Battling the mid-semester blues

While looking for inspiration for what to write this week I read through the previous blog posts written by my fellow writers, hoping that something would inspire me. All I achieved, in fact, was being extremely jealous of Ben’s visit to Playzone!

The reason why I was battling to find something to write about is that I am now two-thirds of the way through the formal taught part of my Masters, which means in this week run up to Easter I am buried under presentation preparation, reading and coursework prep. I think that I feel like I have no time to do anything interesting worth writing about!

I have always been this way; during the first semester I’m full of enthusiasm and energy, but by the second semester I’m feeling pretty drained because of all the demands on my time. Mid-semester blues are something that pretty much all my course mates are feeling right now, and the only remedy is to find little things that you can do to try and cheer yourselves up. Which, thinking about it, is something worth writing about!

Last Friday, at the end of a one-week intensive module, our poor little brains exhausted to the point of potential explosion, we went to the dry ski slope in Southampton which is only an eight-minute drive away from campus and you can ski for free with your sports and wellbeing membership! I did not know this before and it’s probably the best news I’ve had in weeks.

I love skiing but since I am perpetually broke, real snow will continue to evade me for the foreseeable future. The dry slope is the closest I’m likely to get, but that’s okay because it’s a really great place and for the first hour we had the whole slope to ourselves! Afterwards we picked up a bunch of pizzas and garlic bread and chilled out at mine – a perfect start to the weekend.

 

It's not quite Austria, but just as fun

 

We even had great weather for it! 

My second activity to cheer myself up was to start looking at booking a summer holiday. Since I have to write my dissertation over the summer, my partner and I are only going to take a little over a week, so we are trying to plan the best week ever. Comparing flight prices and looking at hotels is infinitely entertaining, motivating and a fab break from work!

Finally, something a bit random. Every Monday I have a five hour lecture block at Southampton General Hospital, and normally I would take the bus there and back. This week, since the weather was so lovely, a few of us decided to walk back which was really nice. The Common in the sunshine is so pretty and walking is so much more inspiring than sitting on a bus trying not to fall asleep!

A nice way to end a Monday

Everyone has their own little ways of fighting back against the mid-semester blues, and instead of feeling guilty about taking time off work, we should feel great about it. There’s only so much time you can spend studying before you need a break.

Emma