Freshers’ Fair!

As a student, I’m practically obliged to love freebies. I mean, you’re trying to balance your priorities between spending money on a good time and boring necessary things like food and groceries – if someone hands you free stuff, you’re not going to turn it down, are you? That’s why Freshers’ Fair is amazing! It was held in the sports hall and there were loads of clubs and societies there, as well as local organizations and groups who wanted to recruit us. I signed up for the Am-Dram society and the choir, and I think somewhere along the way I got distracted by freebies and also became a Christian, a Pagan, a bingo player and a Conservative, but I can’t be sure – I definitely have the freebies that would suggest so.

I also have pizza hut vouchers, subway vouchers – I’m wearing my “Zombies – Eat Flesh!” t-shirt today,which they seemed to like), vouchers for the shops in the shopping centre, notepads from various organizations, lollipops and sweets, I won a teddy bear!, and lots and lots and lots of leaflets and other cute little bits and pieces like lanyards, keyrings, pens etc, which are all now spread out on my desk so I can sort them out. Looks like free pizza for dinner tomorrow and Friday!

We also enrolled today, which was a long and tedious process, but on the bright side I now have my ID card – and the picture isn’t too bad – and I’m definitely enrolled on the course, which is always good! There’s no ifs or buts, tonight is definitely a night in for me – I’m exhausted. In a couple of hours I’m going to head down to McDonalds and have my first chips since I got here – yes, I have willpower! – and use their wifi to get a couple of books for my Kindle. Then tomorrow, I have my IT induction and course induction lecture, and after that, I’m done and just got to wait for lectures to start on Monday! It’s a really exciting, busy time but I’m trying to make sure I set some time aside to write this blog.

I went to Waterstones yesterday – I could spend all day in that shop! – and bought a fantastic book, which I’ll be reviewing when I get a chance. It’s called “If I Stay”, by Gayle Forman, and it really is very good! I’ve bought the sequel on Kindle, but don’t have wifi – only wired internet – at halls, so it’s a trip to McDonalds with their free wifi for me, to have something to eat and start reading. I could go to Starbucks, I guess, but I think going there and getting a caramel frappuccino (my favourite!) and whipping out my Kindle might seem a bit pretentious – only less so than writing my novel there and talking about it loudly for everyone to hear, a la that Family Guy sketch.

So, plenty to come – I’ll keep you all updated on how uni is going and I’ll get back into the swing of writing and reviewing things, starting off with that book. If you haven’t read it yet, I really do recommend it – it’s touching and sweet but quite upsetting at the same time. I hope the sequel lives up to expectations!

My next task!

Well, it seems that no sooner am I getting rid of one task (the drama practical, which went awesome [ i think! ] by the way!) am I taking on another. Loads of charities seem to have their own teachers, but I’ve never seen one to raise awareness or money for young carers. As a young carer myself, obviously it’s a major thing for me, but there could be anything up to 700,000 young carers in the UK, some as young as 5, caring for family members with physical and mental health problems. We get some help, but nowhere near the amount we need – and people remain woefully ignorant to what young carers face, and I think it is really important to try and raise more awareness about who we are, what we do and the fact that sometimes, we can’t be exactly the same as all the other people in our class at school, or our group of friends, because family commitments to other children means something incredibly different to us, and yet too often we are all lumped into the same group.

So, I want to design a t shirt. Chances are nothing will ever come of it, but I saw for myself how the power of social networking can change a community with the Harold Lowe memorial campaign I began on Facebook almost two years ago now, and wouldn’t it be wonderful to do something on a much larger scale – harnessing the power of social networking to help improve the lives of a huge group of young people, and opening the eyes of many, many more people to what young carers go through as well as the regular routines of attending school and growing up, so I thought I’d post about it on here, let you know my plan and see where it goes from there!

It is literally just something that popped into my mind tonight, and it’s going to need a lot of time, a lot of research, a lot of paper ending up in the recycling (environmentally friendly, hooray!) and a lot of ideas that will inevitably get shot down, but if I can achieve my eventual aim, to create a t-shirt to raise awareness of young carers in the UK, it’ll be all worth it, so watch this space! You guys will probably end up as my guinea pigs to show you my designs and ask for your opinions, so please be prepared to like posts and COMMENT on them! I welcome your comments on all my posts, by the way – I love hearing what you have to say, so please feel free to comment on any blog sharing your opinions, suggestions and maybe even, if you enjoy the blog, a little bit of praise (although don’t feel obliged!). If there are any topics you’d like me to cover in Moom’s Views, let me know in a comment and I’ll do a bit of research and post a Moom’s Views about it, and if there’s anything else – any burning questions, any advice you think I can give, or just about anything else, drop me a comment!