Hello, it's me...

Hello there! It's been quite a long time since I last posted on here (almost two years, whoops) and I'm in a bit of a rut at the moment so I've decided to push myself to do something that I used to love, blogging.

Since my last post, I've done a whole ton of stuff. I've created two group magazines, created a group blog about natural beauty and living (I'd love to link it but sadly uni deleted it), written a 10,000 word dissertation and graduated. Phew - that was a long sentence but it's been a very long and busy time so I thought I'd use my first post back to reminisce on my final year of university as it's almost been a year since I finished (and yet I'm still just a project worker - woo). Brace yourself, this is going to be one looong and rambling post - sorry!

We had to throw our caps before we graduated as our ceremony was at night!

Going into my final year, I was ready to both enjoy my last year with my friends and for the amount of work I knew I'd have to do. For the most part, the work didn't really feel like work. Other than my dissertation, my major projects were group work and I got to do them with my closest friends. While it may sound like a bad idea, we all wanted to do well and knew that if we all put in the work, we would. We'd have breakfast together whilst brainstorming feature ideas and watch episodes of Geordie Shore in between filming videos, it was actually a pretty good system. And when deadlines got close, we'd even order Domino's to uni whilst frantically trying to write more blog posts. In the end our hard word paid off and we created two really good magazines, Frankie says 'I do' (a wedding magazine) and On Location (a film and travel magazine) and a pretty good blog called Pretty Natural. I'm so proud of the work we accomplished together and I hope that one day we'll be able to create our own publication because I know it'd be a dream job.

The finished edition of our wedding magazine Frankie says 'I do'

Group work aside, writing my dissertation wasn't as much of a nightmare as I originally thought. I only had one mental breakdown and did one all-nighter which I see as a complete success. I originally started researching literature about the sexualisation of girls in teenage magazines, something that I saw as a really big problem but most British teen magazines had already closed down. In the end, I did it about the sexualisation of women in national newspapers pre- and post-Leveson Inquiry. It was a really interesting topic but I wish I'd chosen something I was more passionate about because I think the lack of passion in my work hindered my final grade. But nevertheless, I got a 2:1 and even though at the time I was a bit upset (I may have in the toilets at Superbull with Dani), I realise that it's still a huge accomplishment that I completed it and passed.

The obligatory finished diss photo!

I spent as much time as possible with my friends before we all moved away from Lincoln and onto the next chapter of our lives. In between practically living on the silent floor in the library, we spent many Friday nights partying with the Bull and eating our body weight in pizza and Nando's. My first two years at uni, though social, were quite lonely, so I was really happy to finally be enjoying my free time. I lived with my friend Elise in my final year and we became best friends rather quickly, which I'm very grateful for. Even just the little things like being in our rooms binge watching Dance Moms or Suits made me happy because for the first time in a long time I didn't feel lonely. I spent a lot of time with Dani, Becky and Maxine as well and they all really helped me a lot without even realising so shoutout to them them too!

Me and the gals at the start of third year

All in all, I had a great final year - probably my favourite of my whole uni experience. Our magazine Frankie says 'I do' won Print Journalism of the Year at our school awards, On Location was shortlisted for Best New Concept at the PPA's Magazine Academy Awards and Dani and I had the highest overall grade for our print production module - go us! To celebrate finishing we visited Derby to stay at Becky's house and went to Alton Towers. It was really good to get out of Lincoln for a few days and I went on my first roller coaster which was really fun. Summer came, I turned 21 in June and visited the Harry Potter Studio Tour in Watford and went to Brighton to see Elise which was lovely. Then Graduation rolled round in September and it was such a memorable day. We had beautiful weather and a great ceremony - though I'm still too scared to re-watch the DVD! Grad ball was great too, lots of dancing and catching up and ending the night in my room with my best friend eating lots of chicken nuggets and left over Wagamama's - I couldn't have wanted any more.

A collage of photos from Grad Ball

And now it's March. I've been working a little bit at the uni as a student mentor and being a guest lecturer every once in a while but I spend most of my time at home on the internet looking for a 'real' job. Living in a small(ish) town is really not ideal when you want to pursue a career in the media industry but I have no experience in anything other than journalism and teaching so I'm finding it hard to get a 'proper' job. For the moment I'm happy but it's hard not having a lot of money, thankfully I saved a lot during uni. I am, however, losing motivation to find a job doing what I love so I thought blogging would help with that. So far it's working - this post is about a thousand words so congratulations if you read it all. I promise they won't all be this lengthy!

Source: East Lindsey Target
Mentoring some students and helping them create their school newspaper

That's it for now but I'm going to figure out a schedule and try to post regularly. Also, I apologise for the terrible Adele reference in the title! Speak soon!

Love, Lauren ♡
@lozzaaa13