all ready for a new course and university

Right now, it feels like the calm before a storm - term starts in four days and I am a little bit scared! However, I have prepared as much as I could have - finances, study area and all the other bits that are within my control have been primed.

{ f i n a n c e s }

My new student bank account has been opened and is ready to welcome in the first installment of my maintenance loan (which is peanuts, by the way). I've also worked out a budget for each term (food, petrol, travelling, books, etc) and hopefully, I will stick to it. Only time will tell!

{ s t u d y    a r e a }

I blogged about this a few months' ago and this area is all ready for action. My desk is empty enough and prepared for the books, notes and stationery that will inevitably grace its surface and my bookshelf has space for textbooks that I will borrow from the library or elect to buy if they come in useful enough.

{ p l a n n i n g }

I gave this area much thought as I'm not entirely sure that my current diary set-up (of week on two page inserts) will leave me enough space to write my timetable, assignments and to-dos on. However, I've decided to give it a go with the aid of some DayTimer Hotlists and to-do inserts slotted in between diary pages; and I will try this until the end of this year.

For 2014, I am weighing up my options and I'm seriously considering using a bound diary (yes - after saying that I couldn't envisage myself doing that!). I've still yet to decide though and will undoubtedly blog about the bound vs ring dilemma in a few months' time.

A Muji notebook, a Rhodia notebook and a Daycraft notebook. Shown with a Bic ballpoint pen and two Muji 0.5mm gel pens.

In other stationery news - I have bought some Bic ballpoint pens (perfect for revision time), already have an abundance of Muji gel pens and refills (for writing out my notes in a neat manner, ready for revision) and also have a lot of notebooks that are just begging to be filled with something medicine-related.

{ u n i v e r s i t y    b a g }

There was a Zatchels 50% off sale a few months' ago and I decided to splurge out for one for the purpose of university use. The Zatchel will hold my books and pens, etc whilst a separate shoulder bag will hold other stuff such as food, my purse and other necessities. Once I've used the bag for a bit, I will blog about it :)

{ t h i n g s    s t i l l    t o    d o }

One thing I can't do right now is get my 18+ travelcard (designed for university students in London) and thus, can't purchase my Oyster Travelcard yet. Apparently, I can only get the 18+ travelcard after 'registering' with the university - something that should happen sometime next week :)

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Aside from the one minor hiccup at the end, I have pretty much prepared for university as well as I could do. Having done university before, I definitely feel more prepared this time and also a bit wiser about it all. However, as we all know - life is unpredictable and so, all of these preparations could have been for nothing (though I hope not!).

preparing for university: creating a flexible timetable

This is another part of the 'Preparing for University' series in which I explain how I am timetabling my hours. When term starts, I will be balancing several things: uni work, netball, cooking, grocery shopping and some other more personal things. Because of this, I need to ensure I get a rough idea of how much spare time I will have and how much time I will devote to studying each week.

To do this, I have made a (somewhat ugly!) weekly timetable that I've printed out on A4 paper. In this, I will fill it in with the times I will be at uni, netball and other things that I know I will be doing for certain.

This is how Monday looks so far...

And with the week filled out:

The timetable is designed to be flexible and not a rigid thing that can't be changed. On alternate Saturday mornings, I may have a netball match and this hasn't been filled in but because of how I have arranged the study blocks, I can easily move that block to another day - or even get rid of it if I feel on top of my work.

Also, for the 'college' hours I have down, they aren't necessarily 100% contact times so I may have a block free for some study in the library while on campus. This can replace a study block that was originally intended for another day.

The number of study blocks for each week may be increased or decreased depending on how I get on with this timetable and the course; and that is what makes it 'flexible'.

One other thing is that this timetable can also be used for daily life and you could also use erasable pen or re-positionable sticky notes for it if you wanted.

However, I find this a good way to work out a rough plan of a normal week at uni - this way, I can be more realistic in terms of how many hours will be dedicated to each activity. For me, this isn't a timetable I will chop and change each week; it is a rough guide for estimating where my time will go. I will then review it at the end of the each term so that I will be prepared for the next term :)

I am aware that this system may not work for everyone - as some may prefer a more rigid schedule, but for me, this is enough.

my week round-up #34

Here was my week and here are the blogs taking part in this week's round-up:

{1} Lucy Wonderland
{2} Rain by XOXO
{3} Miss Mai's Adventures
{4} Filo Cuteness
{5} My Summer Touch
{6} Star Gardener
{7} Sailor Mouth
{8} Life of Kitty
{9} Roses in December
{10} She's Eclectic
{11} Innocent and Twisted
{12} Coffee and Stationery
{13} Properly Made Up
{14} Pen and Paper Passion
{15} Ginger Fox
{16} Life of Bubbi
{17} Miss Sweet Pea
{18} DIY Sara
{19} The Simple Life
{20} My Purpley Life
{21} Fi-Lily Fi-Lo

Want to join in? Click the button below for more info :)




NB: Inclusion on my weekly round-ups do not mean that I endorse any of the products or services sold by readers in the list and I do not get commission from any sales that may be the result of a click-through.

the 3 year giveaway WINNERS!

Thank you to everyone who entered the giveaway to celebrate three years of this blog :) There were 52 entries in total and I really am quite blown away by this - it has made me want to host another one (hopefully in the not too distant future!).

Anyway, onto the important part of this blog post: the winners.

As you know, there were two prizes: the first being the Daycraft Handypick holder and the second being some goodies from the Life Canvas range. To draw the winners, I wrote down all the entries (the numbers drawn do not correlate with the comment number due to some tweeting for an extra entry and email entries) and then went onto random.org to draw two random numbers. Here were the results...

1) Daycraft Handypick Holder winner...

And who was number 32?

Congratulations Anita! If you could please email me your address to angela @ paperlovestory.com and I will get your prize out to you ASAP :)

2) Life Canvas notebooks winner

Random.org gave me this result on this occasion:

Congratulations Katarzyna! Please could you email me your address to angela @ paperlovestory.com and I will get your prize sent out to you :)

Thank you to everyone who entered :)