By Jess Bourne
Third year is a scary time for most university students. Everything is going on. You have a never-ending list of deadlines, thoughts of graduation looming and millions of ideas about what you’re going to do once you leave university and enter the big scary world.
I would always hear people say that third year is the hardest one of them all, but I always thought they were lying. They weren’t. They were being brutally honest the whole time. I’m coming up to finishing the first term of the year, and I am already feeling the effects of the dreaded third year.
I’m constantly making to-do lists of the thousand things that I need to get done by the end of the week and somehow, they always get done. This could be because I’m scared of failing a module and so it’s in my DNA to get everything done on time (or thereabouts…)
It’s also helpful to have friends who are exactly in the same situation. It’s somewhat soothing knowing that we are not alone in the swamp of work and that we all feel the same way.
Despite what I’ve said, third year does come with some positives. Graduation. Now, it may not be everyone’s cup of tea to have to walk across the stage to collect your degree, but what an achievement. It’s what every university student deserves after working so hard for over three years. You get to celebrate with friends and family, your lecturers and your course mates. I just know that I will have the biggest smile on my face watching my friends cross that stage after seeing all the hard work they have put in every day.
And the final thing to think about when it comes to third year is going into the big wide world and forging a career. It’s scary to think that this time next year, I will need to have a job. I’ve come to terms that I won’t have my dream job straight away, that I’ll probably have to get a temporary job and I will have to stay determined to get the job that I want.
Despite all the worries and problems that third year has and will present, I’m hoping to enjoy the year as much as I can. This is the last year that I will ever spend in education, which is wild to think about. But I’ve spent those years with the best, most talented people and I can’t wait to see what we all get up to in the future.
Photo Credit to Emily Ranquist on Pexels