Whoops would you look at that, somehow Christmas is over and it's already that slightly surreal period in the year where everyone is just waiting for the New Year to roll around and I still haven't published a post-first term blog post! Well obviously I have now that you're reading this but you know what I mean.

So yes, it's the end of another term and I'm finally back home recovering from the past few months, enjoying the Christmas period and trying to catch up on some reading in between Christmas TV and spending time with my family (which itself usually involves watching TV). It seems to me that I'm doomed never to simply have a boring drama-free term at uni: instead, it's always full of ups and downs in the form of absolute highlights and rock-bottom moments. When I'm at university I seem to experience everything in extremes, which is draining for someone like me who's an introverted perfectionist at the best of times. I suppose my uni years are just turning out to be a metaphor for life, which comes as a shock after years of living comfortably and averagely. But even though I'm getting quite accustomed to all the #drama, somehow it makes it all worth it that at the same time I've also had some wonderful days and unforgettable moments and ultimately made more friends than I've lost. It's definitely a goal of mine for 2017 to keep things in perspective and remember that I need to keep seeing the bigger picture and not let the extremes go out of focus.

On the plus side in academic terms things are going swimmingly, although I may regret saying that in a couple of months's time! But for the moment it's been great, as since I don't have to take any horrible physical geography modules I can now devote my full attention to studying things I actually care about. Part of this has involved the rediscovery that I actually really love learning: I love the challenge of not understanding something immediately and then going away and learning about it and gaining new perspectives only to come back with my own critical views on the subject. Also, the type of geography that I'm studying is really very close in subject matter to a lot of 'social justice' topics you see in non-mainstream news channels. Case in point: while scrolling through twitter the other night I came across an article from a feminist news site which essentially utilised and modernised the argument of an article from the early 90s that I was reading at the time. On that note I have resurrected my twitter to use for 'serious' academic purposes which means I'm following all my lecturers and interesting academic and news-related accounts and I just retweet stuff I find interesting. So please feel free to follow me if you like that sort of thing!

Anyway, I think that's all I have to say for the moment. In a couple of days I'm off back to England to see family and then back home for a week or so before I go back to uni for next term!

x