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

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.

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