A day in the life of Ross' procrastination

Procrastination to, me is an annoying word to both say and look at. However, it represents quite a large portion of my university life. I am sure that most students that read this will also agree that procrastination plays a large part in their studies and time at university. There is just something so easy, so simple and so joyful about it. 

For those lacking the definition of procrastination - 

pro·cras·ti·na·tion

 [proh-kras-tuh-ney-shuh n, pruh‐]  Show IPA

noun

the act or habit of procrastinating, or putting off or delaying, especially something requiring immediateattention: Ross was smart, but his constant procrastination led him to be late with almost every assignment.

In a simple mans (or girls) terms - Doing EVERYTHING but the work you are suppose to be doing. 

If you want to see it in pictures - 

                                     


                                            

                                  What I should be doing 










                                                 What I'm really doing







There is another picture I like to use to represent this common situation

Before I continue I will of course excuse the people that have complete and utter motivation towards everything they do; how they do it I don't have a f*cking clue. 


Anyway. 
So I go to bed last night thinking that today (16/01/2013) will be a nice productive day and I will get plenty done and get myself sorted for coursework hand-ins and my exam next week. Saying that, I always go to bed with this fantastic mindset that each next day will be one full of motivation and productivity; god knows where that idea goes by the morning. 

I get to university in the morning and my lecturer has not turned up for our lecture, so immediately I think 'sweet this gives me an extra hour to crack on with some work'. O how I fool myself. I go downstairs and log onto a computer, I then proceed to log onto Facebook which is a must because so much has happened since I checked it the previous night - Time wasted. I then decide to play a Facebook game, which leads to playing 5 Facebook games - Time wasted. After this I decide, right it's time to get on with some work, so I open up my Uni emails to check for any relevant news. This then leads me to looking through my emails in my 2 other email accounts - Time wasted. Following this I finally load up the work I need to be getting on with, but obviously I can't do any work without having a snack and something to quench my first; so I pop to the cafe to make my stomach happy - Time wasted. 

It seems ridiculous looking back on it now, but everything I wrote above ended up using up that spare hour I had to get on with my work. I had to get to my next class, so logged off the computer and went on my way. 

The problem is, it doesn't end at Uni, I even plan what I am going to do in the evening in regards to work; and it is a rare occasion if I complete what my mind has set out to do. I have always been told to plan ahead, get organised and know what I want to do with a day. Well I do this, but somehow it all flies out the window as the hours tick by. 

The days procrastinating did not end with that though, no way was I done with this spree of procrastination. A seasoned pro like myself makes a day of it! 

I get home, with full intentions to do some revision for my exam next week, but first things first, have something to eat and check Facebook (So sad the more I think about it). After this I decide I need to take a break and watch something, so I put on some Geordie Shore for a bit. 3 episodes and 2 hours 15 minutes later, it's time to do some work. Then I decide I am going to the gym tonight, so plan out my gym session for the evening and sort out what time I am going. Then I was ready, no distractions, nothing to stop me doing what I need to do. So I actually got all my work out ready to start revision and crack on; but no. Of course not. 

Guess what I ended up doing? 

Writing this. 

Procrastination - A savior, most likely causing my failure. 

Thanks for reading, stay tuned. 

Thought it would be rude not to

Thought I was being rude

Great thing about studying at Brighton - The beach!

Well I just thought that I was being a bit rude by not showing you some form of beautiful mug shot of myself. So here's a few for your hopefully kind viewing and now you can put some of my wisdomic words to a not so wisdomic face. (I know that's not a word). 

Since moving to university and living with new people, there has been one person that has consistently taken photos throughout our time here. This person, who is now my girlfriend, has pretty much captured my life in photos for the last 12-18 months or so. I may post a collection of photos in a future post from when I started university leading up to this present day to give you a small taste of my life while I have been living here. I can guarantee one thing they will show, and that is that you can still have a great time no matter how much work you have or how much pressure is on you. 

This will sound ever so gay I will warn, but one thing I like to remember is that the only person that's in control of the fun you have is yourself. Some people say its my downside, but I say its my up - I never stop myself having fun. 

 Thanks for reading and stay tuned for more content! 


This post is sponsored by - http://www.points2shop.com/?ref=rossonomous

My first "proper" blog post about my first "proper" house

My first "proper" house
7th January 2013

So, hopefully you have read my introduction post and are slightly interested to read a bit more and see what else my blog has to offer in the future. If so then top stuff, if not, well never mind. I would just like to remind readers that I will be covering varying and sometimes random topics, so if something is not interesting to you this time round, then please come back in the near future.  

This first real post is going to feature the misery I went through with my first university house. I don't want to put anyone off university because of the problems I faced, but at least it can give you an idea of what to look out for. 

My first house

If I was going to sum up the experience in my first university house with 3 words, then I wouldn't be able to. We went through everything with the letting agents (who I will not name) and the house we inhabited, but I certainly have many words, none positive, that I could use to describe this situation. A good picture to describe it however is just to the right --------------------------------------->



Anyway, after being forced to go to university because of the fee increase, I was delightfully informed that there was no room for me at the university halls because of "bad luck". So I found some people on Facebook, and we met up for a last minute house-hunting expedition. We arranged a lot of house viewings and to be frank, most were disgusting. It got near the end of the day and we finally viewed a house that we thought looked pretty decent. It had been painted and redecorated, fairly spacious and the price was quite low in comparison to other. So we put pen to paper, and what a bad decision it turned out to be.

Within weeks, we started to realise that they really had only given the house a slap of paint and this was to cover up the state it was really in. To summarise the problems we had : -

• Mould growing in every room
• Damp coming through the walls and floor
• Leaking sink
• Found a mouse and its decapitated head in a mouse trap
• Front door that took 10 minutes to open
• Temperamental gas hobs

The temperamental gas hobs are the reason I displayed the extremely poor quality photo above. It turns out that the people that live their this year, had problems with it too, but it managed to set the house on fire in their case. 

So generally, we did not have a great experience and I would never recommend the house or letting agents to anyone. But after we moved out that was not the end of it. Even though we got a good end of tenancy report for our cleaning and only some minor things had to be touched up on; the letting agents still tried charging us £1200 pound in charges. We decided that we were not going to accept this and took them to court, we recently received all of our money back :) 

Luckily for me, I did not let any of this get me down about going to university, and you learn from your mistakes. But you never want to be in this situation, so below I have listed a few tips to keep an eye out for from personal experience. 

- Ask lots of questions! 

- Ask to see relevant legal documents

- Do not be pressured into signing anything

- Look, and look again

- Ask about recent work that has been done (or not done)

- Read reviews from the letting agents/private owner

- Don't leave it to last minute, you're unlikely to get a decent place!

- Keep your eye out for cracks in walls, damp, mould

I hope this read was worthwhile in some sort of way for whoever has read. Check back soon for new content; no idea what it will be about yet! 

This post is sponsored by - http://www.points2shop.com/?ref=rossonomous

An introduction

Let me introduce myself
Monday 7th January 2013

Hills of Brighton

My name is Ross and I am a university student at the University of Brighton. I am studying my 2nd year of Computer Science and live in a house with four other people.

I have decided that I am going to start writing a blog.. and I am not really to sure why to be honest. Quite recently I seem to have found myself just wanting to express a bit of what goes on in my life and how I plod along doing what I do. So you will hopefully get some kind of joy/amusement or even feel better about your own life from this!

I am not really going to have a particular topic that I focus on too much when writing my blog posts, my main intention is just to produce some light reading material for other students while at the same time offering some general advice and tips on how I get by at university. Over time I may cover a few aspects such as - student life, managing work & general life, making some extra money while at uni. My writing certainly will not be limited to this. 

If you're another Uni student, and you just want to see how other people in the same situation as yourself are getting on, then this blog may well be for you! 

So, I hope that you will stick around, have a read and hopefully enjoy. Please feel free to leave feedback or comments and if you have any questions then ask away!

Thanks for reading,

Ross


this post is sponsored by - http://www.points2shop.com/?ref=rossonomous