Money at Uni!

It's that beautiful time of the term when you look at your online bank account and all of a sudden you've got an extra £1000/$800 (depending on where you live) or more in your account and you feel a little bit like this:

But trust me...this feeling will soon turn into:

when you begin to realise that nearly all of that loan will end up covering either your rent, bills or books for your course if your like me and do a degree that revolves around books.

The little bit of your money that you have left over is supposed to be for the rest of the term but for most students out there it goes a little like this:

1. loan comes 
2. freshers week hits
3. alcohol happens
4. loan is gone in less than two weeks. 

I'm writing this blog entry as a helpful guide to save your money as much as possible because believe me I know what it's like to be at the point where you're running so low on money that you have to remove the blue bits of the bread because you're refusing to go to the shops...I'm now refusing myself to get to that situation again so here are some tips that I'm going to leave you with:

• If you have an online bank account, check it weekly! I have an online account and never checked it as a sort of fear as to what I was going to witness but trust me it helps, I've prevented myself from going into my overdraft on many occasions because of this easy little tip

• If you have to go out then PRE-DRINK! It's so much cheaper and sometimes ends up being more fun than the actual night because you're with your closest friends and not sweaty

• When you're out don't take your card with you!!! Taking your debit card with you to a club or to your student's union is the worst mistake and nothing's worse than that feeling of waking up the next day realising you bought at least 10 drinks for yourself plus loads for your friends and have no money left for actual food and necessities...your expression will usually be something like this every time "mum" or "dad" appears on your phone:

• Give yourself a weekly budget. If you're someone who likes to spend more money on going out than food consider that and also consider WHERE you live and where you do your weekly shop, a person's weekly budget who lives in Norwich is going to be very different to the weekly shop of a person living in London. 

• Look for the sales! I just bought the most amazing boots in a 50% off sale and know I will wear them all the time.

• Make sure you buy your books before freshers week! This is important and something I stupidly didn't do last year. Trust me, you don't want to be the only person on your first ever seminar without your book! I've definitely learnt from that mistake. 

I hope that my little useful tips help. I will regularly remind you of another useful guide to saving money but for now, I think that's enough. I hope those of you that have returned to work, school or uni are having a great time and if not it's midway through the week so you don't have long till the weekend.

You know where to find me,

Cheerio,

Emma

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P.S An extra little note: for all those twitter lovers out there, I've set myself up on the social site so follow me @ezmaar :)

Nearly back to university

The Christmas holidays are nearly done and that means work is due very very soon. Today was a day for referencing and editing all of my essays...definitely not much fun at all!

This was what I thought I looked like for most of the day:

This is what I actually looked like:

 But it has to be done and as I absolutely hate referencing, I thought I'd share with you some useful tips and websites that helped me out loads:

Useful Tips:

1. If you use a book, website or literally anything (that includes an image off google) make sure you note it down somewhere, this doesn't have to be the full editor, author but literally just scribble down a little memo to remind yourself that you used it to help you.

2. Don't panic! I do this all the time. I always leave referencing to the last minute and end up panicking when really I don't need to, it's just something that needs to get done and so there's not much use in worrying

3. Make sure you know exactly what referencing style your course needs (I use MLA but that might be different to a lot of you out there)

When you're ready to make your footnotes and bibliography here's an excellent site that my friend Emma Peagam shared with me:

http://www.easybib.com/

It's amazing and you can easily choose what type of source it is (website, journal, book, video etc)and  what referencing style you want. I seriously recommend this! 

For those of you with no work load like those of us at university and school, you're very lucky! Well it's a very short one today because I got to get back to my bibliography...such fun!

Stay warm, it's starting to get colder

Emma

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New passport, new places

It's always so exciting when you get something in the post, even if it's just your monthly bill from the bank, when you see that letter or parcel with your name on the front you can't help jump up and down a little well I know I certainly do. I ordered a new passport weeks ago and it only just recently arrived, it's not very interesting and very possibly the least blogged about thing ever but I was genuinely so excited to receive something I did a little celebration dance :)

Now I feel that I've got this I need to jet off to loads of exotic places so I've created a list of places I want to visit by my 21st so that's in a year and a month. Here it is:

Paris

California

Figi

Germany

New Zealand

Hawaii

Morocco

Mexico

Kenya
New York (I've already been but it's my favourite place ever so it was a definite for the list)

If I get to any of these places I'll let you know but that's just been added to my resolutions :) speaking of resolutions as I mentioned in one of my other blogs a main one of mine is to teach myself the piano and it's going really well! Can't do left hand yet but I'm getting the hang of the melodies so I'll keep you updated with that, how is everyone keeping up with their resolutions? 

I've also been applying for loads of journalism internships so fingers crossed I get something so I can pursue my dream as a broadcast journalist :) I would literally love to get an internship in London so I'll let you lot know how I get on with it!

That's all for today,

Cheerio,

Emma

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my new satchel

I got a beautiful satchel from my sister for Christmas. It is navy, white and brown and suits me so much!

What do you think? 

It's fake leather but feels real and fits everything I need in. If you ever see me, I will be donning this beauty

Much love,

Emma

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One resolution down...

So one of my resolutions was to learn the piano and I have officially taught myself 'Honey, Honey' from the Mamma Mia soundtrack, that and the Rent music are the only piano books I have so I'm teaching myself through musical theatre :) I'm taking a keyboard back to uni with me so by next year hopefully I'll be able to sing and play at the same time!! I'll upload my progress on here but considering it was my first day today I didn't want to harm your ears :) my other resolutions include: go to the gym more, lose weight, finish my story, write a play, get a job and spend less money on nights out...so far so good!

How is everyone? It's been a while since I've been online but I've had a bunch of tedious essays to write and you all know the drill. 

Anyway I've also started reading thr new Bridget Jones book

I'm a huge Bridget Jones fan and know every line to the first and second film (let's just take a second to appreciate Collin Firth and Hugh Grant fighting in a fountain) but this book seems very different. I'm about a quarter of the way through and I've discovered she's no longer with Mr Darcy and has kids (sorry to spoil but you find both of these out within the first three pages) which I'm shocked by! What happened to Darcy? Part of the reason it makes me sad is simply due to the fact that if they make a film out of this one as they have with the others, Collin Firth won't be in it! But it's easy to read and makes me actually laugh out loud which is hard to do with books- I can cry easily at books but find it hard to actually laugh, not entirely sure why but life goes on. If anyone is considering reading this I would definitely say go ahead, it's an easy read and is perfect for relaxing, Bridget is now older so although the context may not directly relate to the younger audience, the writing remains as funny and unique as the other two books.

Much love,

Emma

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My tops of 2013

Every tv channel or magazine or newspaper seems to be doing the top 10 books, songs, films, shows etc of 2013 so I thought what the hell why not join the phase but instead of doing top 10 I'm just gonna do my top 5...

Top 5 books I read:

1. The Great Gatsby
2. 1984
3. Sense and Sensibility
4. 'Our Class' (it's a play but I'm sure I can still count it in)
5. Before I Die

Top 5 films:

1. Silver Linings Playbook
2. Les Miserables
3. The Great Gatsby
4. Frozen
5. Side Effects

Top 5 songs:

1. Roar
2. 22
3. Pompeii
4. Chocolate
5. Let It Go

Top 5 tv series:

1. New Girl (with nick and Jess together I'm able to look past the bad writing in this season)
2. Girls
3. Glee (the quarterback episode was so sad and emotionally brilliant that it brought the show into the list)
4. The Originals (with the ridiculous storylines in the vampire diaries I much prefer watching klaus)
5. Orange Is the new Black

That's all for now

Cheerio,
Emma
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New Year

It is officially 2014...and in the best of British spirit the weather is awful:

 

So how did everyone spend their New Years? 

I stayed at home with my parents in proper Bridget Jones style and simply drank wine with them. My brother and I created some cool harmonies with his guitar and that was about it...mental I know. But it was a lot of fun, I got to have a bunch of proper conversations that may have been stirred by the alcohol but wouldn't have happened any other way. We live in a suburban area so at midnight were in the middle of the neighbourhood fireworks, I couldn't really see much because there was a tree and I'm really short but it heightened the atmosphere.

So...as with every new year I'm gonna ask the same question you're going to get asked hundreds over times over January: 

What are your New Years resolutions?

Some classic examples are:

Lose weight

Join a gym

Stop dating pricks etc.

Here are mine:

Join a weekly exercise class at the gym

Become a definite size 10 by June

Do work and essays as soon I get them instead of last minute

Get a job

Teach myself the piano

Update blog every day

So you know the drill, just comment or send me a tweet @ezmaar of what your resolutions are I'm always really intrigued

I'm off now,

Cheerio,

Emma

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