Here’s the coveted blogging review edition of the Inside Word. I thought it was most appropriate to write this blog at this time because funnily enough, after a few weeks of sort of putting blogging on the backburner and taking life as it comes, it’s become apparent to me how much I’ve been missing out on that I haven’t been recording my experiences. I’ve got bits and pieces of several blogs that I still need to complete, and that’s been the perhaps the hardest part of my job.

So what is my job about? Well, all I’m here to do is to retell all of my first year experience to you audience members. It’s about providing advice to prospective first years about how to deal with life here. But only as second semester started have I thought about how much it’s done for me. Looking back at first semester, blogging was a really great way to record what had happened to me during such a chaotic time. And it’s made me a lot more reflective on that as well. It’s made me more able to identify what has been working and what needs work on throughout my university life.  And to that extent perhaps the reason I haven’t been producing as many blogs as I’ve been doing in the past is now I’m better at being a university student. I know much more about how this whole life outside high-school is, and only now do I reflect on how my blogging experience has made me both constantly on the lookout for what I can give advice on, and how I now take this advice for granted.

So you’re supposed to write a blog every two weeks, and I’m really bad at that, as you may all be able to tell. But it’s just what happens to you during university I guess. It’s the fact that university is like a job, by the end of some days you feel broken and disillusioned, but others you feel uplifted and hopeful. University for many is a means to an end. It’s a journey of discovery, but not only about what you learn in class, but also what you learn about yourself along the way.

My advice to many of you is that writing is an exceptionally easy way to reflect on the weeks that pass that seem to disappear. You will all realise that the first semester really does disappear from under your feet, and all of a sudden it is nearing the middle of semester two, and if you’re in halls, you’re starting to think about things like flatting and what’s next after this. So, dear reader, you may be in a similar position to me right now, where you’re eagerly waiting for the relentless forward-marching of time before the next step. That step may be unknown, but that’s what makes it exciting.

Even if you don’t end up replacing me in February 2019, writing is such an active medium that it forces you to re-evaluate the time that passes, because we all know it will pass far too soon. I implore all of you to apply for this job when applications open in December (I think), but be sure to keep your eyes peeled on this page!

– Chenchen