Kira - Week at a glance

On a Sunday night, I’ll always write out plans for that week in a calendar on my wall to remember by lecturers, seminars, meetings with lecturers and classmates for group work, including my shifts for work. After I’ve got down the compulsory activities, I’ll enter all the social events or fun things I want to do, meeting with friends, lunches, activities to attend on-campus like Active Student roller skating parties or course parties where us students and lecturers get together. Then I’ll enter allotted times to work and study, concentrating on specific modules or assignments but trying to encompass some fun things to do throughout the day, or least some wellbeing time, whether it is going to the gym, reading, or doing my hobbies. Throughout the week, I try to stick to the calendar as much as possible, ensuring I do enough uni work to balance with the social activities, attending lecturers and office hours with staff. Between working a part-time job and having an active social life, I aim to get six hours of uni work done per day, depending on how close deadlines are.

Especially in the final year, it’s so easy to get caught up in assignments and workload but staying physically and mentally active goes further than procrastinating at a screen for an hour on end. With the girls on my course, we always make time for Friday lunch where we sit in the de Hav café and catch up before our final lectures of the week. We often catch up with other mates in there, making it a social area and a nice end to the week and we try to book study rooms in between lecturer gaps to have some downtime or catch up with notes together. There plenty to do on the weekends too, including the forum on College Lane Campus, St. Albans has a great nightlife with all sorts of bars and pubs and Hatfield has the Galleria, a massive outlet shopping area which is great to walk around. I’ll normally work a few hours over the weekend at the gym and finish my shift off with a swim before going to Aldi or Asda to get my shopping for the week. My girls and I sometimes meet up in the evenings to enjoy a film and wine night too which is a fantastic way to replenish for the week ahead.