N.B

This is the link to my new blog http://amie-coussens.blogspot.com/ unfortunately I couldn't find a way to use the same blogspot address. Got to love modern technology xx.

The final blog.

So it only took about three months to get the olde blog back up and running, but don’t worry there is VERY good excuse.

For some reason and going against the laws of female ability I can’t successfully multitask. Obviously I can breath and talk, eat and drink, sleep and well…sleep, but for when it comes to writing it is either blog or diary. Hence why I have a very fully diary and a very empty blog.

Anyway in theory this particular entry should mark the final entry of ‘the beautiful life of a student.’ No longer are NUS cards in action, staying in bed till 2pm is a thing of the past and tax dodging has officially come and gone.

I have been coming up with ideas on how to sum up university as a whole, some way of capturing the last three years in writing, but have not had much luck. Everytime I go to write about it I just lose myself in how to portray the most amazing three years of my life. Do I thank everything and everyone? Do I write a to-do list for future students? Do I take another degree and start writing about it from freshers week? (Like anyone could turn down that offer!) Do I just write the world ‘wow’- was going with that idea but then thought it was a wee bit to ambiguous?

What I can say is this…sitting back home in my room three years after the initial email congratulating me on my placement at Chester University seems like decades ago. I remember the excitement of buying mundane things such as towels and toothbrushes, knowing that in a matter of weeks I would be out in the wild and living the life every 18 year old dreams of.

Now having completed university just seems surreal. Still to this day I don’t know how it went so fast, or how I managed to get away with half the stuff that my housemates and I did. Chester was an unforgettable experience and that in short is about all I can say.

It hasn’t sunk in that we’re not going back in September yet, or that for the time being Surrey is going to be my home. No more uni.

I think I had secretly hoped this last entry was going to be full of emotion, every other word being flooded with tears, not being able to capture the minute details of every event or fully portray what really goes on behind Chester walls.

Perhaps university has toughened me up and totally destroyed my emotions.

One day I will be able to conclude university life, but for now I have just under 2000 facebook photos and a group of friends and memories that will stay with me forever. Thank you Chester I couldn't have asked for more.

Ginger meat

So here is the picture:

All the members of 6 West Lorne Street moved out two weeks ago and now two of us are back till Wednesday next week.

Now, when we moved out we got a little carried away and accidently took 99% of our stuff home, forgetting that we were coming back a few weeks later. As a result we have been eating all our canned food out of mugs (thankfully there were two left in the cupboard!) and almost resorting to ant powder as a sugar substitute.

If our lack of intuition wasn’t enough, we also have a fridge full of frozen meat. Well I say meat; the technical phrase would be half a butchers shop in our kitchen. Somehow a few days before we left two weeks ago we decided to buy some food, and a mixture of too many vegetables that week and a serious hunger for proper food resulted in 30 sausages, 10 burgers and an estimated two chickens. I can put my hands up and say no vegetarians lived in our house!

But what we didn’t get round to doing was actually eating any of it. So now in between our strict diet of Custard Creams and Milka is a daily allowance of British meat (so much for working of the excess university bulge.)

It has now got to the stage of what can we do tonight with six sausages each. Becky may be a culinary Goddess but we could easily feed a small army of Cheshire Jets with the contents of our fridge.

And if we weren’t under enough pressure of life outside uni, now having to demolish all this food may just be the death of us.

A simple solution would be some kind of massive road BBQ, or some similar meat centred event, but this is Chester after all. There is more chance of me seducing Prince Harry and giving birth to the next heirs of England than another decent house party here. Mind you…wouldn’t say no to Prince Harry, after all, he is ginger.

Initial panic

Ahhh ‘the beautiful life of a student,’ my old friend.

Life right now is about as planned as, well, something that is very unplanned. Fantastic description there.

I am now back in Chester and still house hunting and job hunting. It seems all we seem to do these days is hunt, and thankfully we’re not reliant on our hunting skills because we would be well and truly dead by now.

‘We’ is referring to my housemate Becky and I. The plan is still for the two of us and housemate number three, Amy, to stay up here and officially say bye to our student roots in the year 2011.

As you can tell by the beautiful punctuation and general flow of this blog my mind isn’t really in gear.

Being back here is weird and we are not talking about losing car keys and finding them in the car door weird, but more like the notion that something is missing.

Our little Victorian house is quiet and apart from the odd sticky note marked ring so-and-so regarding job A. it is the same as it was two weeks ago.

Having spent last week working at a paper down south my drive to become a journalist is in full swing and whenever I spot a newspaper I have to read it. Gluten for punishment clearly.

We viewed our first house yesterday but the more we see the more problems arise. Firstly because the three of us are not related we have a small issue of multiple occupancy laws, this means lots of three bedroom places around but very few tenants happy to lease them to three female friends not including the ‘ex-student’ bit.

We have all roughly agreed that come August/ September we will be up here, if not sooner. So I guess that is progress.

The biggest issue is discovering a personal trait that until recently I was unaware I had. Impatience.

Not having a house is upsetting seeing as in exactly six days we are kicked out of this one.

This means if we get an interview for the end of next week we have to come back and fork out for accommodation, and so the cycle begins.

You can’t really have one without the other, which ever way you look at it. But now is a case of grabbing bulls by the horns and pointing the animal in the direction of a career and a penthouse over looking Central Park…a girl can dream!

So safely locking the fear of the unknown away and giving Pandora the key, the life without university begins.

All that’s left to do (apart from find a house and a job) is to find a way to sum up these past three years. Maybe I’ll leave that for the next blog.

Balls up

Last night was the uni ball, the official way and tradition way to end a university life. However, I was not there. Instead I spent the day at work and the evening doing mindless things to distract myself.

I should have gone and yes, it will be the biggest regret of my university experience. Not only was my dress ready to hop into, but the tickets and table were practically written in stone.

There were only three major issues. One not all of us were going, two my bank account consisted of £5 let alone £57 (not including drinks!) and thirdly being in the same venue as two of my ex’s wearing suits was a disaster just waiting to happen.

So like any coward I took the easy route and decided to bail out, rather than go. Hanging my head in shame it was wiser to forget what an amazing night I was missing by literally not thinking about it. I did briefly wish for Tiny Tempah to keel over with some form of 24 hour killer flu and then decided it was probably best not to jinx fate.

After interviewing the guy in charge of the whole event and getting the exact details of food, music, venues and general excitment, the decision not to go was even harder.

Now all that’s left is to hear all the people that went swear that it was their best night ever and those dreaded words “you missed out.”

Chester uni only has one ball a year and anyone is entitled to go, so the fact that I (or my housemates) never went to one is more than a tad depressing.

So there it is, my one university memory I won’t remember. But on the positive side it will not replace any of the amazing experiences over the past three years.

Why am I getting the impression the summing up of this entire blog is not far off?

The summer ball and Six West Lorne Street is soon going to be filed away like eighteen Garden Lane and 31 John Milton Hall. Scary or what.

Decision time

Home is where the heart is so the saying goes. However, home is also the biggest pain since the fashion gods of the world thought it wise to bring back leggings.

So it comes as no wonder that the students, adolescents-call them what you want-people regard home as simply a free supermarket and a decent bed.

Stepping back into familiar territory of home is welcoming but it causes a much greater feeling, the feeling that you are not living your life to its full potential.

Having lived in the same house since the age of 3, going to university in Chester was bliss. Chester itself was a little piece of ancient history and it quickly became ‘home’ and after there years of education and alcohol experimentation the question of where next to set up house was breached.

The South is warm, fun and the general pace of life is so fast compared to its northern counterpart that many people choose never to live it. It is very rare these days to hear a northern accent in these parts (Surrey) generalisation or not, it is true.

In comparison the North is colder and in its own little way trapped in time. Granted, both areas share history but in experience, people in the North are much more likely to flash you a smile than the workaholics found on the streets of London.

Having been brought up in the South, the North was always exhilarating even the droning M6 was exciting. Perhaps it was the prospects of so many KFC’s, who knows?

So as crunch time grows ever closer this decision becomes more and more like Jaws. Do you pack up the best three years of life and move back in with parents, under the same rules and regulations that surrounded the then 17 year old, or do you stay up North, admit financial ruin, move in with friends and continue as an independent woman?

The very reasonable housing market and availability of jobs in Chester makes staying in Surrey point blank pointless. And let’s not forget there would always be the question ‘is moving back into your parents house a step backwards?’

Perhaps the only way to find out is to rent a house up North (well West Midlands) and give it a shot. So here’s to the next adventure and having survived student accommodation, several boiler explosions and killer mould, what’s the worst that can happen?

How to be a student

No one has ever laid down the rules on how to correctly be a student. Tax payers think students are tax dodging ‘young adults’, ex-students think they are jealous and future students will strop until they finally become one.

The simple point of fact is that no matter how you’re perceived as a student, it is what you put into your experience that truly counts.

Let’s start off with a few basics, they can easily to sleep in till lunch, eat breakfast for tea and drink the house dry. They attend lectures once a week and regard channel E4 as the equivalent to the BBC News.

Once they have finally dragged themselves out of the lairs then they can really begin the day. One can imagine their day to be very hectic, what with all their extra curriculum activities (stealing road signs, cones and various other night reflective objects) and keeping the local kebab shop in business, the life of a student is not to be snubbed.

In order to be the very best student a student can be they must follow several simple guidelines…

Firstly: student discount. See it, sign it and get it. Life is not complete without some form of discount and tight fisted, money holding persons that they are, any discount will be welcomed. So get hold of a student card and start flashing it.

Secondly: food shopping. Just because Tesco value food looks like it has been reared on the ugly farm does not mean it is not edible. With a pinch of salt and a sprinkling of pepper they should be Gordon Ramsey-ing it before they know it. Before long the British economy will be booming thanks to students and their low standards of food.

Thirdly: sleep/ sleep deprivation. Students don’t sleep. They are not nocturnal, they simply don’t sleep. Think Twilights Edward Cullen but without the blood curdling thirst. Although sleep deprivation may sound like terminology from doom, it will become a student’s best friend pushing the boundaries of human function to the extreme.

This brings us to point four: ProPlus. Never underestimate the power of a student and a packet of ProPlus, especially around the exam period. The reason students can look like they haven’t slept in day is probably because they haven’t. These Proplus wonders can add hours to a student’s revision timetable and lets face it, they wouldn’t strive on pulling ‘all nighters’ to work if they couldn’t achieve it.

These are but a few guidelines to encourage the students of today to maximize their university experience. It goes without saying that they should firstly, before obtaining their student discount cards, enrol on a degree course they find interesting.

From one student to another, if they want to enhance their path in life, gain an extra qualification or simply learn more about specifics then choosing an interesting degree will certainly help.

At the end of the day isn’t that what students go to university for?