After three years of lectures, exams, seminars, presentations, workshops, essays, one netball practice, one trip to the gym (yep, just one), a couple of nights out, lots of custard creams, drunk fairground rides, a few long trips to the archives, countless laughs and a few cries too... I graduated!
Not without some issues though. And by that I mean I couldn't find any shoes to match my dress. I know, nightmare, right? The morning I should have spent leisurely getting ready to go to the university I actually spent trying not to let tears ruin my makeup as I tried everything in my power (and my mum's) to make the shoes fit that I so badly wanted to wear. I gave up in the end and sent them flying across my bedroom. And on top of that I somehow managed to scratch my eye with my nail whilst I was doing my makeup only to leave a pretty nasty looking red mark. Thankfully you can't really see it on any of the photos but I did nearly leave the house in tears declaring I was having absolutely no photos taken!
It was a really lovely day though and it was good to have everyone we've met through various modules all in one place. I even bumped into an old friend from sixth form who was there supporting another friend but a brief hug and a 'congratulations' was enough to lift my spirits (thanks Sonia!!) After the ceremony and the ridiculously long queue to get a professional photograph taken, my family and I headed to a really nice pub to have a meal and a drink to celebrate. We were all starving by this point and there was no waiting around, everyone dug in straight away. We had some laughs as my mum sat in the corner taking selfies on her kindle and as my grandma started hiding car keys and blaming everyone else. My family are all big kids, that's the moral of the story but we had a fun evening and as it got late everyone jumped in various cars and headed home.
My boyfriend had taken a couple of days off work to see me graduate so we had Tuesday together as I graduated and then Wednesday was free for us to do with as we wished. We talked about going to the seaside for the day or going to the cinema. But I woke up on Wednesday morning and Callum looked at me and said 'your eye is worse you know' which was enough to panic me. After a few phonecalls and some threatening tears, Callum took me to the hospital to get it checked out which I was told I should really have done yesterday (oops). Not really how we envisaged spending his last day off together! I was given some ointment at the hospital and was free to leave to spend the remainder of the day baking and catching up on Fringe with Callum.
Despite all the mess and stress of the morning and the hospital incident, I had a really lovely couple of days celebrating my time at university with the amazing friends I made that helped make some of the more stressful days and weeks a thousand times more bearable. Thanks Zoe for all the laughs and for talking endlessly with me about anything and everything and we wandered around university together. Thanks Amber for being lovely company and for making us laugh with your funny stories. Thanks Amanda for looking out for us all and asking the questions we never wanted to (and for doing all the talking during seminars, phew!). You all made me feel at home as I turned up a couple of week late from Newcastle. You made uni what it was and I love you all for it!
Now to face the real world. Yikes!
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