University Life My Official First Year!

So after finishing my foundation year in Carmel college in St Helens with a pretty high average of 92% across  my exams, I finally reached my official first year at the University of Liverpool to study a degree in Physics.

I've already had my first eventful semester and as always, have met some incredible people, one of which includes my amazing flatmate and now also girlfriend Amy!

Monday night in the Raz one of Liverpools popular nights among students

First semester seemed to fly by and with juggling my bar job with Uni, even though it just being first year which most people seem to take with the laid back approach, I felt highly under pressure when it came to the January exam period.

With barely missing my grades to reach university and having to do the foundation year, it was like a relaxation and party year in which I had no worries about passing. I only needed to average 40% in the foundation exams to get to university and I pulled of 92%.. so it was almost as if I had a year free from the struggle of learning and being tested on new information!

I handed in my resignation for the bar I worked in effective the week after new years to buckle down and concentrate on exams. The week of new years being a very busy one with having to work new years eve then heading over to Ireland to visit Amy on the 2nd of January and coming back on the 4th of january to my final shift at Revolution on the 5th.

Chilling on a mini beach in Clough, Northern Ireland

A final shift at which I was cling filmed to a post... fed chilli vodka... and soaked in champagne.... Everyone had so much fun at that bar, so sad to leave, but university has to come before anything else!

The only picture I could find anywhere of my Suffering!

I had never felt so unprepared for exams in my entire life and these exams were going to be, and easily were, the hardest exams I have ever sat in my life. I felt pressured when I only had 3 exams, some people had 9 or even 10.. I would have gone absolutely insane..

The worst part of January exam time for me is the fact my birthday is smack bang in the middle of exams EVERY year, the 18th of January always seems to be placed right in the middle of a busy and horrible exam timetable.

It made turning 20 feel that little more worse, the fact I'm not a teenager any more and the fact I have reverted to calling myself twenteen to make myself feel better is horrible.

but results day has been and gone and it seems my worries of passing were for no reason, I passed each of my exams and have learnt from my first semester.

Working harder for semester 2 and all the knew modules has to be done since I no longer have a job and therefore money to distract me from studying!

Plus the fact that one of my modules is on Einstein's General relativity, it may need some work putting into it to make sure I know what's going on!

Cant believe how good this year has been already! Hopefully it continues like this

The Bar.

Wow.

I am feeling absolutely drained.

My freshly cleaned black shirt now covered in all sorts of marks and spillages.

My apron cleared of my things and thrown on my table.

My shoes, shoes I used for sixth form college, for job interviews, for nights out, for parties, shoes, that have lasted about 3 years of constant abuse in some of the dirtiest clubs Liverpool has to offer.. now at the end of their tether and coming away from the soles.

Almost like me and my soul almost being ripped out after this weekend!

Friday I decided I wanted to step up from glass washing and collecting, and so asked a supervisor about Bar Backing experience.. since it was a friday and the opening of the Olympics, the bar was relatively quiet and they said I could try it out and get some basics..

I didnt realise the work that went into it... glass collecting is great, run around the club enjoy the atmosphere, if you have time chat to some customers and have a laugh.. being on the glass wash machines similar but you can have a laugh with bar staff... bar backing.. you are a slave.

Constant trips up and down the stairs to the cellar for spirits, crates of bottles, ice for the wells behind the bar, making sure the crates of juices are full underneath each of the bar tenders stations whilst keeping an eye on the levels of all the spirits in their stations and checking what needs refilling, but at the same time making sure every bottle is in the right order.. keeping the back of the bar presentable, clean and tidy...

It's a LOT more than just taking glasses of tables, wiping them down and putting them in a machine!

I worked 9 PM till bar close on Friday night and ended up at home for 5.30 am on Saturday morning and felt destroyed but with happy with a good £10 in tips and a £5 bar tab for making the strangest noise, my signature freaky laugh, in the bar staffs Funday Friday competitions.

This is the first weekend I have been given both Friday and Saturday shifts so I had to work again the next day, honestly felt like I wasn't going to make it through the night.

I turned up last night for the second shift and had a breath of relief when I was on the rota for glass collecting.. half an hour in.. one of the supervisors strolls over and tells me he wants me bar backing again tonight.. the busiest night of the week.. im his new protege and he wants me to work my arse off. At this point I thought. "I am not making it through the night."

But the idea of getting to know the bar and getting some experience involving where things go and how much of certain stock gets used in comparison to others is a very useful thing. Bar Backing is also the next step up from glass collection so being able to get experience in it in only my 4th weekend in the job must be decent.

The only problem was the fact that we were understaffed and had only one person collecting the bars glasses, washing them and then also putting them back into the bar.. a job normally done by at least two people. So I had to alternate between backing and floor work.

I began and started by running a load of popular stock from the cellar to the bar.. I say running.. I should say walking.. the previous night started to hit me as I attempted to use the stairs..

The night seemed to go pretty well.. until we were told that only one person was on the main bar for both collection and washing glasses and had been for an hour so the floor was a STATE.. so now I had to somehow back the bar I was on and clean the floor for two bars... bar backing on hold... to say the main bar was a state was an understatement... it was horrific.. glasses, pitchers, shots trays, were all piled high on all the tables..

The final part of the night that the bar was open I was devoted to floor work and glass collection.. when we closed I was thrown back to bar backing and had to restock every fridge on the bar, this includes all the beers, the ciders, the red bulls, every flavour of our own vodka shots, the bottles of water, the wine, the champagne... then after the bar staff had cleaned their stations.. I had to refill all the bottled spirits both behind the bar and also in all the stations, my bar having three stations with the same spirits in each one, mainly vodkas.

This took a lot longer than I expected but probably was due to me now knowing exactly what I was doing and asking everyone who was already busy for help... but it got done in the end..

Then I ended up helping the downstairs bar restock. which has completely different stations with them being based around rum cocktails instead of vodka... so again I had no idea what was going on.. but that also got done.. we went upstairs .. counted tips.. ended up with a nice £14 and a new flat cap I found cleaning bits of the bar up... 

9.30 AM in need of a good sleep.

Overall .. a decent night!

The second term of University begins!

Happy New Years everyone, hope you all had a great holiday time and that 2012 is treating you well!

I am back at university after a month break for Christmas which was... to say the least ... crazy.

The run up to the holidays was none stop parties and nights out with either the rowing team, my university halls or friends from college! madness.

This is one of the tame nights out for one of the girls in our corridors birthday.
We went to Cafe Rouge in Liverpool One, great place!

It was amazing to see all my friends back at home, share and listen to each others stories from their universities across the country. Its surprising how much you can do in three months and how many people you can meet. Our first night back we got rather drunk..

Christmas day consisted of the standard dinner and family gathering which was nice as I also hadn't seen them in three months properly. After dinner I called my friends and we went to the local pub. We swiftly left as there was a huge bar fight.. glasses being smashed.. girls on top of each other on the floor.. guys swinging wildly at each other.. so the police charged in and we made our escape and went home!

We had no plans for new years until the day before new years eve, so it was pretty spontaneous.. but we all ended up going to a friends house party.. a house party than has many bad pictures and should not have been posted on facebook... all in all it was a brilliant night and the best way to start 2012, made even better by the fact it was spent with my closest friends.

The holidays swiftly came to an end and we all made our way back to our respective universities. It felt so strange to be going back into University halls.. spending a month living with family and quiet was nice. Coming back to a corridor of 20 people the same age as you in a building with 230 others of the same age is a little different! It took a day or two but I managed to settle in a lot quicker than I thought I would.

This was the start of exams.

Everybody came back and decided to get stuck into some revision. It was quite quiet for the first week due to peoples panic at the fact they had a month to revise and had done none.

Exams finish on the 27th for the entire university although most, like myself, are already finished. My last exam was monday and so I have been out every night. Monday night we went to The Blue Angel or as students call it... The Raz

The Raz as a place is, im going to be honest... terrible.. Its old .. its smelly.. its overcrowded. It costs £1.50 to get in and then for a pint of beer.. 90 pence.. It is crazy cheap! You go downstairs to where the DJ is set up and you feel like you have walked into a bat cave.. the horrible sweaty smell hits you and if you come late enough the floor will be covered in what has got to be known as "Raz Juice"... this disgusting juice will ruin any item of clothing/ pair of shoes as anything it touches just turns brown. Once it fills up the Raz is fantastic, you cant beat the student atmosphere thats created down there. If you are a student in Liverpool on a monday night.. the raz is the only place to be!

image taken from http://www.webley.demon.co.uk/beatles/

Last night three of us went to Medication. Now.. Medication is probably the biggest and best student night in the whole of Liverpool.
It costs £6 for entry but it is worth every penny.
The place is HUGE. there is about 3000 students in there and its the best place to meet people, drinks are cheap and the atmosphere in the place is unreal. There is 3 main rooms in the place, The house/electro room, Chart room and R&B room.
http://www.medication.co.uk/
just take a look at some of the pictures on the website and you will instantly see how good the place is!
Probably the best night out I have had since being back in Liverpool!

That leads me to today! Hungover, blogging, chatting to people across the world on skype and waiting to go get dinner!

Awesome start to summer.

What a weekend.

To say the least it has been amazing and crazy.

It started on thursday night, we went for a meal in a local pub and then had a laugh in a new friends flat.

The following day there was a party in the same flat. I decided to get a bottle of Sambuca, which if you have never tried.. and like aniseed.. is well worth having a try of!

When I arrived no one else had any drinks, So I ended up being the mule to go to the shop and look extra dodgy buying a pack of fags, about 20 cans of energy drink .. and also asking for the biggest bottle of vodka the shop had.

Things started slowly with a challenge on fifa ...08 but soon picked up.

I decided it would be a good idea after a couple of cans to attempt something new.

http://ramblingspoon.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2006/11/FlamingSambuca.jpg image link

YES. Flaming sambuca.. I shiftily asked for two glasses and a lighter from my friend who owns the flat.. to which he handed them over in a bit of a puzzle.
I walked into the kitchen and set the shot ablaze. It went well and so I ended up making shots for a ton of people.

The night went on and pretty much all had a laugh... me and two of the others ended up in a taxi home at 5 AM ..

such a brilliant night.

Saturday I slept till about 1 PM due to my early return home.. and then we had yet another party! this time a friends 18th in a local venue, was a fun night and another great party :)

Sunday consisted of work... much to my annoyance as they messed up my hours and holidays and so im now supposed to be working this weekend when I told them I would be at my school prom on friday and in another country by sunday ... so yeah.... nice one haha.

After work. REVISION for my final exam :D which I had today and it seemed to go really well!

SO I am officially FREE :D and so will be partying like crazy. Went to Liverpool straight after the exam with some legends and ended up in Pizza hut sharing a 14" pizza and nachos which killed me.

Tonight will consist of a party at our friends house... whos parents have gona away for the week and so therefore we have been invited to his house every day this week. Already a brilliant start to what seems to be a fantastic summer :D

One More Exam Till FREEDOM!

So this has been a intense week. By intense.. I mean.. borderline loss of sanity intense.

I had 5 exams crammed into 4 short days which has been, in all honesty, HELL.

These exams included my latest maths module Core 4, I came out of the exam worried that I had bombed out on this exam and failed at an epic level. I had a browse through The Student Room forums and it turns out that I didn't do half bad!

Physics latest module was Tuesday and that actually was a nightmare. I crammed a whole years worth of notes and books in one night and thought I had pulled it off. I came out the exam feeling confident.

This is possibly one of the worst feelings when coming out of an exam, although you don't stress about it because you think you have done well.. the reality of it is that you actually may not have done so well.

I again decided to look through student forums at the results and my heart sank as read answers off. I really hope the grade boundaries are changed and there was also a fault on the paper. One of many of this years exams to contain a fault.

The question was given in centimetres although in the diagram of the question the same measurement was given in metres. Surely they can mark one right and the other wrong when it was the exam boards fault!?! If I lose marks for it then I think heads will roll.

Yesterday was Further Pure Mathematics 1st module, this was a resit from last year and I should have completely flattened that paper. With having time to learn it all again and sort out the kinks from the last paper I was able to finish the paper with plenty of time to spare and check everything thoroughly!!

Also on Tuesday was General Studies, it is a compulsory subject in my school and it feels pointless, it is good in a way as it can give people extra points towards university, but the lessons for the subject involve sitting around talking or watching documentaries on subjects that may not even be tested! The exam is random and you cant predict the questions on the paper and so have to hope that you have some knowledge on the topic! It was a 2 hour exam and my longest one. With being involved in all the number subjects I don't have much time to write and practise essay skills... this is a major disadvantage to those who take English for example! But I will just have to wait for the results in August to see how it went!

And today .. was THE hardest exam I have ever taken. Further Maths Pure 2nd Module. Those words have been haunting me all year and today's exam has gone as expected! I was expecting a crazy hard exam, and that's what I was given. I managed to get through the whole paper giving working out and calculation steps and the occasional answer so hopefully have passed the paper!

But on the bright side..

MATHS AND FURTHER MATHS AND GENERAL STUDIES A LEVELS ARE OVER!!

3 down.... just Physics left, but at least I have the weekend to nerd up on it! and a party Friday and Saturday! should be fun.

Going to need a few of these things. ( image from http://revimgs.bevnet.com/media/monsterenergy/monster-can2.jpg )

We leave for Bulgaria a week on Monday too! so I have a crazy schedule over the next few weeks