Freedom (sort of)

It’s a Saturday and mock exams are over... Thank god! I'm free... for now. It’s been a bit of interesting week, really. My maths exam was a lot harder than I expected and I am pretty sure my teacher saw me mouthing swearwords at my paper in frustration. I think overall though my mocks went okay which is good. Well, as well as they could go with the unrelenting magnet of procrastination looming constantly. The week didn’t particularly get much better from that point. I was about to go into my last mock exam on Thursday (finally), I was just getting out of the car and then my phone fell on the floor. That probably would have been okay but then oh wait. I accidentally stepped on it too. Wonderful. Needless to say there was quite a big crack on my phone after that... Not the best thing to happen.

Last night was fun, though. Replacement phone safely stored in my pocket, I went to see Kingsman at the cinema with my friends. Now, not many films make me come out at the end like “Wow, that was so amazing” but this one certainly did. Seriously, go and see it, it’s great. I swear they’re not paying me to say this (not that anyone reads this anyway)... But yes, as I said not many films impress me but that one did. Guardians of the Galaxy made me feel the same way and that is such an awesome film (did I really just use the word awesome?). Bascially yes. Films.

I’m now sat on my bed picking at the rest of my popcorn from last night, wishing that most of the remains weren’t the annoying unpopped kernels and those fragments of sugary shells that do nothing but get stuck in your teeth. It’s kind of representative of my life at the moment... The bits at the bottom of a popcorn bag that nobody wants... Bit of a strange metaphor I know.

I found my old Nintendo DS earlier on in the week and it still had Pokémon Leaf Green in it. I hadn’t played it in months and basically I ended up playing it non-stop for about 5 hours. On the night before a mock exam. Priorities! I had nearly completed it so I kept on going until I did. I love that game... Next, naturally, I dug out my other Pokémon game that is a lot newer and I must admit I was disappointed! Now, if any of you play Pokémon, you’re probably familiar with the traditional Pokémon like Pikachu and Charmander... None of those are in the new game! Most of the Pokémon are basically cats, dogs, whales, you name it. I just couldn’t be bothered with it. I’m going back to the Gameboy one...

Now I’m giving myself the week off revision I have decided to just binge a bit on television. Not that I didn’t do that whilst procrastinating for my mocks, but now I’m allowed! Yet, now I have time, loads of television programmes are either finished or not my sort of thing. For example, Parks and Recreation (I love it so much), finished forever this week... Great. Maybe if I have the attention span I’ll start watching the rest of Game of Thrones again, which I haven’t watched for about three months. I’m going to be so confused.

At the moment I just want to curl up into a ball and ignore my responsibilities. If only there was a form of hibernation I could go into and when I emerge everything in my life will be sorted out already for me. Obviously that’s not going to happen but do you know what I mean? I seem to constantly be in the mood of wanting to do something but not wanting to do any of the things I could do. I need a bit of motivation, I guess. Or a hobby. Maybe a hobby would help me.

It’s funny when I think back to my younger self. I literally used to be so creative. If something could be made out of cardboard, paper and sellotape, I made it. My dream job was to be a writer. I used to write books (they were so terrible) and everything. I remember once when I emailed the author of Horrible Histories, asking for some advice on how to write good books and I got an email back very clearly dictating how I could get sent to prison for plagiarism.  I was 8. Long story short my teacher had an argument with him and our school ended up getting £100 of free books. Wow I need to find that email... I’m not being a writer now, thank goodness, I’m not sure I would cope. I do envy people with the talent though.

Anyway. I’m going to go and salvage what is left of my popcorn...

Laura. 

Time flies.

Does anybody else feel time is moving especially quickly at the moment? I mean yes, time is a concept created by humans (ooh philosophical) and clocks move at the same rate but oh my god where is time going?

I think the times it hits me most is when I’m on Twitter and something that feels like last month is referred to saying “Three years ago today!". It just blows my mind, honestly. I think having ‘Timehop’ would make it worse for me, I think (I have too many tweets to do it apparently – oops). Whenever I have these moments it just feels like “Oh my god we’re all dying”. It’s pretty scary really, especially when they say time goes faster the older you get. Can it slow down a bit please? I do want to savour this pre-exam, pre-university, pre-becoming-an-adult-with-a-life period of my life.

Speaking of becoming an adult with a life, I’m trying to be a bit more proactive with that at the moment. I have started looking at university courses, for example. Even though the prospect of university kind of scares me right now I think it might be the best path for me, and I think I’m going to do History! I’m also looking at maths too but I seriously have no idea why – I think I may end up crying and smashing my head into a wall repeatedly after two weeks if I do that... Maybe.

I have also signed up to the student magazine that should be starting up soon. I have volunteered to help them out with anything they need; and yes that includes writing articles on things. I’m not sure what I would be asked to write about but I feel if I was allowed to have a piece it would be along the lines of ‘Weekly rants with Laura’. I suppose I’m trying to expand a little bit with my experience as it’s so hard to get it properly. But yes, I’m trying that.

At least I am already very certain about what subject I want to drop next year for A-Levels (unless I fail maths or something...). At the start of the year I was pretty certain I was going to drop Psychology because I would physically have to stop myself falling asleep occasionally and looking at the clock every five seconds (a watched clock never changes... Can that be applied here?), but now it’s actually getting pretty interesting, honestly. We’ve started to study social influence and we started by guessing how many 20-year-old jellybeans were in a jar (we were warned not to eat any – that would be a bit of a strange form for my teacher to fill in). We were asked for our guesses twice to see whether we would change our answers depending on everyone else’s answer. The only thing was she actually didn’t know how many were in there. Not that we needed to know for the experiment, but our table volunteered to count them as we just needed to know (324 if you were interested). But yes, I want to drop English language, I’ve decided. I know some people may find it really interesting but I just don’t.

Careers... Still not certain. I want to get into TV but I haven’t really got any idea how to get there exactly... Yet. In the words of Chris Traeger, I am 100% certain that I am 0% sure of what I want to do. Well maybe 20%... Possibly. Let’s see. I’m going to look at some universities this year so hopefully I’ll find something that’s right for me. In a way I’m sort of glad I’m having this existential crisis now instead of in a year's time.

I am currently trying to sit on my bed with my laptop in a position that doesn’t make my radio descend into a wave of static... There was actually some really great music on but now I have finally managed to settle into a position that doesn’t anger my radio, the music just got pretty bad. How ironic. Maybe it's a sign I should really get back to revision now... 

Laura. 

'Great god of technology'

To be totally honest with you all, the only reason I got up to write this is because I’ve had enough of maths revision for today. The amount of times I’ve written ‘substitute’ and ‘inequalities’ in the last hour is ridiculous. Okay, so maybe it’s not as many times as you’re probably imagining but it’s definitely enough for me... So here I am, writing this. I do enjoy writing this though so hopefully this will give me a bit of a break of sorts...

Usually my daily life involves my phone (actually, it always does) and this isn’t the best formula for effective revision. I have to listen to music whilst I revise - I just can’t seem to handle it in silence, and at least Fall Out Boy can make polynomial division slightly more bearable. I even read with music playing, which some people find a bit strange, but I honestly don’t find it a problem at all. Getting back to the point though, with my phone being with me all the time it just makes it so much harder to revise – not that I’m exactly changing that...

We were looking at a source in history a while ago about how people worshipped the ‘great god of technology’. Now that was written all the way back in the 1960s, but it made me think –it’s still pretty true. Just as a disclaimer, I’m not one of those “technology is so bad it’s poisoning our minds” people... Those people do get a bit much at times. Yes, I see where you’re coming from, but honestly, technology is pretty bloody cool.

I put my hands up – I am addicted to technology. I’m not wallowing in that fact, I just know that I am. I have a Twitter account, I have Facebook, I have whatever else there is and I’m content with that. I am knitted into the cyber universe (wow, way to sound forty years old, Laura); and whilst people may preach about how we should throw our phones and laptops out of the nearest window and run off into the wilderness; that’s never going to happen. Yes, people may be on their phones a lot, but a lot of that (for me anyway) is usually socialising. Twitter is pretty great for me, really. A group of people, separate to my main ‘squad’ (that’s the official name now, I’m told) that I can talk with at 2am about stuff that interests us – I’ve actually met a lot of great friends online (and no they were not forty year old paedophiles). That of course doesn’t mean I can’t talk to my ‘in real life’ friends but it’s sometimes fun to have some people to rant and joke with online about some obscure topic that concerns something pretty trivial. Twitter can be quite eye-opening at times but also very hilarious.

I know I would most definitely get more work done if I didn’t have Twitter or Facebook (who am I kidding - I barely use Facebook) but I wouldn’t give them up. In the future I may have a break from them possibly, but now I’ve been online for so long it’s sort of hard to contemplate a situation where I'm not always up to date with news or I don't have somewhere to post my daily rambles. Plus, without sounding slightly creepy, you can stay anonymous if you want, especially on sites like Twitter – people don’t have to know everything about you, you can just pick the things you want to share, which you can’t always do in real life. Also, to be honest I can be very socially awkward in real life situations so typing behind a screen is a nice comfort sometimes. I realise this paragraph has made me sound like a malicious cyber-stalker, but I can promise you I am not... 

The internet is a great place. Apart from the aspect of cyber bullying, I've never fully understood why people would want to get rid of the internet altogether and hark back to the olden days. I mean the fact that I can look up the most random fact and get an answer instantly is pretty amazing. I know I’d be hopeless at doing the crossword in the paper if I didn’t have the internet, that’s for sure. Some more face-to-face interaction would be nice, I guess, but saying that the internet is this dangerous entity ruining our generation? No...

Does this count as a rant? I’m not sure it does, to be honest, so that’s an achievement. According to psychology I have a type A personality so that means I’m easily irritated. Hit the nail on the head there, psychology. But at the same time I have a zero hardiness score for stress so that’s a lovely thought, isn’t it? (The top score was 18. Oh god.)

Anyway, I think this is a long enough ramble for today.

Laura. 

The bigger picture.

So it’s February! [unenthusiastic forced cheering] I used to always spell February wrong when I was younger, which I’m sure quite a lot of other people did too (“It’s February”). I really don’t have anything to look forward to this month, and it’s only just hit me that my mock exams are this month... Oh dear. I am yet to start revising Totalitarian Russia for History... Ah.

Yesterday I went to a course with my friend Kayleigh in Ealing Broadway (London) about Television production (I think I’ve mentioned it before). When we pulled up to Ealing Studios, I thought it looked tiny, but it turns out it’s a lot bigger in the back... Unfortunately all of the studios were closed for the day, I guess, seeing as it was quiet and all the doors were closed! It felt pretty cool to be at Ealing Studios though because so many things have been filmed there, even some parts of my favourite films and TV shows! According to my sister, Shaun of the Dead was apparently filmed there (got to love Simon Pegg), some Doctor Who (my childhood) is also filmed there, as is Downton Abbey. I must admit I did freak out a tiny bit inside when we went up to find the toilets and the production offices for Downton Abbey were right in front of us... I wonder if they were planning to kill any more of my favourite characters off in there.  We did actually find a Downton Abbey studio door though, a caution sign stating ‘REAL GLASS USED ON SET. And some fake glass. And sometimes no glass at all’. That did make me laugh – got to cover all bases...

Anyway, back to the course, it was actually really interesting. Television production is actually so complicated it’s a bit worrying – there are so many different jobs people do and you need to get it right! The fact that we were told that a lot of the jobs are in London worried me – I live over two hours away and literally nothing happens in my city... I already knew that to be honest but it doesn’t really help my current situation! Overall though, I definitely think that television is the job for me, no matter how hard I am going to have to persevere to get into it. There wasn’t any point in the course where I was bored (yes, even the budgeting part) and it just seemed right – you know? That of course doesn’t yet solve the problem of the ‘big dilemma’, but at least it’s given me a bit of insight into what it’s going to be like. I need a runner job and a driver’s license by next summer ideally... Yes, Laura, good luck with that.

First of all though I need motivation. It’s really quite hard for me to find that push to want to actually get up and do some revision. Whenever I say to my mum about needing more motivation, she always says “Well aren’t your exams motivation enough?”. That’s the thing, I get where she’s coming from, they should be enough, but it just doesn’t seem to work like that with me. I can’t see the bigger picture very well, I don’t necessarily see into the future where I am smashing my head repeatedly into the table when I don’t know the answer in the exam. There’s always something I’d rather be doing. Can’t I just skip to the part where I have my life sorted out, please? 

Laura. 

Another ramble.

I feel like I haven’t really introduced myself enough on here... What are my interests, what are my non-existent hobbies? Well if you want to know all of that gripping stuff then you’ve come to the right place, my friend. I’m not sure if I’m the only one but whenever somebody asks “Hey, what are your favourite ______?” it kind of stresses me out. I feel like I need to credit every single thing that I love, for the fear of missing out something/somebody vital and betraying them in a strange way...

If you’re one of my friends, you can probably skip this paragraph if you like, you know it all anyway (as I constantly remind you). I like television – a lot – if you hadn’t already guessed. I do watch a ton of shows (way too many for the workload I’m supposed to be doing): Sherlock, Parks and Recreation and Downton Abbey being a few among the masses that I love (again – I feel like a traitor by not mentioning the other 6485 that I love). I would literally be typing for a whole page if I mentioned them all, and I don’t think either of us want that, do we? Keep it clear and to the point, Laura!

Moving onto music, I have to mention my favourite band which is most definitely Coldplay. I love their music so much I can’t even describe. I heard a Radio 4 DJ once describe their music as ‘plugging your headphones into a tin of beige paint’, which is a load of rubbish - one of their albums they spray everything with multicoloured paints, for god’s sake. They are not a dull band, trust me. I do love other music a hell of a lot too, especially Bombay Bicycle Club and Fall Out Boy (who I’m seeing live again this October – yes!).

As for academic interests, I’m one of those unlucky people that doesn’t really have any academic subjects they’re passionate about. I mean I do like History but it’s not exactly the most inspiring at the moment. Half of my AS level course is based around the 1960s in Britain. The amount of facts I have written down about how many fridges people owned throughout that decade makes me want to slam my head into a wall (69% of people by 1971 if you were wondering).I don’t think I’ll do a degree in that era if I do decide to go into History...

Speaking of careers, I actually did something productive today! I sat in on my local BBC radio station show and was shown how things worked. Yes, it was a three hour long show full of 70s music but I found it really interesting to see how it all works. It has sort of made my mind up though that I don’t think I’ll be going into radio. After seeing the producer (the job I thought I wanted) speak on the radio quite a lot and the presenter actually doing a lot of the technical stuff, I’m not sure if it’s really for me – not in the studio, anyway. I couldn’t be a presenter, I really couldn’t. I hate my own voice and I stumble over my words a hell of a lot and I bet I would be that person who accidentally leaves the microphone live or obliviously swears on air. Television is still the route for me, I think. I’m going on a TV production course in London with my friend next Saturday so I hope it’s useful for me!

I am now aware this post has gone slightly off-piste. I try to plan these things but they never really turn out that way, really. My blog is just one big ramble at the moment and I hope it isn’t too terrible to read. I am also becoming increasingly aware of just how many brackets I use in these posts. Sorry about that, I feel like Gollum with his two voices, except one is a lot more sarcastic.

Looking at my other friends’ blogs it kind of highlights how depressing mine sounds at times, so I’m going to try and make this a bit better for you read (if you are still reading, thank you). Don’t worry, I’m not going to link you to one of those cheesy American self-motivation videos that usually have some person playing basketball in them. Whenever I see those I usually respond throughout with sarcastic comments, as I do with most things, including this blog.

I think it’s time for me to shut up now.

Laura. 

Opinions.

Venting. It’s something I need to do a lot. I’m a glass-half-empty kind of person so naturally I have a lot of things that irritate me on a daily basis. I was told recently that I need to be more of a glass-half-full kind of person to be more successful in life. That’s quite difficult in my current situation, with the ‘big dilemma’ forever looming... In the words of Dan Smith: how am I going to be an optimist about this?

“But Laura you vent all the time to us” I hear my friends call from the distance. Yes, that is true, but I don’t vent about everything. It’s those little moments where you see a tweet on your twitter feed that really makes you think “Why the hell would you post that” (I often say it aloud, to be honest) and you feel the need to vent about it to somebody on twitter but wait- the person follows you. You can’t exactly bring those little annoyances into conversation when you’re lying in bed at midnight looking at your twitter feed.

It’s not that I don’t trust people with my rants (well sometimes that is the case) it’s that I really don’t think they would care – I get annoying as hell when I start ranting about something, honestly. Especially with little disputes in groups, you can never know where a small comment could end up, usually snowballed into something much worse than intended.

Opinions are definitely something that are a lot harder to express these days, in my opinion (pardon the irony). Often I can’t get to the end of my sentence before someone tells me how wrong my opinion is (If you’d let me finish...). Obviously some people’s opinions are just fundamentally wrong. Literally one of my biggest bugbears is when somebody insults something/someone and then justifies it as “I’m allowed to have an opinion!” or when they start sentences as “Not being mean or anything but...” and then wow, what a surprise, they say something mean. What is the point? We get it, that’s your opinion. Putting a little disclaimer that the start isn’t going to make somebody less offended by something, you know.

Sometimes I just sit there in class or in public and just listen to the conversations going on around me and some of the comments just make me think “really?”. Often I end up staring into the invisible camera from The Office, wondering if the person thought about what they were saying when they said it. I am literally Tim Canterbury 90% of the time in some of my classes.

I can’t be the only one to often feel the urge to just come out and tell someone what you think of them, cutting out the dreadfully awkward business of treading on eggshells (it’s even worse when you’re inherently English). But of course, as always, you can’t do that! That one moment of madness can trigger weeks of even more awkward atmosphere. Maybe that’s the reason I’m so sarcastic all the time...

So, in an effort to be a bit more “glass half full” I am going to try and be more proactive! Look, I know I say this every blog post but this time I can absolutely guarantee you I will probably end up saying it next time, too. Just a warning.

It’s funny, I almost didn’t post this rant about not being able to rant about people as I guess this sort of counts as ranting about people. Well anyway, I feel a bit better after writing about it. It’s kind of like therapy and you’re all my collective stress ball. No. Wait. That sounds a bit wrong... I’m going to stop now.

Laura. 

Positive thinking.

Hello everybody!

I was told by a friend of mine last week that my blog is quite depressing at the moment – I laughed. Yes it is! It definitely is! I’m now aware that just blurting out the innermost thoughts during existential crises isn’t the best reading material... So. Postive thinking! What do you even want to read about? My opinions on current events? My analysis of different kinds of fruit smoothies? I don’t know!

Maybe I should just dive in and talk about what I’m happy about at the moment. It’s like Pollyanna with her ‘glad game’ (has anybody else watched that or is it just me and my sister?)... Well. I’m glad for my friends, for one thing. If you’re reading this, which I know some of you are – thank you - I know I’m not exactly the greatest person to be around when I never shut up, say weird things and do everything else Laura-ish... You never make me feel bad for it so thank you. (Dear god this is a bit soppy isn’t it? I’m not a soppy person). Something else I’m glad for... hm... my family? God I am seriously making these up on the spot – Abi I blame you for this blog post idea! (Not that I had any others, mind) I’m terrible at expressing emotions...

I am managing in college, sort of. I am doing fine in my work it’s just the motivation thing again, I guess. My friend told me today that she’d already revised about a quarter of the material on Soviet Russia... That is a lot of notes. I haven’t started. 

My mum keeps telling me to book open days at universities and I probably should be doing that. Last week my sister kindly reminded me whilst I was relaxing that “Laura! You’re going to uni next year”. “If I go” is what I always respond. Everyone knows what they want to do and I’m panicking!

It’s kind of ironic seeing as the topic we’ve conveniently just moved onto in psychology is stress... Just before our mock exams. Wonderful. So we’re sat there going through reasons for stress and there were so many. I just stared at the board thinking “dear god how will I survive as an adult?”.  Not surprisingly, workload was at the top of the list – and fear of failure. Well that sums it up for me! We then started to go through methods of dealing with stress and my teacher kept mentioning exercise as the most effective way of helping stress. I am a lazy person. I sat there thinking “yes! I will do more exercise” imagining myself running the stress away on the treadmill when I got home, not taking into account I am literally so unfit. My friend asked me if I wanted to take part in a run with her in the summer and I had to say no for fear of literally collapsing after ten minutes...

I get stressed over the smallest things, though. I’m not even joking, I get stressed out if I’m watching too many tv shows at once (which I most definitely am). I am supposed to be watching a tv series my friend lent me a few months ago and I have watched two episodes so far. Out of twenty two. I’m sorry Kayleigh, I will try to stop procrastinating watching that show by watching other shows... You can probably see my motivation problem now. I once asked Mark Gatiss how he deals with stressful deadlines and he said "I ignore them". Maybe I should try that (to an extent). I’m currently staring at a whole mountain of blank revision cards and an unticked list of work that needs doing and I’m sat here typing this. It does actually help me de-stress a bit – venting is good. (Although you always have to be wary who you vent to, of course; but I can trust you...)

Laura.