Holiday Motivation

It feels amazing to make it to the Christmas break after what has been a tough, work-heavy first semester, but it’s also been a great term!

The exams and coursework deadlines seem a lifetime away – a new year in fact – but some of us can still struggle to switch off over Christmas with the overhanging fear of the workload to come.

I know from my own experience the feelings of guilt when I’m not feeling too productive over this period.

But uni work, and indeed life, is always about finding the suitable balance between work and fun so I’m here to offer a few tips of my own.

Do things in a group

When I’m struggling to do work, I like to surround myself with other people, whether it’s with family or friends. It actually proves to be more relaxing in a different environment and you can be in a better frame of mind when you do knuckle down to work.

Equally, setting goals and treating yourself when you’ve succeeded at a personal hurdle is great for morale, like when I went for a Christmas meal with two of my housemates last week, Alex and George.

 A meal out with my housemates

Practice a hobby

It sounds obvious and that’s probably because it is. Being a complete working machine is all well and good but often exercise is the best remedy to revision blues and this has always worked for me. Luckily in Southampton, we have the Common where we can go to get some fresh air and fresh perspective, plus in recent weeks, I’ve been playing tennis, squash and badminton to raise my motivation levels.

Take breaks between working

Everyone has their own personal studying and working techniques, whether it’s doing an all-nighter study session at the library or setting strict hours for when to work and when to relax.

Personally, I’ve never been able to spend hours on end concentrating on the same task without taking breaks, or maybe it’s just that my mind is hyper-active! I also like working in various locations, whether it’s in my room, on Avenue Campus or at a friend’s house, but the main Hartley Library during exam week is just a no go for me when everyone is in full work mode.


The main message here is that it’s important to make the most of this break, both in terms of recharging your batteries and completing small milestones for assignments, which you can do without bashing out 2,000 words in one go. It’s easier said than done, but we’re already almost halfway through the academic year so that’s already one big milestone reached!

Before I sign off, the Erasmus society with which I’m involved recently received some gifts through the post, courtesy of Uludag Erasmus Student Network in Turkey. Every year, all of the ESN societies across Europe send off a special parcel packed with gifts that are synonymous with their own country and their Christmas traditions and below are a few pictures of what we received, including luggage tags, Turkish tea and Turkish delight!

At our Erasmus Christmas meal

Some of the gifts we received from ESN Uludag

Finally, I’d like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas with family and friends and a Happy New Year in 2017!

Paul

Celebrating abroad: results in Budapest

With results flooding straight into our email inboxes this week, my friends and I thought it best that we were in the most comfortable place possible when we received them, so we flew off to sunny Budapest for a few days!

It might not be top of most people’s lists of places to visit, but the Hungarian capital is a total holiday haven for students for a whole number of reasons.

Artistically speaking, the buildings are positively gorgeous; a beautiful mixture of old-school Gothic architecture with waves of more modern influences. The classical thermal bath-houses are a definite must-see - a lot of them even have regular swimming pools now too.

For the Historians among us, the city has a super interesting background too; from the still firmly intact Buda Castle to the constant call-backs to the country’s former-Soviet past. Statues of all sorts of interesting figures from Hungarian war heroes to Ronald Reagan are dotted all around the city.

 Even our apartment building was just a joy to look at

I even have a personal connection to the place too, which felt stronger as I was wandering around the streets. My mum just so happens to have been born in Budapest, and she fled the city and the country as a young child during the Hungarian Uprising of 1956, so it was fascinating to be able to see how far the city has come in all that time.

Not to mention that the wobbly currency makes everything insanely cheap. A fancy meal out set me back less than £10, including wine, whilst an evening out in one of the many awesomely-decorated ruin bars (exactly what you’d expect them to be) proved even less expensive than a night at our own dearest Jesters.

 Riding bikes around a city as gorgeous as Budapest is definitely a sure-fire way to stave off the nerves from results!

The cherry on the cake was, of course, being able to share such a beautiful city with my friends, and all of us receiving our final year results together whilst enjoying the sun was a definite highlight. Ultimately, everyone emerged super happy and pleased with what they achieved too, which was a total relief.

Returning to Southampton was somewhat bittersweet, very much missing the joys of such a glorious foreign land, but pleased to be back somewhere familiar, if only briefly.

My time here is very gradually coming to an end, with now barely even a week left to gather everything together before moving on.

I guess that makes it time to finally cross off the last few things from the Southampton bucket list then!

Ben