Yes, I’m writing this in 2015, my first post of the new term and New Year - I hope you all had a great celebration-packed season! I always find it quite a curious feeling moving into the New Year as, just a few days in, I already find myself straight back into the swing of things in Southampton, anxiously preparing for exams and assignments, awaiting results from coursework … and somehow writing '2014' by accident on everything, a habit I’ll probably only be able to drop by March at the very earliest!
2015 promises to be a quite significant year for me, and a lot of the people I know down here! If all goes according to plan, following 17 years of formal education, this year many of us complete our degree programmes, graduate, and move out into the world of employment – an incredibly exciting, yet at the same time mildly intimidating, prospect!
Much of my Christmas holidays were spent looking up placements and researching graduate schemes, potential future employers, various industries and the opportunities galore out there. I spent time working my way through Career Destinations and the many other networking services the University of Southampton (for example, the brilliantly comprehensive listings at the ECS Careers Hub) makes available. As my Dad put to me on Christmas Day, “So, what will your job be by next Christmas, Robin?” - A question which well and truly struck home the significance of the upcoming year!
Christmas was great fun in the Johnson household – and yes, I was given a selfie stick!
So, with a vague plan or two now up my sleeve, it’s time to kick on with my course, particularly the January exams (I’m fortunate to only have one this time around!) and my fourth-year Group Design Project, the deadline for which looms ever larger with the end of the month rapidly approaching. With just the three and a half weeks left of our allocated time, all systems are well and truly go as we scramble to make those last-minute additions and get everything written up.
Although at times it’s been tricky (particularly when things break!), my group and I are greatly enjoying the challenge, particularly in the knowledge that our work could well have a real-world application for an industrial client which could have a hugely positive effect on research and, hopefully, on people’s lives.
Moreover, we’ve found that (conveniently for our future aspirations!) we’ve all been equipped through the demands of the project with numerous skills, experiences and stories which hopefully will prove useful in the future, both on the CV and in the interview room. For example, not only has the project tasked us with working on a pre-existing codebase for the first time (in other words picking up, understanding and building on someone else’s programming code!), but it’s also challenged us to work as a team and to manage our time and resources as efficiently as possible across a whole semester - and around the myriads of other things we’ve had on!
Of course, being so close to the end, it’s important that my academic and career commitments are always at the forefront of my thinking, but it wouldn’t be a final six months representative of a quite hectic but incredibly enriching University experience without play to balance the work – or, in my case, plays! I’m fortunate enough to be involved with Performing Arts productions such as Romeo and Juliet in February, The Drowsy Chaperone in March and Into the Woods in April, so there’ll be plenty to get my teeth stuck into outside the lecture theatre!
2014 was an incredible twelve months of shows, rounded off with a great group shot at the Showstoppers Christmas Ball!
Equally as excitingly, a lot of us can’t wait for the end of this week, as we’ve recently been informed that a quite unique (gender-swapped!) production we were fortunate enough to be involved with last year at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, The Importance of Being Earnest, will be featured on television this Friday, so if you get the chance, keep an eye out for Great British Railway Journeys, BBC Two at 6.30pm – we’re hoping it counts as a BBC television acting debut!
2015 has quite the calendar year to live up to. From coursework to conferences, exams to elections, theatre to tours, and the Festival Fringe to filming, 2014 had a bit of pretty much everything. After a brilliant start to January, I can’t wait to see what lies ahead in store this year.
Well, after the Project deadline, of course…!
Robin
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