I can’t believe that last time I posted on here was November. Christmas seems like so long ago let alone November.

I would love to be writing more on here but I just don’t have the time. It is now March. In less than two months my dissertation needs to be in, in less than 3 months I will be done with uni for a second time. My dissertation is steaming along, not as fast as I might like it to be but it is getting there. It is a marked improvement on my Derby dissertation though, just for a fact that I didn’t start writing that one until the week before it had to be in. I know… bloody students!

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My chosen modules for this year have continued to be as interesting as they seemed at the start of the year and I am getting on well with them. Some of the lecturers however are not as good.

The assignment for one of the modules I am doing was given out at the start of term together with a list of suggested research areas. Basically we had to pick an area, research it and write a 3000 word report. Now this was quite a good piece of work as:

A> It is nice not to have to worry about coding or designing anything for a change, we can just write.

B> Some of the suggested topics on offer were very interesting.

I picked my area almost instantly (Cyberstalking – which was on the list he gave out and I was not the only one to pick it) and being the hard working student I was hoping to be pretty much made a start on the research straight away. Read the rest of this entry »

Considering the halls I currently reside in are ones that are allocated to first year students they are surprisingly quiet.

It is a fairly old building though so I imagine it has thicker walls than some of the more modern halls I am used to but even then it is still silent. I am used to halls having music playing well into the night, drunken students running up and down the corridors banging on your flat door and students generally being students… not that I have ever done these things of course *ahem*.

Besides the hole on my wall, stains on my carpet and general crudiness of the kitchen (it would be much better if there was somewhere to sit and relax, but there is only a little table and 3 uncomfortable chairs, so not the most welcoming of kitchens) it isn’t turning out too bad a place to be living. Add to that the fab location to the shops and pubs and the less than 10 minute walk to uni or the library it is perfect.

The older building has its quirks too and it looks nicer than your run of the mill, modern halls. And, rather oddly (well, I find it odd) on our floor there is an emergency access lift to the railway that runs underneath the halls. Must remember that if I am ever late for a train.

Yeah, yeah I know I have been shockingly bad at keeping this up to date. But you should know me by now and probably think some stupid excuse is coming up… well you are wrong! I am not even going to bother with an excuse this time, just put it down to me being crap.

So, the summer literally flew by and on Saturday I moved back to Liverpool. As any of you who is a friend on Facebook will have seen over the weekend I didn’t initially think too much of my room. Hole in one wall, crack in another, stains on carpet and generally dirtiness of the room when I got here was not good. Anyhow, once we had a clean and got my stuff in I settled in pretty quickly and it is good to be back at uni.

Even better is that the available modules seem much more interesting than previous years and the coursework we have been told about already sounds like it will be quite manageable (remind me I said this in a month or two when I am tearing my hair out please).

The strange part of the week has been finding out that our nice little course with 4 people in our year has suddenly grown to 15 people due to a load of the 2nd years not getting placements and going straight into the final year. I quite liked the fact there was only 4 of us so the fact that our course is now more than triple the size in numbers is going to take some getting used to.

Due to some expert guidance given to me last night I am making progress with my dissertation and hope to make a big start on that very soon and I am looking forward to the start of lectures next week. So, all in all a good first week back at uni.

Please let it carry on as well, i know the work is going to start to pile on soon… but I’m ready for it!

Bring it on!

I am all packed and waiting for my sister, who is currently stuck on the M6 to come and pick me up to take me home for the remainder of the summer holiday. On Thursday I finished my placement. I have enjoyed the time at the college but have to say I was quite happy to get to the end and I am looking forward to getting back to uni and starting my final year as a student.

I will miss all the guys at work, they have made the job very easy to get into and they were all fun to work with. After work on Thursday we went out for a couple drinks to celebrate us leaving. Needless to say the couple drinks lead to me getting in at 1am after consuming far more than a couple of drinks. It was a fantastic night out though, my best in a long time and it has made me start missing the guys already. A good thing about the college being quite close to uni is that I can come back and visit next year which I definitely will do.

So, my year in Widnes has been worth it. The placement has been great, I have learned a lot and I have definitely grown as a person more. My confidence, not only in my ability to do the job but also in myself has grown immensely. For that alone, this year was worth it, the additions I have to put on my CV is a bonus.

Ahh it’s good to be back! I won’t even pretend that I know what went wrong with this site but thanks to the persistence of my web hosting mistress Eliza (who still seems to be afflicted by whatever happened) I am once again blogging. And yes, I do still intend to do the redesign… when I get round to it.

Can you believe it’s already May? And more unbelievable is the fact that I only have 3 months left on this placement. I have enjoyed working here but I am looking forward to it ending so I can get back to uni and finish this degree.

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For a while now I have scoffed at my friends that seem to sit on facebook all day poking people and writing on walls. I never got the fascination with the site. I have been a member for a while but rarely checked it and didn’t put too much information on it.

Then, Thursday night I got an email saying that my sister had friended me so I went on to confirm. There I was looking at her profile and reading loads of messages from the people that she went to university with.
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I have a quiet few minutes at work so thought I would come and update you all on how I have got on this week. The move went well, apart from my laptop bag deciding to rip on me and my laptop landing on the ground with a thud – it seems to be working ok though, thankfully! I am going back home tonight after work and returning tomorrow with the rest of my stuff.

Work has been good. The HR department made a bubu (or is it bobo? I dunno) though. We were not actually meant to start until the 6th August so when we turned up on Wednesday as it said to in our letters the IT department were a bit surprised to see us. Because of this there wasn’t anything planned for us this week. So instead we have spent most of the week helping out one of the tech guys installing, ghosting and networking PC’s. I have done all this before but only at home, its quite different doing it on such a huge scale so that has been interesting to learn.

All the people that work here are really friendly which is always good and the other 3 students on the same placement are cool too, we are all getting along great. The staff are really laid back and are already letting us use our own initiative and have even turned a blind eye to us getting around the colleges block on MSN, myspace, etc saying that this is exactly what they expect students on placement to try and do and don’t mind as long as we don’t get caught.

Well, thats all for now… back to it!

We were all called into uni today to get our results for the second year. I thought I would be ok, I wasn’t confident about one of the exams but I was certain my average would be high enough. I kept getting the usual nerve attacks though and panicking that I would have to do resits while on my placement. I got there and there was quite a queue of first years outside our course leader office also getting results so I joined the back and read my heat magazine, hehe.

Anyway, my turn came quite quickly. I knocked on the door and went in to be greated by “Oh god, not you! Hello trouble!” I found this quite funny as there are a surprisingly high amount of people that great me with a “hello trouble” and I don’t know why. After all I am an angle, not trouble at all. Anyway…

I PASSED EVERYTHING!!

I am well on the way to a very strong 2:1 and if I work extra hard in the final year and do a good placement report then I can get a 1st.

Whats more, while our tutor didn’t tell me what other people got he did tell me I was highest out of the year! OK, there are only 5 of us but first is first

He also commented that he was really impressed about the increase in my average from 1st to 2nd year, 11% I think it was. He says most people will drop or only increase slightly due to the step up in amount and difficulty of work for the 2nd year. I didn’t tell him I hardly did any work in my 1st year though… and also this year.

I really need to get it into my head not to leave my work and revision to the last minute. If I work hard, do my work in pleanty of time and revise properly I should be able to grab that 1st.

Yes I am

I got myself a work placement for next year! woo! I have been running round all giddy with a huge smile on my face since *checks phone* 11.39am this morning after receiving the phone call to make me happy. Best thing was I only had the interview for it at 9am this morning so I must have done something right!

So yes, I start in August and am going to be an IT/Computing technician. It isn’t what I set out to find but sounds very interesting and it definitely has all the elements in it that I am wanting to build on so all good.

That’s all for now, I have been up since 6 am and am starting to go a bit loopy…