The dreaded results day...

I had to wait a long 3 weeks before I got my results. Although I knew there was absolutely nothing I could do to change the marks I was going to get, the fact that I wouldn’t just be getting my exam results but the overall classification of my degree was enough to make it quite terrifying.

Steve went up to uni to get his results the day before I was due to get mine. Annoying, as he finished his exams a week before me so he shouldn’t be allowed to get his results before me too! :P

I said to Steve that I would cover for him on the St John duty he was meant to be on. As the uni fairly often has ‘hiccups’ when it comes to technology and internet stuff, I spent the morning obsessively checking my student record page using the internet on my phone in case they slipped up and released the marks early.

I’d checked at least 20 times, but still no joy. Getting slightly bored, I decided to scroll down the page a bit further and look at my AS- and A-level results. There, casually hanging out underneath results that I’d long since stopped caring about, was my degree classification...

Arghhhh, there it isssss!

 It was actually a bit of an anti-climax, as I was pretty sure beforehand that I was going to get a 2:1. If I’d got a 2:2 (which was possible, given that I thought I’d completely messed up at least 2 of my exams) I would have been disappointed, and if I’d got a 1st (highly unlikely, but I was clinging to a vain hope that something would magically pull my marks up) I would have been over the moon, but I got what I expected, so my reaction as basically this: “... meh.”

By the time I got home uni had emailed round (obviously realising that some people were clever and had found out their degree results already, which the department hadn’t intended to happen) saying they were going to release all the rest of the results a day early. Somehow the thought of getting results for my exams made me more nervous than getting my final degree result haha.

However, as is always the way when you’ve been waiting for something, getting my exam and project results didn’t go according to plan – the student record system crashed and I couldn’t log on. Argh!

Later on that evening though, I did finally manage to get my results. Here’s the damage:

• Marine Vertebrate Conservation exam (the one I thought I’d done really well in): 71% 
• Animal Life-History Diversity and Conservation exam (the one I was sure I’d completely messed up): 68%
• Africa Field Course exam: 64% 
• Wildlife Forensics exam: 55% 
• Research project: 70% 

I find it quite funny (and very reflective of my mental state!) that my exam results got progressively worse with each exam I did. Slightly ashamed of the 55% one, as that’s the lowest mark I’ve ever got for a uni exam, but the rest were ok. I was chuffed to bits that I got a 1st for my project (albeit on the borderline of the 1st/2:1 boundary!), because I put an awful lot of work into it and would have been so gutted if I didn’t do very well.

Overall, I got 68% for my degree, so I missed a 1st by 2%. So annoying, as I only just missed it and I now blend in with the masses (some of whom may have only got 61%, yet we still have the same degree class...), but hopefully my other transferrable skills (such as first aid/St John) will make me stand out from the crowd when it comes to applying for jobs.

Speaking of which, I now feel like it’s time to start in earnest with the job application process. I don’t really want to apply for jobs, as I still don’t know what I want to do for the rest of my life, and all the things I like the look of are all unpaid voluntary positions, which as cool as the positions may be aren’t going to pay for me to live :(. I also want the chance to enjoy my last summer of proper freedom where I feel like I can get away with only doing what I want – after this summer I’ll always feel obliged to be working, and that any gaps of unemployment in my CV will look really suspicious and reflect badly on me :\. That being said I’ve just applied for a part-time job at Hobbycraft haha (getting to play with craft stuff all day and getting staff discount, what’s not to love? :P), so that will get me a bit of money while I work out what I really want to do as my career.

So, the end of uni was not the triumphant and amazing experience I was expecting it to be, but I definitely feel happier now than I have done in a long time, now that the weight of assignments and exams is off my shoulders. But now the pressure of job hunting and The Rest of My Life is beginning to bear down on me and I’m beginning to feel ever so slightly terrified again...

Exams

It’s been a long time since I last posted any “life stuff”, because in this time I’ve been slowly going insane, then trying to regain my sanity by stupidly filling my days with as much stuff as possible. Now I’m finally getting some down time, so it’s high time I updated anyone that may be reading this with where my life’s at right now. I’ve got quite a lot to talk about, so I’ll probably split this up over a few posts.

Sooooo let’s start with exams.

Finishing revision and getting through all my exams was such a struggle. There were many times when I thought I wouldn’t make it to the end because I was feeling so miserable (I don’t know if I was depressed – I doubt it, because I’m feeling much better now – but it was definitely the lowest I’ve ever felt in my life and it felt like I would never be happy again). I even had my first ever argument with Steve because I just couldn’t take it any more : (. Having to get up every morning and sit and read and read and read until it was bedtime was really not good for me. Plus I really messed up my revision “strategy” (if one ever existed...) – I spent far too much time revising for my first exam (Marine Vertebrate Conservation, in which I got my worst ever mark for an assignment, so I felt like I needed to try hardest for the exam in that module in order to pull my grade up), and that meant I neglected the other 3 and did nowhere near as much work as I should have.

Each of my exams this year was 2 hours long (twice as long as all of my other uni exams). I had to answer 2 questions in each, each question being one essay. I had 4 exams for the 4 modules I did this year – Marine Vertebrate Conservation, Animal Life-History Diversity and Conservation, Africa Field Course, and Wildlife Forensics.

My first exam, Marine Vertebrate Conservation, went pretty well – when I opened the exam paper I instantly had stuff to write about, I managed to get in my evidenced of outside reading, and I even managed to cite a couple of scientific papers (which I’ve never been able to do in an exam before). I came out of that one feeling pretty confident, but slightly panicked that I only had a week to revise for another 2 whole exams...

My second exam, Animal Life-History Diversity and Conservation, was quite possibly the worst exam I’ve ever done. I opened the paper and went completely blank. I had a choice of 4 questions, 2 of which I ruled out straight pretty much straight away as I had nothing to say for either of them. I managed to think of a few points to include for the other 2, but my answers completely lacked structure, I missed out loads of key things, and I had no outside reading examples. I could see the marks disappearing before my eyes :(

The third exam, the day after the last one, was for my trip to South Africa. It went a lot better than the second exam, but it still wasn’t brilliant – I ended up having to make up basically everything in my second question and try to give it some semblance of truth. But I knew it couldn’t be as awful as the previous one, so I wasn’t too worried.

Between this and my next exam, basically everyone else I know had finished their exams – Steve had finished, my housemates had finished, and even other people on my course who didn’t do that module were finished. This made me really, really grumpy, and all I wanted to do was hide in my room and not talk to anyone until it was all over haha.

The last exam, a week after the previous one, was Wildlife Forensics. I don’t think I really had that much to write, but by that point I simply didn’t care and all I could focus on was the fact that 2 hours after opening the paper it would all be over and I would never have to revise again, hurrah! This made it extremely difficult to concentrate on the exam itself, so much so that I finished writing 20 minutes before the end (which never, ever happens), but again I simply didn’t care because freedom was within my reach. The end of exams was a lot less dramatic than I thought it would be.

As everyone else had finished days before the novelty had worn off for them, so I had no one to properly celebrate with. I went to The Stannary (our on-campus bar) and had a celebratory jug of Pimms and a Kinder Egg (because I’m secretly still a child haha), then went home and felt far too drained and exhausted to do anything else. Steve and I went out and had a tasty dinner at the Mexican restaurant down the road, but that was about all I could manage that evening before I just needed to sleep (plus the fact that I’m not a “party animal” so Club I was not an attractive prospect haha).

And so, what were quite possibly the longest and most boring months of my life were over, and all I needed to do was wait 3 weeks to find out whether it had all been worth it...