Me And My Hectic Life!

I apologise for the lack of updates recently, my life appears to have exploded. That or someone’s replaced the old Maddy who sat in her room writing all day with one who actually has loads of stuff to do and doesn’t seem to get a moment’s peace to just sit down and blog. I think it’s the first one, my life has been feeling very ‘splodey lately.

Glyndwr Uni is currently hosting Ffresh Festival, the Welsh student film festival, and it seems to be going really well. I’ve been doing a couple of hours of volunteering on the registration desk yesterday, and I’m doing the same this afternoon – in 45 minutes, to be precise – as well as helping to judge the best actor award (not just me – there’s three of us doing it), so it means going to watch all the showcases (the one we saw this morning was very good!) and then making a decision.

As well as that, directorial performances are next week and I’m in two, so rehearsals are still ongoing. I’ll be honest, I’m looking forwards to getting them over and done with now. Having to schedule in rehearsals every week around everything else is mad. I’ll be glad of a break!

Going to see Train on Saturday and honestly, I can’t wait! I’m so worried that something will go wrong – we’ll lose the tickets or they’ll cancel last minute – because I’ve wanted to see Train for ages, they’re my favourite band and I love their music so much. I think my Mom’s still convinced that she’s coming with us, and honestly if I knew she liked Train when I was buying the tickets I would’ve gotten her one too, but she didn’t decide she liked them until around the day after tickets sold out. Next time, I promise!

So, lots has been happening in the world – I know I said I wouldn’t post too much on current affairs but it’s been a big couple of weeks – since I’ve been AWOL.

Oscar Pistorious and the shambles that has been his bail hearing – how it’s going to be a fair trial now with all the mistakes that have been made is beyond me, but I’m hoping it is all just a big mistake and he really mistook her for a burglar.

The human incarnation of a Chucky Doll calling the-woman-formerly-known-as-Kate-Middleton “plastic” and basically having a go at her because she’s pretty – what else would have sparked such a vicious and personal rant? It’s fine to have an opinion, sure, but there was some definite bitterness going on there – which made me giggle really; it’s been good for the Twitter lulz.

Bedroom taxes and workfare schemes galore; political cock-ups I’m not even going to delve into because I could spend all day ranting about Ian Duncan Smith; but I’ll spare you that one.

Still, the story that’s caught my eye isn’t a miserable one, or one filled with anger and bitterness. It’s one of hope; one that’s really affected me in a way I didn’t think it would. I’m referring, of course, to the announcement of Mars One (at least, it’s the first I’ve heard of it) – the plan to start a colony on Mars. I’m thrilled, because it’s a step towards the universe I’m writing about – Christopher Maine’s universe, of course – becoming a reality, and I never thought we’d even taken one step towards it during my lifetime. I really hope it becomes a reality and isn’t another of those far-fetched schemes, doomed to failure, because the hope the news has filled me with is surprising.

So that’s just a little update from me, to warn you that it may be a while until you hear from me again. I’m still alive, still plodding along (or rather, running at everything head-first and hoping it doesn’t hurt too much) – I’m just a busy bee!

Freshers Week: Day Two

This day will probably start a few hours later than most, especially if you’re nursing a hangover from the night before! It’s probably a good time to switch Facebook on, because no doubt you’ve met a couple of people the night before who were still sober enough to send you a friend request when they got home. It also might be worth posting on Facebook/sending a text, just to let your family know that you’re still alive – they’ll probably appreciate that. 

For me, day two was a Tuesday. Once I’d woken up and cleared away the hangover – it wasn’t too bad, in all honesty – I finished unpacking and sorting my room out, making sure everything was nice and tidy, and taking some pictures to show my family at home. 

In the afternoon, the uni and the students guild had arranged a treasure hunt to help us get to know the campus and other people. It was quite fun really, we all got into groups and had to go around the campus finding all these places (which really helped later in the term, I’d have gotten lost without it!), and finishing with dinner in the student bar. 

In the evening, my fiance came up to visit and stay the night (it’s allowed in our halls, check with your halls residence agreement and policies to find out if it’s the same for you), and we spent the evening together. However, the student bar had a DJ on from 8pm until late, so for people who did want to go out, there was the option of doing so. 

My room!

I keep referring to university as “home” which is, as you can probably imagine, quite painful for the people back home – that is, my old home, my house, the one where I lived for all those years – to hear. I mean, I’ve only been living here for two weeks, and I’m already calling it “home”? What’s the deal with that?

The thing is, it’s quite easy to get into a routine quickly. I guess for my family and Daf, they’re still in the same place, doing the same things – but I’m not there, and it might be quite glaringly obvious that someonne’s missing. For me, though, I’ve been so busy that my head is full of so much stuff – forms to fill in, things to remember, items to take to lectures with me, new timetables and so much new information, as well as all the new names you have to learn. To me, my room probably does feel like home because it’s where I sleep, it’s where I’m not faced with information overload, and because it’s the closest thing I have here to my bedroom at home.

On a lighter note, I’ve got some pictures of my uni bedroom (these were taken last week so things are a tiny bit different now; I now have a Wrexham FC scarf up – got to support the home team! – and I have my Welsh flag duvet on my bed instead of the blue check, but aside from that, it’s mostly the same (and still as tidy, thanks to the best fiance a girl could have!). So, please enjoy – and, if you want, take inspiration from – my uni bedroom 🙂

I have a few more pictures, but those should give you a basic idea of how I’ve decorated it. I’m quite pleased with how it looks – I wish I was better at keeping things tidy, but it’s not a complete pigsty (any more!). Now the aim is to try and get into the habit of tidying up after myself all the time. It won’t be easy, but if I want my room to look nice, it’s what I have to do!

I’ll post a few more posts over the next few weeks about living independently for the first time – especially for students who are, like me, 18 and living away from home for the first time. Things like cooking – I’m learning! – shopping for yourself  – still working on getting that one right! – and generally beating homesickness – not sure I’ll ever master this one myself!

On Vlogging.

Vlogging is something that’s actually quite new to me. Not as a concept in itself – I’ve watched plenty of vlogs before and I used to follow charlieisocoollike on YouTube – but I’ve never actually made one myself before, until today. Reasons for this have varied from the fact that I’m convinced my face will break the camera, to the fact that I have very little to vlog about, to the fact that until a few months ago, I didn’t have a good enough webcam to do so. Now that my new laptop has one built-in, I’ve been meaning to make more videos – mainly of me singing, seeing as only one exists at the moment – but never quite gotten around to it. However, I am now a vlogger!

I’m making a series of vlogs for The Student Room about being a university fresher this year. Each week has a different theme to talk about and I’ve just finished the first one. I have no idea when it will be uploaded, but I’ll keep you all up to date. If it goes well and I get a fairly good reaction to it, I might make longer videos and post them on here as a resource for any future freshers who want a bit more in-depth information on the whole process, as well as some information for A Level students that I learned that could be useful for them. Still, that all depends on reactions etc, and the first one hasn’t even been uploaded yet!

With regards to writing, very little has been done, I think I’m going through a writer’s block of epic proportions – I want to write, I just don’t know what to write about!! Blogging is easier because you don’t need any imagination for that, and you can’t really get writer’s block with regards to your own thoughts and events in your own life. Hopefully when I get to uni I might be able to properly start writing again, but I’m not holding my breath. In better news, my university has an Am-Dram and Musical Theatre society! I’m very excited for starting now, but the nerves are getting more and more intense too.

Suddenly being a tramp doesn’t sound so bad…

… if you’re ill, or prone to high blood pressure, or of a nervous disposition, DON’T APPLY FOR STUDENT FINANCE.

Your health will thank you for it, even if you’re left as a skint student living off scraps with nowhere to stay. That’s looking like the more attractive prospect at the moment as opposed to heading back into that dangerous frontier of the Student Finance Wales website. Here is a run-down of why the application is so stressful.

1. It’s full of stupid questions. Whilst filling out a calculator which will tell you what loans and grants will be available to you in the next academic year, one of the questions you have to answer is, “What loans and grants will be available to you in the next academic year?”. Funnily enough, I don’t know, which is why I’m doing this calculator to try and find out!
2. Whilst you’re filling in the calculator, which takes ages as you try to figure out what the question actually means (in the end I just put “£0”, I’m fairly sure it’s true), the application form logs you out and makes you start from scratch because if you’re not active for 15 minutes they have an automatic log out, so you have to start all over again.
3. They randomly change your security question from one you’ve provided an answer to, to a question you’ve never seen before, let alone one you’ve answered.
4. Not only do they want you to go through the rigorous process of registering before you can even begin to think of applying, they then want your parents to go through it too, individually of course – so just when you think you’re actually getting somewhere, you then have to get your parents to do exactly the same. Yay! Not.
5. If you put in any information, chances are they will have forgotten it by the next step and you’ll have to repeat yourself. Possibly more than once, if you’re unlucky.
6. Even if you registered two years ago for EMA and have probably only heard from them once or twice since then, you’re expected to still remember every tiny log-in detail. If you don’t, they’ll send you re-set details which will probably also be wrong.

In short, it’s not been the most relaxing of mornings. I’m not at college because I’m ill but I thought, best do something academic today, even if it’s only applying for finance. What can possibly go wrong? My blood pressure must be through the ceiling, I’m all hot and bothered, the co-codamol is wearing off and I don’t think I’ve ever sworn so much at my laptop. I suppose it has been an enlightening experience – I’ve learned that Student Finance Wales make it as hard as possible to secure any financial support, they want it to be as time-consuming as possible and I know a lot of quite creative swear words (personally, I blame my mom’s teatowel, the periodic table of swears). However, no amount of learning can make up for quite how ill this application has made me feel already.

In the end, I’ve elected to do most of the rest of it by hand and send it in the post. I think it’ll be better in the long run – particularly for my laptop, which has found itself on the brink of being launched at the wall more than once this morning.

Moom’s Views: Illiteracy

I was really shocked today to discover that in Wales, 40% of children enter secondary school with a reading age that is more than six months below their real age, and 3.8 million children in the UK do not own a single book, according to the National Literacy Trust. My first question was, “How?”. How can this happen? And also, is it any wonder that young people are struggling to get jobs these days, when they cannot read at the level they should be reading at?

I know that for some, it’s not through lack of trying – conditions such as dyslexia can seriously affect literacy. However, in many, it seems to just be that their parents never encouraged them to read when they were younger, and that indifference to literature has continued as they’ve aged. Personally, I can’t imagine a life without reading. Not being able to read would mean not being able to write, and for me – when I’m looking to pursue a degree with a high element of writing – the ability to read is absolutely vital. Regardless of that, I love reading – I always have been. My parents have always encouraged me to read from a young age, reading books to me before I could even read myself.

By the age of six, I was reading Harry Potter and by the age of eight or nine I was getting through books like there was no tomorrow – it only took me a few hours to read Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which wasn’t a small book by any means, at the age of nine. It really shocks me that there are some children who, even at the age of eleven or older, are unable to read – even simple magazines or small books.

I don’t quite understand why – there is the stigma that books aren’t cool, or that they’re for losers, but I’m pretty certain that when these people who say these things get to the age of about eighteen, when they’re stuck with no money, no job and no prospects of going to university/furthering their education – or probably older, depending on just how immature they are -, they’ll look back and they will regret not learning to read when it was much easier, when their minds soaked up information better and they had the aid of teachers.

When I have children, I will always encourage them to read from a young age and make sure they never encounter the problems children these days are facing – and I hope they will learn to love reading in the way that I did, and reap the benefits in the way that I am doing now.

Moom’s Views – Being “British”

This blog post is mainly inspired by a discussion on thestudentroom forums, where they’re talking about what it is to be British.

Personally, I don’t consider myself to be British other than the fact that, according to my passport, I am a citizen of Great Britain. As far as I am concerned, my nationality is Welsh, and I am proud of that fact. I am proud of our language and the fact that it is still alive despite the many attempts to quash it, proud of our history and our culture, our patriotism, our music and our poets, our food (if you haven’t tried Welsh cakes, you must! They’re amazing!), our scenery and beaches and so much more.

Now, I am not against English people coming to this country. After all, my family moved here from England, so it’d be hypocritical of me to say that. What I am against, however, is people who move to this country and make no attempts whatsoever to learn our language – in fact, they go as far as to actively slag it off, and slag off all the people who live here (“sheep shaggers” is a popular insult), and say how much they hate living here – and yet, when asked why they live here if they hate it so much, they’re the first to bleat (pardon the pun) “racism” and “I have just as much right to live here as everyone else”. They have the right to live here, but if they hate it so much, surely the good thing to do would be to move back to England, where you don’t have to listen to us speaking Welsh if it irks you so, and free up some of the housing market for the young people and families who want to stay in Wales and want to remain immersed in the culture.

The other ironic thing is that these people are usually the ones who complain the loudest about immigrants who move to England and refuse to learn the language and don’t immerse themselves in the culture. I mean, I do agree with them, I think people who move to any country, regardless of where from, should try to become a part of the culture and at least learn the language, the law and the generally accepted way to be a member of society, more for communication’s sake and to be polite than anything else. However, why is it the English seem to be so hypocritical about it?

Of course, I am generalizing here, and not all English people are like that – it seems to be a minority, but the minority seem to be the most vocal about it. I know plenty of English families who have moved here and the children have all learned Welsh through school, and the parents try to learn Welsh (although it is harder as an adult, because of the fact that children soak up languages better than adults), and even though they may still support the England football and rugby teams, you never get that attitude of “we’re going to smash the sheep shaggers”, shortly followed by (when Wales win, which usually only happens in rugby) “ugh Wales won by a fluke, Wales got lucky, Wales is full of sheep shaggers, don’t get too smug Wales, you only won by a little bit”. Alternatively, if they win, it’s “Ha, we showed them Welsh *****!”. They seem to be sore winners and sore losers. Also, in sports, there is the fact that when a Welshman (or woman, I’m not sexist) wins something, they are “The British sportsman, ________, wins the gold medal!”. When they don’t succeed, it is “And the Welshman, _________, crashes out in last place”. It’s double standards, and the only country it never seems to happen to, funnily enough, is England.

I don’t hate England and I don’t hate English people – I just hate the attitude some of them seem to have towards countries that live, however slightly, differently to their own. We are next door to England (although, I must stress, Wales is NOT a part of England), we share the same Royal Family, most of us speak English as well as Welsh, some of our bands and singers are quite popular in England (Bullet For My Valentine, Katherine Jenkins (the Forces Sweetheart) Duffy, Funeral for a Friend, Kids in Glass Houses, Lostprophets, Manic Street Preachers, Tom Jones and of course, Stereophonics, to name some of them) – the only real differences is that we can and choose to speak a different language sometimes (which seems to really annoy the English if they walk in on a conversation in Welsh – ever heard the “I walked into a pub and EVERYONE changed from speaking English to Welsh” myth?), and we support different teams in sports. Why is there such animosity towards the Welsh? I’m not saying it isn’t reciprocated – there are some Welsh people who dislike the English, but it never seems to be the same level of hatred as some English people seem to have for the Welsh – and yet, they’re more than happy to come on holiday here and expect us to speak English whenever they’re around, regardless of what language we normally use. And if we don’t? We’re racist.