No alcohol you say? I don't believe you!

Some of you eagle eyed chaps will have seen that I posted a link to my cancer research dryathlon page, you may have also noticed that I said I'd write a blog post detailing why I'm doing it, if you're reading this then that means I've stayed true to my word. Welcome to my justification for saving money, giving my liver a break and raising some cash for charity.

I guess this post might sound a little selfish but I'm not going to apologise for that in fact I'll ask you to hear me out and then judge me if you want to. I do not have a great deal of exposure to those suffering from cancer but then again I don't think that should be the only reason we partake in fundraising. Cancer is a b*tch. I guess that's one of my reasons for taking part in dry January, but it's not my first.

My first reason is to predominantly to prove to  a whole range of people I can survive without alcohol. This range includes my mother, my "friends", other family members and myself. I can't even count the number of times my mother has looked at me disapprovingly because I've tarted myself up and said "I'm going out", or the number of times she has worryingly expressed her thoughts that I drink too much. I'm twenty-three, it's not uncommon for someone of my age to be out at the pub or the SU every friday right? But, I guess she has a point, my liver is probably screaming out for a break "thank god she's come to her senses" I can hear it gurgling as I write this. So, mum, I'm taking a break to prove to you that I can live a life that doesn't involve getting pissed every weekend. (please excuse my language).

I mentioned I wanted to prove to my friends I can do it, this one is definitely linked to my insecurities. I worry I'm not that much fun, I worry people only enjoy spending time with me when I'm slightly pissed. Although I know this probably isn't true, I'd like to prove it to myself and there's only one way to do that. Most of my friends will agree that if anyone is up for a drink or a night out it's me they might question how easy this'll be for me. The answer is it won't, it's going to take a lot of willpower from my end but boy I love a challenge, so friends please don't stop inviting me cause I wanna party with you, but sober.

Kronenbourg you were my drink of choice for years but it's time for a break xx

My second reason is probably more selfish, I want to save money, I don't want to waste my time, I don't want to feel hungover!! Let's talk hangovers, sometimes I feel utterly crap the next day and it's a complete write off, other times I'm able to get up and be a little more productive but most of the time I experience what I refer to as hangover blues. I'm sure a lot of you may have heard or experienced hangover blues but I am fed up of feeling shitty and worrying about things I know I probably wouldn't if I'd had a good sleep and rested rather than enjoying a tequila slammer. Also know that feeling where you wake up andyou think "I know I had a really good night but I legit don't remember what happened after we go to ..." that's me probably after 80% of my nights out. Which is really f'in sad, I want to remember all the laughs, all the slut drops, all the smiles so I'll be embarking on some sober nights out - watch out I'll probably document that too!

Let's talk money -  I reckon I could save at least £100 a month if I didn't drink, I could spend that money on something much more enjoyable and worthwhile. I want to take this opportunity to enjoy myself without a bev, to really enjoy my friends company and to give my self a break!

As I've mentioned fundraising is a reason, even if lesser so than the other reasons, to partake in dry jan. In a world where I feel like I have very little input it's important to me that I do a little something to give back to the world, to help a little bit. So this January instead of thinking what's cheaper double vodka cranberry or splitting wine, I'm going to be thinking "this money will go towards a worthy cause".

So please if you fancy supporting me through what is gonna be an interesting yet challenging month head on over to https://fundraise.cancerresearchuk.org/page/ursula-takes-on-dryathlon anything will be appreciated!

Enjoy your holidays and think of me whilst your nursing that baileys!!! Goodbye pints, goodbye shots, goodbye cocktails *tears streaming*

Ursula
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PhD to wannabe socialite...

Good evening guys!

So I'm aware it's been a few weeks since I posted, it's definitely been a busy few weeks so I'm sorry about that. I've been finding my feet and whilst it's all be such fun it's also been quite intense, I'm gonna give a little run down of what I've been up to and also how I've been managing my time! As time management can really make or break your progress.

What have I been up to I hear you asking, well here's the exciting stuff. Reading. I've been doing a lot of reading. And by that I do not mean casually skimming a book here and there. I mean true academic reading. I'm sure lots of you are aware of what I mean by that but for those of you that don't, what I mean by academic reading is the process of first of all finding relevant information, digesting that information, and making notes and processing such info. It's quite amazing how long properly reading something can take, it's easy to spend hours on a couple of papers because either they're majorly interesting or incredibly complex to understand. The process of passing your eyes across the words might not actual take all that long but note taking, recording what you read, how you found it, any comments you may have really does take a while. Most researchers will tell you they have a database of what they read, when they read, why they read the paper and any thoughts they had as a result of reading the paper. Notes notes notes. So important! What's also important is collating all your thoughts which I'm currently in the process of doing, I've read a fair amount and now I'm ready to let that spill out of my brain.

Other academic stuff, meetings, meetings, seminars, lectures, training, etc etc.

Aside from all that desk time what else have I been doing I hear you wonder. Not going to lie, I've probably spent far too long in the gym. It's just so easy to waste hours upon hours in a gym when you not only have a workout to do but also people to socialise with. I'm so glad I joined as not only do I benefit from a structured training programme but I also get to train with some awesome people. My lesson from this is always going to be about how matching hard work with socialising will always make for a well balanced life. I won't bang on about lifting too much as I'm still a novice but it's soo rewarding when numbers go up 🙌.

Oh, and of course I can't forget to mention my fave thing foooood, I've eaten out waaay too much lately. I can't help it as I absolutely love spending time with my pals and especially when it's over a good meal. In the last couple of weeks I've been out for Thai multiple times, pizza, tapas, chinese, steak, and a good burger to mention a few. Shit. Sometimes I wonder why I'm not lean then I remember ha ha. 

Always remember that work life balance. Read a good paper? Have a glass of wine. Wrote a few hundred words? Grab some sushi. Delivered a seminar? Treat yo self to a long gym session. Whatever works.

The most important thing I've learnt about the way I work is that I need to manage my time very carefully and also to plan it! Every Sunday I spend a little time thinking about commitments I have scheduled during the week, the main research goals I want to achieve and how I'm going to compliment that with down time. Then, each evening I have a flick through my diary check whats going on the next day. This is so important to me as I'm able to mentally prepare myself for what's coming up, my diary is easily my best friend atm (love all u other besties too). Of course not every hour of my day is scheduled, although sometimes it feels like that. One thing I observed whilst working and I've noticed it here to, is the scheduling of "desk time", this is great for saying okay I'm going to be at my desk for a solid amount of time, this is great when you're an extremely busy person and need to reserve your time. Whilst I'm not that in demand it's still a good concept, I can mentally say to myself okay I'll spend two hours at my desk followed by a 20-30 minute break. I try my best at the start of each session to spend a little time thinking about what it is I exactly want to do and boy does it help. No point mindlessly opening google scholar if you don't know what you want to discover!

Lists. Lists are also the other key enable to me getting all ma stuff done. Whether it's a list for personal life stuff, such as "register to vote", "book haircut" or more specific academic stuff, lists are so useful for putting into perspective things that need to be achieved immediately as opposed to actions that are a little far into the future.


Hope one of you lovely lot found that enjoyable to read 😊 xx

Enjoy a cheeky pic of me and some friends I met the other weekend.

Happiness, qu'est-ce c'est?

Happiness is a journey not a destination, happiness is a way of life, happiness is a mindset. We've all heard a least one of these sayings before but what actually is happiness? Scientifically, happiness can be defined as the release of "happiness hormones" such as endorphins, dopamine and serotonin but I'm not gonna focus on that, instead I want to reflect on what makes me happy and why it's important to recognise when you're not happy.

Right now, I'd say on a scale of 1-10 (1-miserable, 10-completely happy), this of course is a subjective scale, as I'd call myself a realist and I find it harder to reach the extreme ends of a scale. However, this kinda thing helps me put things in perspective as it makes me question my judgement, by doing this I'm forced to consider different aspects of my life and look at how they're working out, or not. Perspective is a great thing and really helps ground me, it helps me identify areas of my life I reckon I could improve.

Background info. I've experienced times in my life when I was definitively not happy however I didn't really accept it, you know when your life starts to spiral a little bit, it can be days, weeks, however long until the realisation hits you. I'm sparing you the details as I'm not here asking for pity just offloading I guess. That was five years ago. Today I've learnt to listen to my feelings (may sound a little bit wet but I assure you, you can leave this page at any time) and I can't tell how much better I feel for it. Over the last couple of years when I've felt seriously unhappy I've stopped, taken some time for myself and critically assessed my life. I've made changes, mainly lifestyle changes, I decided to look after my body, I acknowledged I was consuming far too many Kronenburgs, (disclaimer I'm not saying ceasing to drink beer will make you instantly happy, nor that you can't be happy and have a pint) and perhaps not giving my body the exercise and shit it needed. Fast forward to now - I still drink (probably still more than recommended - ooooops) and I regularly exercise.

Whilst your physical health can have a significant impact on your happiness, it's super important to recognise that your mental health also plays an important role. During my third year of uni I was unhappy and it took me a long time to deal with it, but I did and I sought out support to do so. I'm a talker but when it comes to talking about real deep shit it's hard but it helped. Whether your support network consists of your family, you friends or someone unknown it's important to know there are people out there who will listen. Sometimes just talking about your thoughts and feelings helps to understand and rationalise them, I know when I bottle things up in my head I'm in serious danger of overthinking and over complicating things.

Sometimes a change of environment is needed, no one should live their daily life doing something that makes them question their happiness. This is why I think it's important to consider aspects of your life that you can change and how you would change them if you could. For me, this meant recognising I wasn't satisfied and accepting that I really wanted a change of environment - mainly I wanted to be in academia. Whilst we can't love everything we do I really believe we shouldn't subject ourselves to doing something that negatively affects our state of mind.

I think what I'm trying to say with this post is that it's okay to take a minute or several to reflect and it's even more okay to do something about it.

Happy picture time.

Beacon Hill

Sorry if this is totally too much info, but sometimes I like offloading.

Ursula x

My biggest fear (and it's not spiders)

Hey chaps,

It's blog time! Get excited as this one's got a bit of grit to it, I'd like to talk about something that I'm sure there's a few of you out there can relate to. The fear of rejection. This is a fear I experience in every aspect of my life, from my career/academic life to my personal life, behind almost everything I do is the fear of rejection. So I'd just like to put it out there and address how I deal with it and maybe someone out there will relate.

I'm only 23 years old young but nonetheless I've experienced rejection in my career. From a young age I seemed to do pretty well for myself, I was successful in part time job applications, my university application, and my social life. Fast forward to my first proper job interview. I interviewed with British Airways, I'd passed the preliminary tests and made it all the way to Heathrow, my gosh it was daunting. Don't get me wrong I loved it, it was enjoyably corporate yet mildly intimidating. I think I knew when I walked out the room that I didn't get it, so of course I held back my tears for a long as possible. Then the tears came. I guess that's my first tip for dealing with rejection, let those tears out baby! Coming from a cry baby I guess that's easy for me to say but in all seriousness, crying is a great stress reliever and once the tears are dry you can start to think objectively about moving onward and upwards.

I've experienced rejection from scholarships and rejections from a PhD application, all of which can be incredibly demoralising! When you put hard work into something and it's not perceived as 'enough' that just doesn't feel great. One thing I've really worked hard at is rationalising things, for example, take an unsuccessful job application, there will be a reason you weren't selected for the post. I know upon reflection that in some instances I haven't possessed the crucial skills for a post when initially I thought I might. Dealing with rejection in this kind of way can really provide self-insights and provide opportunities for you to better yourself. Because let's face the world doesn't end if you don't get x job. Another will come along, and you never know it'll probably be even more your cuppa t!

So, from a different angle I'd like to talk about rejection in my personal life. One of the saddest things in life is losing a friend. I've lost one or two friends over the years, some have just drifted away and others have been slightly more drastic. It's very hard not to take it personally, it's like someone's saying "actually I don't like you and I don't want you in my life". Here, time is the best remedy, you'll be able to accept their decision and perhaps think okay I can understand that maybe we weren't ever going to be long lasting friends. Or if not, you'll find yourself thinking about it less and less.

Also, put your hand up if you've ever been rejected by a romantic interest. *both hands up*. That is a fact of life and I can accept that but especially since the rise of dating apps rejection is so blinking common. One of my biggest insecurities is that I'm always thinking "well, if they're not paying me attention they surely must be paying someone else attention", yes I know that's rather silly but hey I'm human! In these instances it's so important to remember that there are way bigger issues in the world and you aren't going to bloody die if someone doesn't text you back. Bring in the distraction activities, I love a distraction activity, something that gets you away from the life sucking social media (soz for being a hypocrite but sometimes it's good to have some time out), whether it's a gym sesh, wiring a blog post, reading a book or watching mindless tv shows - it all helps.

One thing to remember throughout your life is to celebrate the small wins, without the rejection those wins would not be half as rewarding as they are. Celebrate finding and reading an awesome academic paper (you know it could be the key to the research gap you've been looking for), celebrate doing well in an assignment, celebrate being healthy, having fabulous friends, hitting a PB (personal best) in the gym! In this short life we have so much that is worth celebrating.

I leave you with a picture representing one of my fave achievements at the moment. It's kinda nice being able to say I'm part one of the top ten institutions in the UK (*insert reference*).

As a parting thought, it occurs to me to question whether I'd really strive to be the best I truly can be if I had no fear of rejection?

So that's it, thanks for reading and remember you are fab and you can achieve so much.
Ursula x

Week one, day one.

Hey!

Believe it or not but I survived my first *official* day as a PhD student. I say *official* as over the past two weeks I've been involved in events and coming onto campus a fair bit considering I was meant to be 'taking it easy before I start'. This post is for all you chaps who want to keep up to date with my activities, for those of you who are just curious as to what a PhD student really gets up to and for the rest of you who are a little nosey (I'd probably be the latter if this wasn't my blog).

So let's get to it.

My day started at 7:15, I could probably get up at midday and no one would notice but as I may have said before (or not), I love routine and I'm going to try and stick to a solid routine from the beginning. My first task of the day was to drop by the SBE (school of business and economics) finance office with my passport so they could check I have the right to work in the UK, super simple and easy to ease myself in. Then I made my way to the student enquiries desk, typically when I went to pick up my ID card I didn't take my passport *eye roll* so I needed to swing by and show them as well. I made my way over trying to remember which building this was in and casually strolled in to Hazlerigg when in fact I wanted Rutland, both of which are stunning buildings so can you blame for getting them mixed up? Looking at the queue which was spilling out of the front entrance I thought "sodd this, I can come back when these kids are in lectures" quite funny 'cause I'm definitely still a kid but I just don't have lectures.

Having done attempted to complete a few admin tasks I made my way over to the PhD office I'll be based in - this is basically a big computer room with an unofficial hot-desking policy, so unofficial in fact that all the good desks had been claimed and the desk I was left with was not perfect, I fancied a desk tucked away in a corner preferable near a window but to no avail, I'm stuck in the middle of the room near the door. Beggers can't be choosers though, some of my fellow PhD students have been here 2 years and 8 months and I've been here a day... So I settled in, first thing I did was to write my to-do list. Who doesn't love a list? Like seriously, there's something so satisfying about being able to put a little tick and give yourself a YAY for completing a task. Although, it's probably important the list is realistic, mine was 15 items long. Perhaps a little long but I thought I can carry this over the next few days. I checked my diary to see what I had planned (nothing) and got stuck in. I enrolled onto some events that'll be useful to my development, mainly "what is a literature review?" and "Literature review: best practices" I also booked onto the doctoral college induction, which isn't until November, kinda a little late on but as PhD students start whenever I guess it makes sense, I'm just lucky I started at the start of the academic year. I emailed someone about attending some modules that might be beneficial to my learning, this excites me as I'll get to sit in a lecture environment and take notes, think of the stationary dreamsssss.

I carried this on for a bit, then headed back over to the student enquiries desk, even though there was still a queue I wasn't gonna turn around for a second time. Boring stuff done, I went back to my desk and completed the first part of a teaching module that'll be doing, cause ya know I get to take a few seminars already (I'm still struggling to imagine myself at the front of a class rather than perched on the first row 😆). I was at my desk for an hour or so and I felt my fitbit telling me to move, so I thought perfect opportunity I need to go to the library and IT services so I trekked over there. And yes it really is a trek but I refuse to catch the free shuttle, my legs are fine!

Fast forward a few hours, I've read a few articles, made a few notes, sent a few emails and I'm ready to meet my supervisors. We discussed how I'm going to really get started, in terms of journals to read, papers to search for etc. Not going to lie, I was super excited and I still am! I came away with a new to do list ready for the next day and so here we are. I'm doing #1 which may not be official business but in a way it is, because I'm keeping track of my daily activities and that's a plus for me.

Stay tuned to hear my review of my first complete week, Loughborough's top for so much lets see if they can hit top marks in "Ursula's PhD review: week one".

Peace x
P.S. sorry no piccy this week, and sorry for the excessively long post.

Five Things I'd Like To Thank My Mother For

As you've probably guessed this is going to a bit of a soppy tribute to my mother! As it's Mother's Day I thought I'd say thank you for five rather non-trivial things I'm ever grateful for. Whilst I'm so lucky to have a woman who has fed, clothed, housed and supported me for 21 plus years there's so much else my mum has done for me.

#1 Thank you for encouraging me to try so many different things as a child. With the exception of sport (well I mean you tried but let's face it I was having none of it) my mum encouraged me to take part in so many activities, from flute and piano lessons, dance lessons to being a girl guide, throughout my childhood. So I might not have been the worlds best ballet dancer but I did achieve a number of things. In addition to actual achievements I learnt the importance of hard-work and dedication, I also learnt to appreciate other people's talents and my own.

#2 Thank you for supporting me in everything I do. From the obvious financial support to the emotional support you're always there to tell me I can do this, you've never prevented me from doing anything I wanted to do. From day one when I looked through University prospectuses and said "I want to go to Reading" you supported me in getting there and once I was there you supported me through the tough times and were there to celebrate with me at my graduation.

#3 Thank you for trying to educate me culturally. Yes I may have complained once or twice when we traipsed around castle after castle in the bleak Welsh weather, or frowned when you said we were off to ANOTHER art gallery in Cornwall. But truthfully, I'm so glad you did! Now you probably wouldn't believe me if I told you I enjoyed walking round new towns and discovering old history but there's a first for everything.

Here's a snap of one of our most recent outings :D

#4 Thank you for bringing me up to be the person I am today. I always remember reading the "Children learn what they live" poem as a child, it's always stuck with me. Thank you for being patient with me whilst I was a stroppy teenager, thank you for working hard at everything you do, and most of all thank you for being polite, kind, caring, and understanding. If I turn out to be half the woman you are I'll be happy!

#5 Thank you for giving birth to me. (Ew I know) If you hadn't I wouldn't be able to say thank you. Hopefully I'm going to make you proud as pie. Not only that, but thank you for my darling siblings too, growing up with them may have been testing at times but I know I'm so lucky to have all of you!

I know, you can all stop throwing up now. I guess that's another thing I have my mum to thank for, I'm such a soppy git when I want to be. Hope you all have a lovely day with your mummas!
Urs xxxxxxxxxx