Halie

And I'm a fresher no longer! I'm leaving on Sunday, mam's gonna come and pick me up. She's a little bit nervous driving all that way with my TV in the car, but my dad's car is in the garage atm so he can't come down, so.

I had a good and bad first year. It was an awesome experience, I'll give you that, but there were some really shitty times, particularly in the flat, but I've told you guys all about that (though they've gotten worse). Anyway, to commemorate the end of my first year as a uni student, I thought I'd list some of the most memorable/best/worst things that happened

In no particular order ~

1. Okay so I'm not much of a clubbing fan, so I very rarely do it but since I've not had much to do this term I went out a few times with my mate Emily, and the first night we went out, I had my first ever drunken-vomiting experience. I've always been a lightweight but I was never sick from drink before. Tbh, it was actually really hilarious? It wasn't a bad experience, I was too drunk to be bothered by it. I remember everything, as I tend to when I get drunk. I'd mixed a lot of drinks which was really stupid of me, but as you can probably understand, at the time I didn't care very much. I was dancing, and after a little while I had to go and hold onto the wall for support because I was on the verge of puking everywhere, and Emily was trying to get me to go to the toilet and I eventually agreed, and then I distinctly remember All The Small Things by Blink182 coming on and I just shouted "AFTER THIS SONG!" and kept on dancing for the whole song with my hand still against the wall, and had an absolute blast while doing it. Then I was sick in the toilet, Emily took me back to her flat, I was then sick in her toilet, took a hilarious selfie and sent it to my best friend from home, which he then screenshotted and now uses it to make fun of me. I also remember knocking over a glass of water on her carpet and trying to pat it dry with my hand??

In the morning, I woke up super early, still drunk, couldn't get back to sleep so decided to get a bus home. I went into the kitchen, tried to make myself an egg sandwich, but found that the douchebags we live with had stolen one of my eggs and broken the last one, so I took it and egged their fridge door. I would not have had the courage to do that if I was sober.


The look of absolute serenity. I comited in Emily's dooper. And came out stronger.

2. Made a really awesome friend in Ellen, one of my flatmates. We clicked pretty early on, she's the closest friend I've made, and she's just super awesome. Together we have procrastinated the living shit out of this year whilst gorging on pizza, garlic bread, chocolate, cake, pasta bake and every other pasta dish you can think of. But mostly pasta bake. And then us both promising that we're going to start eating healthy and getting fit. It never happened.
So many TV show/film marathons. She got me to play The Walking Dead game, and I loved it. She watched me blitz through a playthrough of FFX last week in one day, because I did not sleep (I had a really messed up sleeping pattern and was trying to fix it). Without her I would not have survived first year, especially living in a flat with douche #1 and douche #2. I really wanna visit her in Ireland over the Summer, but I'm too shy to ask? lol

3. Booked a trip to Disneyland!! I've dreamt of going there since I was a little doot and I'm finally going!! I paid for it all myself. Well, with my scholarship money. When they awarded me that scholarship, I don't think a trip to Disneyland Paris is what they hand in mind for it.
This is also my very first adult holiday without any family members! Woooo!

4. Learnt that I am the most awkward, embarrassment-prone person on the face of the Earth. Like I knew I was bad but omg uni has pushed it to the limit. On my first day I stood awkwardly outside one of my flatmates doors with all my kitchen stuff thinking it was the kitchen before realising I was at the completely wrong end of the flat, the two guys just stared at me weirdly and then laughed. Later on in the term, I was walking down the stairs to the library when I missed a step and fell all the way down and landed on all fours, and everybody saw. It was like a cartoon, slapstick-humour-worthy fall. Again, that term, I had a cold and needed to get tissue from the toilet room because I had sneezed and snot was all over my nose (I know it's gross), but one of my flatmates and a girl he was talking to were blocking the door, and I couldn't talk to ask them to move so I just had to sandwich myself between them to get through. He looked me dead in the eye before looking at the snot all over my nose. It was awful. I died inside. In term 2, we were put in new seminar groups and unfortunately I had a seminar leader who was interested in our lives, so we had to go around the room and say 2 awesome things that had happened to us every week. The first time she did it, I was late so I had to sit on the end of the row of seats, so I was first and was completely ambushed. For the life of me I couldn't think of anything so I just said "Um... I made a really nice new pasta dish?". It was awful, everyone else had brilliant stories and I'm sat over here in the corner like some weird pasta girl with no life.

Those are just snippets.

5. Performed at a museum, and had possibly the first ever positive experience with improv I've had in my actor training so far. And it was exhilarating! I had so much fun.

6. Stood in the hallway chatting to Ellen, our flatmates had been out drinking and one of them was in the toilet. There's kebab everywhere. Eventually, he comes out. Absolutely stark naked. Zero clothing. I turn my head and oh hey, there's a penis! And Ellen and I are like wtf, Dan?? And he just says sorry, and casually keeps on walking, completely unphased. We laughed so hard that night.

7. Performed with an MA student, made some really awesome friends with the people I performed with, and was introduced to a really great song which I had to perform to by a local band called Ben and Alfie. The song is called Snowfall. It's lovely, you should check it out. Also, as part of this experience I also got to see a little glimpse of what drama therapy is like, and really understood why it helps. As part of one of our rehearsal sessions, our MA student director, Steph, had us use chairs during that song, and we had to relate to the chairs as if they were people. It could be any person we wanted, we just had to form a relationship with it somehow by using our bodies, and then everyone else watching had to try to guess what the relationship was. Earlier on in the session she had shown us this collection of photographs of these people all staring out to sea, so I still had that in my mind. So in my piece I was a child at sea with their parent, and I was trying to get my parent to come and jump over the waves with me but they refused, so I had to go jump by myself. And the kid was sulking, but in the end they give in and forgive their parent because kids always love their parents no matter what when they're little. And then when it was done she kept asking me why I did that and I didn't know at first, I just thought it was a good idea and she kept prompting me so I just thought that, yeah when I was a kid I always loved the sea and the beach and my mum always refused to go and play with me, not because she's afraid of water or anything, she just mostly couldn't be bothered or didn't want to get wet or whatever. And now that I'm an adult, I don't think that's bad of her or anything, it's completely understandable, but you don't feel that way when you're a child. And then when I got home that night I just cried really hard???? I don't know why. It's really not upsetting, but I was tired after a long day of rehearsals for both that and the museum rehearsals, so I was pretty exhausted and probably delusional. But I'm happy I had that experience? It was nice. And she ended up including my piece in the final performance, with the polishing of course. So that's super awesome it was my favourite part to perform. I had to bend my body in ways I never have before in order to imitate waves lol.


I think that's all I'll list. There are others, which I'll probably write about at some other point, but for now I'm tired and I have to be up early. So for now I'll leave you with this. Good night, guys.

-Haliefax