The Things I Think Now First Year is Over

4th June 2019

To those who are no longer with me, 

What is it about impending exams that suck you dry of all motivation and replaces it with double the amount of procrastination? That is hardly fair. I am so glad my end of year exams are over but I'm just sat here thinking about how long it took me to actually start my revision. I had three weeks from the end of the second semester to the first exam and I only started revising exactly a week before the first exam. Why? Because I'm freaking crazy that's why. 

Now that the pressure surrounding upcoming exams is over I can finally relax and look back on my revision style and promptly punch myself in the face, because if I had just started my revision when I said I was going to, had I just stuck to the timetable I made for myself, I can assure you there would have been a lot less stress, tears, and hair pulling than there actually was. 

 This is great though. It is almost as if I have performed an experiment on myself. I can take everything I have learnt this year and apply it to next year, working under the assumption that I have in fact passed my exams and don't have to drown myself in self-pity at the thought of having to re-sit them. 

I have learnt a lot over this last academic year, I now understand why your first-year grades very rarely count towards your final degree and that is because, academically speaking, you are finding yourself. It took me half a year to figure out a note taking system that works for me. Meaning that half my years notes are useless to me when it came to actually revising. Whereas next year, now that I know what I am doing and what works for me, come the end of year exams, all my notes will be helpful. That is the plan anyway. 

First year is all about finding your rhythm, I get that now, but I get it too late. For the whole of the last semester all I could think about is how I would do things differently come second year and that is still the case, even now with exams over and summer starting, all I'm still really thinking about is what I am going to do in order to make sure I get the most out of my second year of my law degree, especially with two extra modules to contend with. I'm making plans and lists of stationary and what to do and when, even without a timetable. I think I might be certifiably insane, but I am determined to do better in second year. I don't want my health to jeopardise me as much as it did this year. So, if that means getting my thoughts and idea's down into mock timetables and lists then so be it. I'm a sucker for a good list anyway. 

This blog will surely be a great help as well. Posting every Tuesday means that every Monday evening will be my designated blog writing time. I just have to find time to designate to my other written projects as I know that even though second year will be a lot more intense and harder, I don't want my writing to suffer. I have so many projects on the go and a book I am determined to finish, or at least make sufficient progress on that I can get parts of it sent to publishers. It is my baby after all and I'm sure you will be hearing about that in the future, but when, I do not know. 

This post like many others started out as one thing and morphed into something else entirely. I'm not even sure what it will be titled in the end, but I assure you by the time you read this it will have a title that makes sense. I started talking about lack of motivation and then I think that turned into what I plan to do differently next year without actually saying anything. 

There will be plenty of short posts like this in the future, but when I get round to writing them weekly, some of them will undoubtedly be about my week and I'll try to do things in order to make those weeks posts less boring, because, as you will begin to discover, if you haven't already, I lead a very boring life. 

So, that is what you've missed. 

Love, always 

Tiffany Jade 

Xo.