Every year when exams roll around I find myself procrastinating revision by looking through various shopping websites where I inevitably end up buying myself things as either motivation to revise or a reward for having revised. This year my exams were fairly manageable as two of them were 'seen' (meaning we got the question in advance) but even so I did a little bit of what I call procrasti-buying on Amazon, so I thought I might as well do a quick haul.

The first thing I got was this DVD about David Lynch, aka the creative genius behind my favourite TV series of all time, Twin Peaks. This is a documentary about Lynch's early years and the events that shaped his career and is also narrated by Lynch himself. I've read his book Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness and Creativity and it was really fascinating so I can't wait to watch this to get another glimpse into his mind.

I also got this book, A is for Arsenic: the Poisons of Agatha Christie by Kathryn Markup. I am a huge fan of Agatha Christie's stories and I'm on a mission to collect all her books (I'm about halfway so far) so this is perfect for me. I also have quite a morbid mind so the idea of learning about poisons appealed quite a lot.

Next I got this book Tragedy Queens: Stories Inspired by Lana Del Rey and Sylvia Plath, which I've had my eye on for ages! I actually bought this the day of my dissertation submission, which was also the day it came out in the UK. It's an anthology of stories by various writers who were all inspired by Lana or Sylvia Plath, two of my absolute favourite artists of all time. I'm not sure how directly inspired the stories will be but I couldn't not get this. I'm also in love with the style of the cover, it's so cool!

I also got four (!) seasons of Mad Men, which I've been wanting to watch for a while. I already have at least three other boxsets which I need to get through but nope, I decided I needed this as well. To be fair, it was secondhand so it was only a couple of quid which is really excellent for four seasons. I'm excited to watch it!

And last but not least, I got this little stuffed bee. Hear me out on this one, OK? My university library is called the Bill Bryson Library, which everyone shortens to 'Billy B'. As a result of this, the library mascot is a bee, which the library staff have called Billy Bee - they often post photos to the library social media of Billy Bee doing various things. I saw one of the pics and really wanted my own, so I found the exact same one on Amazon. It was smaller than I expected but I still love my Billy Bee, and since I already have a college stash teddy from my college I thought it would be cute to have a little cuddly memento of the library when I leave Durham.

And that's everything I got!

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Last Friday I had my last exam of third year, which was also the last assessment of third year, which was also the last year of uni - which means I am essentially done with uni. To be honest I am still processing all this. I can't quite believe that my time at Durham has nearly come to an end, and that soon I won't be able to call this little city in the north home anymore (although I think a part of me will always consider it home in some way). 

My last post was about the week I spent in Jerusalem on a uni research fieldtrip over Easter and since I got back from that trip I literally have not stopped. First I had the entire analysis section of my dissertation to write more or less from scratch, which took the two weeks until I travelled back up to Durham for the final time. Then when I got back I had an essay to write, then I put the finishing touches to and finally submitted my dissertation (see pic below), after which I had an 8-page research report from the Jerusalem trip to write. As soon as that was handed in it was straight into revision for my three exams, two of which were luckily 'seen' which means we got the questions two weeks in advance and had time to basically plan and memorise them before actually writing them under exam conditions. The thing I've struggled most with around uni exams in the past has definitely been the fear of the unknown and the infinite amount of information it's possible to learn in preparation for the questions which are impossible to guess, so it helped enormously to have the questions in advance. I'm also fairly good at just straight up memorising information so that part of it wasn't a problem for me either. The one unseen exam out of the three was potentially the worst exam of the education so far, but it's only a small part of one module which is a small part of the whole two years of assessment so I can honestly say I'm really not that bothered about it.