I have also had a friend from home come to visit and we visited Harry Potter Studios which was of course brilliant!

However I am now at home for Easter break and although it is called Easter break there is no break for me - the next three weeks is all about dissertation, dissertation and more dissertation! I am very happy to be back home for a few weeks with my family (hi Dad) and to be able to see my home town friends who I have not been able to see for about three months, but as this is my final break before I finish my undergraduate degree forever sadly my social life will have to be shaped around the hours of work that I have to do to get this dissertation finally completed!

As I post this, it is around 24 days until the deadline date for my dissertation. 24 days! I am sorry that most of my posts over the past few weeks have been all about my dissertation and how close it is, it is currently the only thing on my mind! To do my best for this assessment, I am trying to come up with a schedule over the next couple of weeks to stick to in order to get my dissertation done to the best quality that it can be. I have the ambitious aim of getting the first draft of my dissertation done within two weeks, which means lots of late nights, lots of early starts and too many cups of coffee!

So my plans for the next week include lots of dissertation work, (lots and lots and lots of dissertation work), finally getting to catch up with the friends I have not seen for the past three months and also spending time with my family.

I hope you are all having a great weekend and I am not worrying anyone too much about what writing a dissertation is like (I promise its not as bad as it seems).

See you next week!

Robyn

My Week

Hi guys! Hope you have all had a great week!

This week I have gone home for the weekend to spend some time with my family for Mother's day. I'm currently sat in the living room having a break from all the work that I have had to do over the past week for university. It is now 33 days until dissertation deadline and the nerves are starting to kick in. In just 33 days all written assignments will have been handed in and I will have only two exams to go to completing my degree - a truly terrifying thought!

This week I did a group presentation as an assessment for my module in Applied Health Psychology in which as a group we came up with an intervention for a certain type of health behaviour and presented how we would conduct the intervention. I am hoping that it went well, but it has taught me good communication and group skills. I now have work to do on my portfolio for my dissertation, work on my dissertation, work on my report for health psychology and to complete my essay for mental health.

Currently my dissertation is going well, I have completed data analysis and have all the results that I need to write it up! It is very exciting to see it all pulling together however there is still a long way to go until my dissertation is ready to be submitted! I am aiming to have my first draft ready two weeks before the deadline which means my first deadline is the 17th of April! Very soon!

Thank you for reading, see you next week!

Robyn

PS. 33 days until dissertation deadline day!

Halfway through Semester 2!

Hi guys! This week I've done a video blog (the right way round this time) about what semester 2 has been like so far as I'm about halfway through it!

Hope you enjoy!

Thank you

See you next week!

This University Week

Hello All! Hope you're doing well!

This week I planned to do a video blog, but I filmed it on my phone and I have just got the footage ready to upload only to realise I have filmed it upside down! So I will do a written post today and next week upload a video blog the right way round! What I tried to do in my video blog was summarise each day between Monday and Friday so you can get a good idea of what a general week at uni is like, so for this week I will do it in written format :)

My uni week started 9AM on Monday morning for a Cognitive Neuropsychology lecture, which looked at how brain injuries and impairments affect language perception and ability which was really interesting, even for a 9AM start! I had an hours break before my next lecture and so I went into town with my friend before my 11AM lecture on Mental health which looked at treatments for depression. Following this I had another hour break before my tutorial in which I went to the silent library to do some work and to re-read over the papers I was going to have to discuss for the following tutorial. At 1PM I had my Mental Health tutorial in which we discussed two papers on depression, both looking at different theories and we were graded on our discussion although we do not find out our grades until the end of the assessment. We are currently halfway through this assessment with 2 more tutorials like this to go which will make up for 25% of our overall grade for the Mental Health module. Then it was time for a little more work in the library before going home for the day.

My uni day started at 10AM with an Applied Health Psychology lecture looking at stress and its health implications which is something I always find really interesting. Then I had a group meeting with the group I am working on a presentation with for Applied Health. We discussed the work we were to do for the next meeting and it was very productive. I had a tutorial at 3PM which gave me another 3 hours spare so again I went to the silent area to do some studying and to reread the paper I was going to need for my Cognitive Neuropsychology tutorial at 3. In the tutorial we looked at 'Aphasia' which is a disorder that people with brain injuries often have in which they find it difficult to read, write or speak. After this my day was finished and so I went home and got a little more work done.

Wednesday's are my days off at uni this semester -  that means I have no tutorial, no lectures and so it may seem like no real reason to go into uni. But as a third year there is always a reason to go into uni and this week I went into uni on Wednesday to do some more work for my upcoming assessment for a few hours.

My uni day on Thursday started at 10AM as I met up with my group again for the Applied Health presentation to discuss what we had found and try to piece it together a bit. Following this we had an Applied Health tutorial in which we watched the other groups do their presentations and asked questions on their intervention. After this at 12PM I met with two of my friends for lunch for an hour. After this I went to the research cubicles to recruit participants and it went better than expected with the majority of people that I asked to take part were more than happy to! So I am finally at the stage where I have almost finished getting my participants! At around 5PM when they start closing the research cubicle, I went to meet my friends in the it suite for about an hour and a half for a chat and to do some work at the same time. Then at 6.30 I went home for a well deserved break.

At 9AM I had my last research dissertation lecture. The very last one! Although it will be nice not to have to get up at 9AM on Fridays any more, it is a very daunting feeling to realise the dissertation lectures are finishing because the time is running out! Following this I went to, yes you guessed it, the silent area to do some more work on my assignment. At midday I met with my friend to go to a buffet for our friend's birthday. After this at 2PM there was a careers talk on Clinical Psychology which is the area I eventually want to go into and so it was definitely something I needed to attend. A Clinical Psychologist who had graduated from the uni had come in to talk about what kind of work experience we would need, how to go about applying for a doctorate in clinical psychology, what type of grades we would need and everything we would need to know really! It was very helpful and I would strongly recommend going to careers talks that are available to you, even if you are only just starting uni. After this I went back to do some more work in the silent area and at around 5PM I went home.

I hope this has been helpful and has shown you what a week at uni is like! As you can see it is not all lectures and tutorials, a lot of it is preparing for the lectures and tutorials, doing research for assignments and other things. No two days at uni are the same!

See you next week, when I will hopefully have figured out how to do a video blog the right way up!
Robyn

Ps. 47 days until dissertation deadline day! 

Doing a dissertation

Hi Guys! Hope you have all had a great week!

The past week has been a busy one, I've been at home to see my family and I've had a friend to come to visit for a day as well. It is now getting to the stage where assessments are due in again soon so I have been doing work on that, and lots of work on trying to get my dissertation questionnaires distributed, it has been one busy week!

In just 26 days it will be the end of second term, and there are just 54 days until dissertation hand in day! For this blog post, I thought I would talk about dissertation truths and myths as it was not until around second year that I started to learn the truths from the myths about doing your dissertation.

To begin with, doing your dissertation is not as scary as it sounds, in fact I am probably finding it the most fun out of all of our modules! Doing a dissertation in Psychology means that you are able to choose the area of Psychology you are most interested in and conduct your own research in it with help. You spend two years at university learning about research that Psychologists have conducted, and you find yourselves thinking about changes that could be made, or what you would do if you were the researcher and then in third year you are able to do exactly that!

Before third year, I thought that writing a dissertation would be at least 10,000 words however I was very happy to find out that for Psychology at the University of
Bedfordshire, the word count is between 4,500 and 8,000 words. Another myth that I had heard but did not know the truth to until second year was that the dissertation was all the word for third year. However, the dissertation is one of four modules in third year and so accounts for 25% of the year which is a lot less frightening than my previous perceptions. Another thing that I did not know until I had started university was that when doing your dissertation you choose a supervisor who specialises in the topic you wish to do for your dissertation. The supervisor gives you advice and help so you are not alone conducting your research, which also makes the dissertation a lot less frightening.

I hope this has helped anyone currently applying to do Psychology to learn a little bit more about final year. Good luck to everyone who is currently getting offers from their uni choices, hope everything is going just as you hope!

See you next week!
Robyn