A Week into Easter...

Hi everyone...

So its already been a week into my three week Easter break :-(! I'm not going to lie little university work has been done this week, however the plan is to get motivated for next week.

I have realised I only have FIVE assignments left of the year which was so exciting to find out, the best part is only two of those are essays, the rest are presentations and poster presentations which are my favourite type of assignments to do.

The two essays I have left are long ones too, the worst kind. I find long assignments so draining which is a bit worrying for my dissertation, ha! I also have a 7,000 word essay due for one of my modules next year so I've nearly got two dissertations to do next year, one due for November!

The majority of this week was spent down in Cheltenham where my boyfriend goes to university, catching up with friends and having a relaxing break before driving back home (which is a two hour journey) with him for Easter, he only gets two weeks for his Easter break!

I've had a bit more of a think about work experience and I'm hoping to do it in a local school which only caters for students who have social and behavioural problems, I think this will link quite nicely to my psychology route I've got in my head at the moment and will hopefully be an eye opening and decision making experience. I've also got a few links to some professionals and have been told it might be an idea to get in touch with them and see if I can have some sort of mentoring a it's tricky to get experience within certain job roles as they are often confidential.

It's going to be a work filled couple of months but soon enough summer will be here and I'll be getting ready for my holidays. I can't remember if I have mentioned but I'm off to Turkey in June, Spain in July and Rome in August, so it's not all that bad being a student you know haha, but no seriously, the only way I can afford this is due to commuting and having a part time job.

Here's a few snaps of my summer, also will include my 20th birthday and at the end of April a trip to London to watch the marathon.














So I think it's safe to say summer is looking brill, Easter always makes me think about and get excited for summer holidays because they're just weeks away from our Easter breaks at university, the semesters tend to always finish earlier than predicted so university finishes so early compared to school summers.

It is certainly one of the many perks of being a university student, there are quite a few actually.



Until next week..

M

Last Week Before Easter!

Hi everyone!

As you can all tell by the title of this post, it is in fact my last week of term two! It has absolutely flown by, I can't quite believe I'm heading into my final semester of second year.. kinda scary!

It's all third year discussions at the minute, like what choices are you picking, are you on track for a decent grade, personal tutor meetings, assignments due, beginning our dissertations, work experience.. you name it we have been talking about it.

My lecturers are all trying to stress how vital this last semester is and that during and after Easter things need to be on the ball. So, I have several assignments due in after the Easter holidays, all around the same date so it is crucial for me to get going throughout the holidays and complete as much if not all of them for before I start back. That's my goal anyway, I hate being behind on work.

I had a meeting with my new personal tutor too about where I am in terms of final grade which is about a 2.1 at the moment which I am very happy about. Ideally I'd love a first as everyone would, but my main reason for that is because the University offers a free masters course to those who graduate with first class degrees. I'd be personally extremely happy if I achieved a 2.1.

I went out for student night this week, as it was a big night because everyone's heading home(Well those that don't commute) for Easter break. We have three weeks off this year which is more than some universities but I guess that's just the way our terms have fallen, I'm not complaining!

I am looking forward to not having to drive backwards and forwards to Bedford for three weeks though, sometimes it does get a bit draining I must admit, especially if I have to drive back after a Wednesday night out! Other than that I can't really complain about my choice to commute this year as it really was the right decision, it's not a pain until the very end of each term as university is for most people(lecturers included). I really do love being able to go back to the comfort of my own home and family after a day at university rather than going back to a room in a house, it just isn't for me! I haven't missed out on the social life as my friends are kind enough to let me stay with them and I rarely get to uni and find my lectures are cancelled, it's quite an efficient university in terms of getting information across which is vital for commuters as it would be a massive pain to turn up to uni to find your lectures cancelled! I know some of my friends have this problem at other universities.

I had to reapply for student finance today too, I really don't get the point in having to reapply if your details are the exact same, they should just carry if over but of course they don't. So now my parents have to fill out all their details again and I have to wait for ages to find out what I'm getting even though I know it will be the exact same as my circumstances are the same as last year.
Oh well, I couldn't do university without student finance so I'll do what it takes haha!

I thought this picture was brilliant as it represents student finance! 

For those of you applying for uni's now I'd sort out your student finance as quickly as possible as it's a long old process and takes a bit of getting used to on your first go!

I'll have updates about my work progress next week so keep your eyes peeled!

Oh and I forgot to add, it was varsity this week! Which means a big sporting event that every university takes part in each year! I watched the badminton and the rugby which were really good, rugby won by a mile and badminton lost. Our university is against hertfordshire university.
But it was such a brilliant vibe and if you're into sport definitely look into joining a team!

Until next week,

M!

Second Year Progression

Hi Everyone, hope you all had a lovely week!

This week for me was very general and actually quite productive, which is always good. So, what happened? 

Well the weekend was work work work at my part time job, Monday was a day of joining the gym and not much university related. Tuesday, my first lecture of the week! We, watched a documentary of a man lecturing about Finland's education system, I made a few notes however, I did not go into too much detail as this lecture was not supportive of my assignment but even so it's always interesting to know about other countries education systems and it is not an excuse to miss a lecture.

Tuesday also saw my Comparative Education assignment two guidance being introduced which is an essay, 2000 words, due 21st April(which sounds far away but really isn't). 

" Is education different for girls? Critically explore the cultural or religious tensions underpinning gender inequality with regard to education in Japan OR Afghanistan?" 

This is the question I have chosen, we got to choose from five questions all supporting the past few

months lectures and I chose this one because the Japanese education interested me the most and therefore (in my case) will allow me the best possible chance of doing well on this assignment. I always do better if I am interested and engaged with the topic or essay question. 

Wednesday was Lifelong, which was all about the the value of Higher Education, which I obviously am aware of but it actually made me realise how much HE(higher education) can do for you, there are so many different doors that it opens and I really believe that without some form of extra studying or training after school no matter how long or short it may be, if you do not have it you are at a disadvantage, which all of you reading this will agree with because otherwise why would you be reading a university student's blog. 

Thursday, so far you might all be thinking "she said it was productive, it doesn't sound it" or  something along those lines, well that's because Thursday was the day where it all happened. 9.30am I had a meeting with my new personal tutor, who discussed aims and targets etc and I found out I'm on track for a 2.1 at the moment which was fabulous news! He also said he didn't need to worry about me and also pointed me in the direction of another lecturer who helped me out with finding a career within education and psychology which was helpful and I hope I have found the perfect place for some work experience too, I need to ring up next week! 10-12am Digital age lecture took place, which was where I started another tab of my webfolio the 'Risk' tab and until around 2.30pm I managed to sit in the library after the lecture and complete this section which is such a weight off my shoulders as the deadline is on Monday, I only have one more tab to do as well, yay! 

I used a website called 'Powtoon' for my Digital Age assignment which is brilliant and creates interesting and engaging presentations, I really recommend them to anyone, they're very unique! 

3pm I had my Research Methods lecture which was very useful as it was all about ethics when carrying out research and how to carry out research on children without breaking the rules which was extremely helpful! 

4pm was supposed to be my Research Methods seminar but I didn't have to go because it wasn't relevant to Education Studies, just Early Years. 

I then finished the day off by going out for a lovely meal with my family and a long hot bath! 

Here's a couple of snaps of my meal to make you mouth water! It was so delicious! 
Until next week! 

M

Career talks..

Hello everyone!

Hope you've all had a great week, I certainly have.

So, this post is finally going to give you all an insight into my future plans.. because for some reason just before Christmas I panicked that I had changed my mind and no longer had set in stone plans, and I know plans don't always work out but I just like to have some sort of idea of where I'll be this time in five years.

First of all, I would like to clarify that it does not matter if you haven't decided what you want as a career path both before, during and after university. Personally I think it's silly to expect every 17/18 year old to know what they want in their educational/working life but we are expected to choose such specified degrees nowadays that it really can be scary for some if they are not 100% sure on a career path.

Degree's like mine are extremely versatile, 'Education Studies' has so may branches coming off it when you look into it. There's the obvious teaching, social work and anything is possible as you can head off to do a conversion course after your degree if you truly change your mind or even if you slightly go off course. I have decided that after I finish my final year I will be heading off to another university(probably not Bedford purely for experience of going elsewhere) to do a Psychology conversion course.

I want to be an Educational Psychologist, I have done thorough research on this job and I just know it will suit me perfectly! I was always interested in psychology at school and I even chose it for one of my A levels but sadly had to drop it as I had too much on my plate and couldn't even put my focus from subject to subject. I do really wish I had been able to carry it on as it was my favourite but unfortunately failed the first mock exam and I was achieving higher in my other subjects.

I had a meeting yesterday with the careers adviser at university because I have been trying to get round to doing it for ages and now I hope you understand that I couldn't tell you all about this until I had spoken to her for fear of getting my hopes up and telling everyone to then be told it's not possible, but it IS possible which is the best news ever.

I'll do my conversion course and then work my way up through a job setting, it is so exciting knowing that this is the right path for me. Don't get me wrong I am interested in teaching and education I just think using psychology is much more suited towards me and my personal preferences

An example of the type of situations I'd like to be faced with, helping children to reach goals, overcome fears etc.

I chose my degree partly for this reason... I didn't know if I'd always want to be a teacher but I knew I'd never lose my passion for education as a whole. There are so many courses similar to mine in all fields of careers and I would highly recommend a more broad course for someone who does not have a clue what they want to be.

There are hundreds of courses available on the University of Bedfordshire website I urge you to take a browse and have a read of some of the courses!

That's it for today.

Until next time,

M x

First month over...

Hi everyone!

Well this is my last blog post of February! Can't believe its been four weeks already!

I thought I'd talk a bit about internships in this post, so I'll cover where to find them, how they benefit you and how the benefit readers...and whatever else springs to mind!

So, I began blogging for the University back in the first few months of my first year. I got a notification on my 'BREO Shell' which is basically where I get my lecture notes and anything university related is on here. It's an internal site that all members of staff and students use daily to keep track of lectures and assignments and all that good stuff! So I believe the notification was a link to get in touch with the marketing team and arrange an interview. The interview was at the Luton campus however, which is about 50 minutes away from the Bedford campus where I am based, but this didn't put me off because I wanted the experience and realised how interesting it would be to do.

So I am the blogger for Education and Teaching for the University. There are bloggers for the other courses too I believe. I was surprised to find out when I first applied that no one else had snapped the opportunity up and I think this was because we were all new and didn't really know our way around the whole 'BREO' site etc.

This brings me to my first piece of advice; read EVERYTHING. Don't miss out on something really beneficial just because you couldn't be bothered to read an announcement. The University lecturers really do try their best to help you gain experience and have an exciting time at university. I am extremely grateful for my lecturer putting this announcement on BREO back when I was a fresher because now I'm still here and still enjoying blogging about my time spent at university.

Not only is blogging beneficial to the readers, for example possible students trying to get an insight into what the University is really like and whether they would suit a particular course or not, but it is also a really good thing for people like me to do to broaden my skills, have something to stick at, and one of the best things that I cannot wait for is reading back from the very beginning of my blog posts to reflect on university and all the obstacles I've overcome.

In terms of lecturers and seminars this week, not much has been happening. I've been super ill this week but I still managed to make it to all but one lecture, yay! In Comparative ed we watched a documentary on the history of South African education to add to the growing collection of countries we need to know about. It was actually really moving and terrifying to watch how some parts of the world lived. In Lifelong learning we had a lecture on the ICT curriculum. We are currently having lectures on all the subjects to help us decide which two we want to use for our poster presentations we've got later on in the year. Digital age was actually an optional lecture where we got up-to-date on our webfolios, as our next formative deadline is creeping up on us! Research methods was the lecture I missed but it was in qualitative data analysis I believe (I will be catching up on notes soon)!

All in all it's been quite an easy week; just preparing for the next lot of assignments in April/May time. But I thought I'd tell you all a bit more about blogging and internships.

In all seriousness, if you can, go for an internship. They really are great opportunities and if you can manage to bag one that you really enjoy (which I really have) then even better. They also show such commitment to future employers that you were involved in your university and got stuck in. I really would recommend one and good luck to anyone who is interested.

On a side note, if you don't manage to get a blogging internship I'd seriously consider blogging your experience at university anyway... To have all or most of your experiences in writing would be really nice to look back on and treasure. So, have a think about it guys because blogging really is fun!

Hope you all have a great week and I'll speak to you next Friday!

Here's a couple cliché 'Spring time' pictures to brighten up the post and get you all looking forward to the next couple of months!

M

2000 words... DONE!

Hello everyone,

Hope you are all ok!

So I think I mentioned last week that this weeks post would basically be a low down on one of my units called The Lifelong Curriculum, seeing as last weeks was dedicated to the Digital Age unit.

I had to make this image really big so that you can see all of the words, which I hope you can as this is the biggest it will go. This image is one of many that come up when you search lifelong learning online. I personally think it is a brilliant representation of what lifelong learning is. It shows so many different words that contribute to the whole idea of lifelong learning and they are all jumbled together which shows that things may not be in order but they still happen and we still learn. 

As we speak I have just uploaded my 2,000 word essay (well 1,849 to be exact, we are allowed 10 percent either side of 2,000), for my first assignment for Lifelong.

I'm not going to lie to you, this is one of the units I thought I would love. I primarily took it because I wanted to become a teacher which most people on my course want to do (obviously)! However, I'm not sure whether it's because I have had a change of career path or because the unit itself may not suit me as well as I thought it would, but I'm just not loving it,which is a shame I know. One of the main good points about being able to choose two units of your choice in second year is that you are more than likely going to enjoy the two you get to pick.

You are probably wondering now "Change in career....?" Well basically, I still want to work in education, I had just been having cold feet a couple months back about becoming a teacher. I do still like the idea of it, I just don't LOVE it. I'm not upset about it, because I have done a lot of research and am planning to go and see the career adviser's at uni so I  don't want to say anything until I know its definitely possible, I'm sure it is I just want clarification from someone who really knows what they're talking about. A.K.A a career adviser.

So I do still love my course and I know it was the right choice for me, I'm just slightly moving away from the whole 'actual teacher' role.

The course is still completely relevant to my possible career path.

Lifelong curriculum is all about how the current national curriculum supports us throughout our whole lives and is not something we just leave behind at school. You study every subject and complete an assignment and presentation about the subjects of your choice. It is very interesting and has actually opened my eyes to the fact that I do still use such things I learnt in school that I thought would never be relevant in later life.

As far as the assignments go, I've only completed the essay so far but I know the presentation will be the nicer of the two for me because I am quite a relaxed presenter and writing essays is not exactly a walk in the park for me, especially long ones like this one!!!

For this assignment, I chose the English National curriculum for key stage 2, mainly because I enjoyed English the most at school. It was difficult, I won't lie, and I found it hard to start off, but once I was into it, it wasn't so bad. I wouldn't say it was the best essay I've ever written though; I'm not the most confident about this one.

If you want to be a teacher, take this unit as it is recommended by the University that you do so, and I do see the relevance to a teaching career.

I'd also like to say that it really doesn't matter if you don't know what you exactly want to be. I was getting stressed that I had changed my mind and tried to convince myself teaching was what I was doing; I had made up my mind and I just had to stick with it. But I just flipped one day, and realised that I can be whatever I want, and began researching and found something I'm truly interested in. So, basically don't worry if you are taking or thinking about taking a degree but haven't yet figured out your career path or ideas of what you want to do.

I thought this was an interesting image as it represents exactly what this post discuss... the fact that even if you go off track and change your mind, you're still learning no matter what path you choose, and that is what lifelong learning is all about. 

Until next time,

M

A Week Gone By...

Hello again!

So as you can see by the title of this post, I will be giving you an overview of the past week(since my last post).

The weekend went by and I was just busy working apart from Saturday which I had off for my friend's baby shower. It was so fun I've never been to one before so it was a nice experience.

Monday came quickly, I had been given a two week extension for my Children and Young People in the Digital Age formative deadline due to illness and bereavement which made my deadline for Monday just gone. I got everything submitted in time which was a bonus and I have also received my feedback from my lecturer.

For those of you that don't know what my 'Digital Age' assignments are here's a brief description... we have a 5000 word webfolio to produce and a presentation. The webfolio is made up of six tabs which are on a software called pebble, this is just where we store our work and where lecturers mark.

Here is a screenshot of the pebble page, as you can see the six tabs are Presentation, Learning Activities, Social Change, Literature Review, Digital Research and Risk.

The tabs I had to complete for my first submission date were Learning Activities which we did in class, Social Change which was a 300 word section and Literature Review, this is 1,500 on any chosen topic and it is also a first draft. On the far right are three tabs, the tick with the number 1 underneath is the feedback tab.



Here is a screenshot of the feedback tab, as you can see it shows I have one piece of feedback which is expected. I'm sure you can see the feedback is quite good, especially seeing as we have another formative deadline before the real thing.

Formative deadline: a deadline before the actual deadline to gain feedback to help better the final grade.

Personally I love formative deadlines because it means the more work you put in for the deadline, the more feedback you get and therefore more chance of getting the best grade possible.

So yeah, there's an insight into Digital Age seeing as that's been my main focus this week.

I also went out this week(Wednesday night is student night in Bedford) and it was such a good night, I haven't been out for a couple of months due to illness. It has been a fun week with friends and successful in terms of uni work so I'm very happy!

My other lectures went well, the usual.

Next week is going to be focused on Lifelong Curriculum and my first assignment as I will be handing that in next Friday(I had another two week extension). So I'll inform you all about this unit and what it entails.

The university offers extensions if you have appropriate mitigating circumstances which I haven't ever made use of until this year as my personal tutor advised it was needed. It is a really good scheme and has really helped me out.

Until next time

M