2020- A Review| Carenza Bramwell

I have written one of these posts for nearly every year I have been blogging. It is a chance to look back on the year. I wasn't sure if I wanted to write one this year, but it feels more important than ever to reflect on the weird year that was 2020. I have broken this down into three sections- university, personal and reading/writing/culture. 

University

In the first half of 2020, I completed my second year of university. It was odd completing it at home, after having to leave suddenly. I haven't seen some of my friends in months. I'm still proud of the work I managed to achieve as I really struggled with motivation this year. I got a slightly better grade than last year and I'm hoping graduate with a good grade this year. Then in the second half of 2020, I started my third and final year of university. It is bizarre to me that I will be graduating in six months time. It's a cliche to say, but it does feel as though I only started university yesterday. Moving everything online has been a weird experience. I miss the separation between home and uni. Now that I'm on Christmas break, I have been enjoying the work a bit more as I feel I've had time to relax and brainstorm. I'm ready to graduate and move away from education, even though I don't have a plan for what to do next.  

Personal

Even without COVID, 2020 was a fairly difficult year for me personally. The first 5-6 weeks were amazing. I was having a great time. Then in early February, I fell ill with a mystery illness. It was a scary moment as I had never had something like that happen to me. I haven't totally recovered, but I am a lot better than February. It goes without saying but this impacted my year a lot. In the last eighteen months, I have experienced some of the worst health points in my life. At the end of the day, I'm still alive, even if I'm not in the best of health, but it could have been so much worse.

A few months ago, I saw tweets going around asking people what had they achieved in this awful year. At first, my thought was "well I haven't achieved anything". I had so many goals. I was going to travel and work. None of that happened. It made me a bit sad to see that a lot of people had achieved amazing things in a not amazing year. So, I've made a list of the things I have achieved. They may be small in the grand scheme of things, but they mean something to me.

My achievements:

• Finished second year and started third year
• Continued to make my new home feel like home
• Spent time with my family after three and a half years living apart
• Read 75 books
• Became the Editor in Chief of my uni magazine 
• Discovered new favourites
• Survived 

Culture

My relationship with "culture" has changed in 2020. By culture, I mean books, film/tv and writing. I'll also give theatre an honourable shoutout as I've missed it so much. I managed to see four plays live before everything shut down. The arts has been devastated this year and it needs a lot more than we're giving to it. Reading wise, I only managed to read 75 books. This is the lowest amount since 2017. I found joy in books, but I found that I didn't enjoy them as much as I normally would. They didn't provide as much comfort as normal. I know that a lot of people have found solace in books, I'm hoping that returns for me. 

This year, I really discovered my love for film/tv. I have a lot clearer an idea of what my favourite film/tv favourites of the year were than I do books. I think it's because I know that I want to work in film/tv after I graduate. I would love to write a book, but film and tv is where my heart lies. I went to the cinema twice in 2020, and like theatre, I miss it a lot. 

I told myself in 2020, that I would do more writing. I had more time. What I didn't have was the motivation. 2020 drained me of a lot of energy. What with my degree, creating blog content and working on the uni magazine, it felt like spending my free time at my laptop was a bit pointless. Hopefully after I graduate, I will have time and motivation to work on my writing.   

I think it's safe to conclude that 2020 was not the best year, but there were moments of lightness. I would say let's hope that 2021 is a better year, but I have very low expectations. I'm just happy this year is over.

Carenza :) x

An Honest Review of My Second Year of University| Carenza Bramwell

It still hasn't sunk in that I've finished my second year of university. I'm going into my final year. This time next year I'll be done with my education. All of this doesn't feel real and to me it still feels as though it was yesterday I packed up and moved to uni. I will be sharing my honest thoughts on my second year of university. Obviously, there will be some areas where I will be vague as to maintain privacy for those around me.

It is difficult to say outright whether this year was good or bad as this year ended up being very unusual. No one could have seen the current situation hitting us and it has affected every single university student across the world. I'm lucky that I was at the half way point for my degree, that this didn't happen in my first or final year of university. It was definitely a bummer that this happened when it did. It has impacted how I feel about my second year of uni, but not by much.

One thing I spotted was the jump between first and second year. First year, looking back, was quite chill. We had work to do, but it didn't feel like we were drowning in work. This year it felt a bit more intense and I imagine third year will be even more so. I did notice that the work increased and that I would finish the week and have a decent amount of work to fill my time. There were a few occasions when it wasn't as bad, but most of the time I was working hard.

A big change this year was that I joined a society. I hadn't found any that I wanted to commit to in first year. I looked over the summer and found that we had a student newspaper, something I new nothing about. I decided to join and actually ended up being one of the editors. I'm now the editor in chief, which is something I never thought would happen. I'm so glad I decided to join a society as it's expanded the social side a lot and I've met people outside of my course and existing friendship group.

Another change was that I decided to apply to be a student ambassador for my university. This is a paid role and means that I help out at any event that the university is hosting. Again, it was an opportunity to meet people outside of my course and so on. It's quite a chill job and I look forward to doing it in my third year.

Possibly my favourite thing about this year was the group of friends I made and hung out with outside of uni. We would meet up every now and then for drinks and board game nights. I am not a big drinker or party person so this was exactly my type of social event. I'm sad that they came to an abrupt end when we all got busy and then had to move home. These are memories that I'll treasure for a very long time.

Compared to my first year, I suffered a lot of health problems this year. In the first term, I had a viral cold that lasted for two months and meant I was constantly run down. I felt awful all the time and was really struggling a lot. I got better over Christmas and thought that I would manage to make up for lost time in the second term, but I was very wrong. I got really sick in February out of the blue and ended up in hospital overnight. I still don't know what happened to me, but it took it's toll on me again. It got to a point where I thought I would fail this year because of how ill I was. Luckily I managed to soldier on and pass, but this year ended up being quite difficult for me. I'm hoping that third year is better.

Second year ended up being quite a solid year. There were ups and downs. Going to university during a global pandemic was something I never thought I'd experience. It is changing the way that I will be completing my degree. I hope that I can finish my degree with a bang, but we'll have to see what life has in store.
Carenza :) x  

Writing for the sake of Writing| CarenzaOnBooks

Over the past few months, I have been writing blog posts for the sake of getting something up on time on with my crazy upload schedule. I have been forcing myself to write half-arsed, rushed posts just so I can say "I wrote a blog post today". While that may be the way some people approach it, it doesn't work for me. I want to make content I am proud of and comfortable to share with strangers on the internet. At the moment I am not happy with the content I am posting.

Blogging is a hobby. I started blogging because I wanted something to do in my spare time and here I am two years later. I love blogging, it allows me to be creative and start conversations with people who have similar interests to me. Blogging, for me, was never about how many page counts I could get or how many followers I have. It was about finding a creative outlet that worked for me.

I pride myself on being a creative individual. Throughout my life, I have tried many different creative mediums including dance, acting (whether this be traditional acting or musical theater), art and crafts and now social media. It is rare for me to stick at something for an extended period, I am forever wanting to try new things (activity wise) and so blogging was a huge decision for me to make.

I was and am still in full time education. I have to prioritize my education, but lately social media has taken over my life to a unhealthy degree. I would get stressed and occasionally depressed if I didn't put out a new post that day. I let it take over my life and this is me, reminding me that blogging is a hobby. Maybe one day, in the near distant future, blogging could be my job, but right now, I don't gain any revenue from making these posts. I do it because I want to. But want turned into have to and that is never how you should feel about a hobby or something you enjoy.

The same thing has happened with reading. I am reading books because I have to so I can complete my GoodReads challenge. Reading is something I should do for fun, but now it something I do because I feel I have to. I want to go back to the days were I can sit down and read a book because I want to. The pressure of putting high quality reviews out frequently is very stressful. It's why I stopped doing Book Review Monday. They were low quality posts that I am not proud of.

I am a full time student, studying three separate courses that require 15 hours contact time per subject and 15 hours independent study (overall) a week. I live between two houses, meaning I don't get to see part of my family that often and when I do I want to make that time good quality. I am volunteering at two places to gain credentials on my CV. I want to make good memories and do things I'll enjoy and yet with all this pressure I'm putting on myself, all I spend my time doing is watching YouTube because I'm afraid of how much I have to do. I have been off college for three weeks now (it finished for the academic year, I'm not ill) and it doesn't feel like I am off college because I am spending so much time working, whether that be on college work or blogging.

This month (July) is Camp NaNoWriMo and because I want to be a writer in the future, I thought it would be a smart idea to challenge myself to writing 50000 words this month. I may be enjoying it, but finding time to fit everything else in has become chaotic.

The point of this rambly post is that I put too much pressure on myself with my commitments. From now on, I am only going to post when I feel like it and not stick to a crazy upload schedule. I could post one really good post and then not post something for a couple of weeks and that it okay. Blogging is still a relatively new career option and competition is scary, yet exciting. I am so happy to be a part of this community, but I need to remember that by forcing myself to create content I am not making content I am proud of and as a creator, I am failing my audience and myself. Today the pressure lifts ever so slightly and I remind myself that this is something I do for fun, not for a job.
Carenza x