MissIsGoode

I kid, I'm not quite suffering. 

I have one last exam left before freedom, however, this one's proving to be a real struggle. It's a seen exam - pfft easy I hear you say - it's really not. English exams are so bloody abstract it's never that easy. There's no right or wrong answer as it were. Aside from discussing how the characters within Oliver Twist perform to survive and how feelings and sensations are performed within Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets from the Portuguese, I've also got to find some fancy critics to back up my argument. They never say exactly what I want them to. 

My pharmacist boyfriend suggested I just make up names and make my fake critics say exactly what I want them to...the way this revision's going that seems like a spiffing idea. You can tell he's not used to writing essays where your opinion means jack all.

With the amount of names of characters and critics I've been collecting in my brain, I'm not even sure if these lads and lasses are actually people within my life, or just those I've read about. Let's just go ahead and conclude my brain's beyond fried...can someone hand me an alcoholic beverage now?

Good luck to everyone during this coming exam week. I'm definitely going to need refreshers week when this is all over!

The lovely Georgina over at She Might Be Loved has got an amazing competition up on her blog at the moment and with an incredible prize up for grabs, I thought I'd take one last look back at 2013 and the moments that mattered most to me:

2013 started, as with all my new years, in Cornwall. My time in Cornwall always matters most to me. I spend the holidays with my family, and being over 300 miles away when I'm up at university for three months at a time, makes the holidays back down in Cornwall even more special.

My 19th birthday was a memorable time for me (well almost, I was far too drunk towards the end of it, but that's student life aye). My best friend came all the way up from Cornwall and despite her hatred of people and leaving her bed, she trecked over 300 miles on an 11 hour journey, all to see little old me. For the past 10 years I haven't had a birthday without her, and since university started, I haven't been able to be there for her birthday (as it coincides with the start of the semester), so I'm really grateful she put in so much effort to come up for mine. 

My blog really took off in 2013, celebrating its first birthday in August, and reaching almost 8000 hits in September alone. I made a series of posts offering advice to freshers, and with all the hits I got, I was happy my blog was living up to its title of informing people on the life and times of a student. I made my blog a month before I started uni in 2012 because I wanted people to see beneath the surface of student life. Whilst it has been a very alcohol induced experience, throughout the latter of 2012 and the whole of 2013, I've experienced an insane amount of things that university has put me through, and entered 2014 with a little more insight into life than I entered 2013 with.

Moving into my first rented house without my parents was a crazy moment in my life. It may not seem that crazy, but it really made me realise how fast my life is moving. Thankfully, I still don't have to deal with bills and all that 'grown up' malarky (thank you bills-included contract), but moving in with a group of my closest friends from first year has been a really insightful experience. We've had some real ups and downs in this house, but we've been there for each other, just as we were in first year. 

And finally, I'd say the most memorable moment I had in 2013 was submitting my application to volunteer as a teaching assistant in Thailand with VESL. My application took me months to perfect, and I travelled down to London for the first time all on my own for a question and information session followed by an interview. I was inexplicably terrified. I'm not the most confident of people when it comes to interviews, or talking to people I don't really know, but I must have made a mark as a few weeks later I was offered a 6 week placement in a school in Chiang Rai, Thailand for summer 2014. It's probably the scariest yet most exciting thing I've ever committed to in my whole entire life, but 2013 was the year I decided to do something crazy, and in 2014, I'll actually have to do it! 

Thank you to Lloyds bank for providing the prize and get on over to Georgina's blog for a chance to win!

I haven't blogged about my fundraising for VESL in months because I haven't had the chance to get out and do some proper fundraising, but finally, I've got some plans.

My current total stands at:

Do you feel you have an exquisite talent for procrastination? 

Are you finding that your exam revision is going no where?

Are your exams and deadlines only days away?

Was your answer to all of the above questions, yes?

Brilliant, then we have something in common and you can check out my reasons to be unmotivated during the exam period. Yep, I'm condoning procrastination during the nail-biting month of exams and deadlines, because I want to drag you all down with me - though, from twitter, I gather most of you are also avoiding your responsibilities and hiding from the books and notes that so desperately need your attention. 

Whilst I'm shut away in my room with my nose in books and the smell of coffee constantly lingering in the air, I've had little time to even think about writing a blog post, but whilst revising for my exam on the representation of women in Hawthorne's short story 'The Birthmark' and also re-watching the film Romance for my 2,500 word film essay, I got thinking about how women feel about their physical appearance and what kind of affect partners can have on this.

I don't usually discuss this kind of topic but whilst it's January and body image seems to be on the mind of almost everyone, I thought it'd be something a bit different that could get a discussion going.

In both the texts I've been studying, the women don't have much respect for themselves, particularly the protagonist of Romance, who feels physically unloved by her boyfriend and allows other men to objectify her, yet constantly criticises the way in which men treat her. I found this pretty ironic but perhaps it's just something I don't understand. Marie (the protagonist) blames her boyfriend's constant rejection of her sexual advances for her self-loathing and the disconnection she feels from her body, and Georgiana in 'The Birthmark' chooses to have her birthmark removed because her husband sees it as 'the sole token of human imperfection' - she was happy to do this because her husband loved her soul, he just didn't love her for her looks, and she of course, wanted to be perfect for him.

My questions, influenced by these two texts, are: do you feel your perception of your body rests upon how a male feels about it? Do you change things for a partner because it's what he likes? If your partner told you about a flaw or imperfection that had never bothered you before, would you do something about it to make them happy? And visa versa for males too, would you change for your partner?

I know in the past if a boyfriend has liked something I do with my hair, I do it more often, or if he doesn't like a piece of clothing I own, I wear it less often. I once stopped wearing quite so much make up for a boyfriend who liked 'natural' girls who later criticised me for 'no longer making an effort'.

So, when do you think changing the little things about yourself to please a partner becomes too much?

If this post appears to have somewhat of a feminist flair to it, it's proof that my revision is truly submersing me. Which, on the plus side, means it's working!

So I've written up my 2014 to do list, but I think it's only right to break it down just that little bit more, and set myself some monthly goals...because, well, I love lists, goals and everything that I can look to, get done (hopefully) and look back on to tick off. 

"Man often becomes what he believes himself to be. If I keep on saying to myself that I cannot do a certain thing, it is possible that I may end by really becoming incapable of doing it. On the contrary, if I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning.' - Mahatma Gandhi

Preach it, Gandhi.

This quote doesn't exactly apply to the simple things I'm 'challenging' myself to do, but hey, Gandhi makes a good point nonetheless!

So my goals this January are:

Raise at least £50 for my volunteering in Thailand

Revise for and sit my January exams, and come out satisfied that I've done my best

Organise my fastly dwindling finances

Apply for a few jobs

Organise my trip down to Aldershot to (finally) meet the lovely Nadine!

Buy a passport

Put back money in my savings account and leave it there

Time to crack on then I guess! It's gonna be an expensive year so, financially, I'll be cutting down on the nights out and takeaways, and opting for more nights sat at my laptop watching TV episodes and films...I mean working, writing essays and all that malarkey. I hope everyone had an amazing new years eve and day. Good luck to everyone making resolutions and I hope you manage to stick to them throughout the year!