An insight into my Second Year!

Today myself and everyone else carrying on through to their second year of studying education studies received emails telling us about our reading lists for next year. This may sound uninteresting but actually it's an opportunity for us all to get a head start on what we are all going to be studying.

I am sure I have mentioned in a previous post that we all had to choose two options of our own choices to study next year which I have now had a chance to look at in more depth. However, some of the books are not available as ebooks which means I have to buy them.  

I don't remember ever talking to you all about how important university books actually are... don't think I'm boring because trust me I used to think they were useless but they are soooo not! They were my saviors when writing my essays. I am so not a book person but now I've had to learn to be because there is no surviving university or passing university without opening some books. 

Yep, this is what I felt like my desk looked like a lot of the time...BOOK OVERLOAD! 

But, in all seriousness I am genuinely excited to find out more about what I will be studying in my second year and I think this is mainly down to the fact that I have grown up and learnt a lot throughout my first year and I am now in the complete right mind set to focus solely on my studies and achieve my goals. 

Going to university taught me a whole lot from living by myself to how to write a proper essay, and mainly how important my degree is to me.

Books are SO expensive!!!

So, as most first years do I decided to buy every single book I was told I 'needed' before I started university, which was a mistake!

Take it from me, you definitely DO NOT need every single book you are advised to get. My biggest piece of advice is to wait until you get to university and see for yourself what books you need and also don't listen to everyone else because every person is different and one book may work for your friend but will be useless for you. Take your time and research the books that are really worth purchasing.

Also, one of my mistakes was buying books that are also available as eBooks for FREE. So I bought books for £30/£40 which I could've got for free.Yep, quite annoying.
Another thing is that if you end up going to the University of Bedfordshire, the library is the biggest library I've ever seen with every kind of book you could ask for, you don't really need to buy any books if you don't want because the library is such a huge source of information.

One good thing for me was that I got given a £300 gift card when I started my course for John Smith's bookshops which is used by a lot of universities and that meant I didn't spend hundreds of pounds of my own money, however some people aren't lucky enough to be given such a luxury and £300 is a lot of money to be spending on books that you can get access to for free!

I'm not saying don't buy any books they're all useless because they're certainly not useless, some are extremely useful and I wouldn't have passed any of my assignments if I hadn't opened up a book but I know students don't have hundreds to spend on books when they need money for food. So definitely wait until you get there and see what you have available to you in terms of vouchers, money off, libraries, online resources etc. There is so much put on a plate for students that is never used but could be the different of a first class degree to a second.

There are loads of offers for students like NUS cards which allow us money off in so many stores so it's definitely worth a search around for what is available for students and see what you can do to help yourself out.

If you find anything I already haven't then let me know ha!