On being 23 and "potentially" employed...

As you can see from my last post, the latter 1/3rd of 2016 really wasn't doing much for me. At the time of writing (late November 2016) I was still over a month away from being offered the job which I hope to take up in a few weeks' time. Just under a fortnight to be precise! I can't really talk about the details, and it's not 100% yet (until I pick up a visa, book some flights, and pass a compulsory training course...) but I'd say I'm about 95% certain that this really is happening!

Springtime, time for new life, and fresh opportunities. 

I'm extremely excited. And anxious. Maybe in equal measures? I've started having the classic anxious dreams about being chased and being lost in the dark etc., so that must mean something. Either way, change is coming.

I've been trying to make the most of the past couple of months by studying (bits of Mandarin, Hindi and Burmese), reading (a lot) and continuing my water colour paintings! I feel like I'm moving forwards now, although finding temporary work at home has proven really frustrating, despite signing with an agency I've only been given 2 days of work in about 3 months. I've almost completely stopped tutoring for now, as I prepare to go away again.

I'm pretty pleased with this photo! Having flowers around really brightens my mood, and reminds me of the power of patience - you can't force a flower to bloom at your convenience, and if it is not looked after, it will never bear fruit. 

I can't wait for a new adventure, with new routines, people and places. These past few months I've felt quite "stuck" at points, as if I'd stopped growing as a person, and couldn't find much to really be engaged with, as I wasn't really getting on that well with work, yet I was still waiting, and overcoming one obstacle after another to try and land this next job!

Anyway, onto my last point; there's a new blog. On Wordpress again (I know, I know, this was just another shameless plug after all, but Blogger just hasn't kept pace with Wordpress in terms of design features and online community). This new blog won't focus on any particular trip abroad (as has usually been the case) but will be a platform for all of my thoughts on Travel, Education and Personal Development in general. That way, every time I go somewhere else, it won't mean having to do all of the set-up and customising all over again! Plus I might actually gain some more regular followers!

I have to admit, another reason that I'm deliberately starting up a wide-ranging blog is so that I can keep at it whatever happens in the next couple of weeks. I've realised slightly too late that I've really missed blogging as an antidote to uncertain times, and I'm now too busy to launch myself into one time-limited project!

Without further ado -->  New blog link!

On anxiety, being over 22.5, and unemployed

I could blog about how great my time in China was, earlier this year. About the friends I made, the places I went, the things I saw. If you want to read about any of those things, you can find them here.

However, it's been over four months since I returned from China, and the travelling that I did afterwards (northern Thailand/ Chiang Mai really does deserve the hype...). Since then, things haven't been quite so great. I've made more than 40 job applications, and had over 20 interviews, but I'm still searching for work. I've done dozens of online tests and assessments, written scores of covering letters, and re-drafted my CV numerous times. And it starts to eat at you.

For the first few months I remained calm and patient. I was happy to be back in the UK again, seeing family and friends, plus, I knew that people often searched for a suitable job for "months". That's fine, I thought, I can wait a month or two. But progress was painfully slow. Many of my applications never received any kind of response. Sometimes a company might take a month to get back to me - with a rejection. I started to despair as October came to an end, and I was bored of living at home again and being mildly broke.

Every new months that has come around since August I'd keep muttering to myself "THIS will be my month, I know it, I can feel it". Now December is approaching, and I don't say that kind of thing anymore. There honestly comes a stage when you stop telling friends and extended family about job interviews, and even job offers, because you've become so used to things not working out. I've had a number of "near-misses" in the past four months, and they've been tough. Some examples;

• Doing what I thought what a good face-to-face interview, after sending in my CV for a vacancy and having a telephone interview. Then I received a phone call asking if I "would like to continue with my application". I was confused, "yes, of course!" I replied. I never heard anything from that company again. 
• Being really excited that I was about to be paid for a blog article I was writing for a student website. about the benefits of living and working in Asia after graduation. I had written the draft article, and the chief editor gave it the go-ahead. When I sent in the final copy, complete with an infographic that I'd made, I got an email from another editor that I'd never corresponded with before, telling me that the chief editor was away, but my piece had been cancelled, and I wasn't getting paid for the work I'd done. 
• Flunking out of the Civil Service Fast Stream application after getting rejected after the first round - which was an online "Personality Questionnaire". Awkward. 
• Being offered a tour-guiding job in China, only for my potential employers to then get back to me by saying that, actually, I didn't qualify for a Chinese work visa after all...so the job was a no-go. 
• Having to cancel an interview and decline another interview for two different Social-Mobility charities in London, after realising that, with the salary that they were offering, I couldn't afford to eat and commute to London and back for the internships. Irony. 
• Not getting an interview for a job that I kind of fell in love with (NOTE: Never do this whilst job-hunting, at least until you get an interview, don't even get attached to the idea of yourself in a certain job). The job in question combined Schools partnerships in the UK, Education/ Charity work and SE Asia. I felt like my previous experience matched every specification point on the job description, but no luck there. 

I could write more examples, but there's little point - the purpose was just to highlight some of the many reasons why it's not always as straight forward to find "a job" as people might think. At the moment, I'm technically employed in two different part-time tutoring jobs. But I really do regard these as temporary employment, not something to really base my career on. I've had another two temporary jobs since the start of September, but I only lasted about a month each in each of them. One was in a "learning centre" where the behaviour of the children was so bad (and the disciplinary procedures so absent) that I was too stressed to continue. Another was an online/ Skype job, with a Chinese company, which started out really cool (with me writing for their blog, editing articles and doing product research) and ended with them trying to force me to make sales calls to their UK customers. I refused. I resigned. That wasn't what I had signed up for at all, and no other team members were made to do it.

However, I've actually learned a great deal in these last couple of months. I feel like I've become a stronger person after having to constantly re-evaluate myself after every Competency form, every hopeful application. On top of that, having more free time has meant that I've been able to revisit some old hobbies, and develop some new skills, including;

• cooking/ baking (especially Thai and Indian curries!)
• watercolour painting (especially natural scenes, plants and flowers, at this time of year)
• Hindi (basically revising that things that I knew off by heart in India, this time last year!)
• Mandarin Chinese (Trying to keep up my current level of reading/ writing/ listening)
• Reading stuff that I never got round to at uni, Sense and Sensibility, Midnight's Children, and more modern classics like Orange is the New Black.  

I've also learnt some random things from the temporary employment that I have had. I've had to revise aspects of GCSE Maths for Numerical Tests, and for tutoring. I've learnt how to make infographics on different websites, and how to use online software like Trello. On a simpler level, I've even learnt how to use secondary platforms, like LinkedIn, to search for jobs, rather than relying on the already-crowded watering holes of Indeed, and Guardian/ Target Jobs etc. 

Things are looking up. Next month there's Christmas and New Year to look forward to. I'm resigning one of the tutoring jobs that I'm doing at the moment, as I'm not really enjoying it and I don't make that much money from it. I'm also hoping to hear back about some travel grants that I've applied to, and even if they fail, then I'll probably still book myself a trip somewhere nice (somewhere sunny in Eastern Europe? Or I could push the boat out further...Cambodia?) for 2017, so that I can take a real break from obsessively checking my phone and emails, diary in hand. Of course, I'm still keeping my fingers crossed that some of the jobs that I;m currently applying for might turn up trumps next month! 

On the whole though, I think one thing that the last 1/3rd of a year has really taught me is that there are a lot of graduates in my position. I had this naive idea all through university (and probably school too) that I'd graduate, and somehow walk into my dream job, whatever that might be. I underestimated the competition, and just how excruciatingly slow the process can be. Yet I also underestimate myself. A year ago, or maybe even six months ago, when I was first sending out those tentative initial job applications, I'd have never believed that I could really learn anything whilst I was living back in my old room, dependent and fairly isolated. But I have, and I'm still learning. Everything happens for a reason, and clearly something is still waiting out there for me, I just need the courage and patience to seek it out. Good things come to those who wait, right?

Finals and finality

My life. Since March.

Seeing as a detailed summary would be impossible, I've decided that what would be most accurate is a series of photos with extended captions, You add the rest.

Revision strikes :( although note the phone in the HelloKitty phone sock, that managed to break a month before exams, just to add to the already tense atmospherics. 

Don't want to think about the number of hours, from April until the beginning of June, that I spent in silence, and alone. I kept myself sane by doing some volunteering (including residential events) with the University's Widening Participation scheme, as well as trying to keep up with friends. I deliberately avoided any timetabled commitments, but in retrospect perhaps this would have been a good idea. It's alarming how much some people retreated into themselves during exams, to the point where having a conversation which didn't concern exams became difficult, as did they whenever exams were mentioned. This made life, well...difficult at times.

My escape to the....grey English seaside. 

I went to the coast to see my Dad for a much needed week in the countryside. This photo was taken during the Easter Vacation and captures the weather in all its glory. To be fair, walking along the pier was refreshing, at least.

Goodbye to a good room!

My noticeboard display, in particular the chain of photo memories made for me for my 21st, by some of my friends that I lived with. Those photos gave me a lot of comfort whilst working at my desk all day! I'd already pinned up some postcards and stuff to liven up the all-beige colour scheme of my uni room (remember at Oxford we're essentially in halls for all three years, so we're limited in what we can do to our rooms, decoration-wise).

All of the luck

Lovely view from my window, looking onto the back of a collection of strange-looking buildings. Nice cards though.

Exam carnations! 

At Oxford, it's a tradition to wear different coloured carnations to each exam. You wear them pinned to your white blouse, which students wear as part of the Sub Fusc dress code prescribed for official University exams. The first carnation, for the first exam, is white. Then it's pink carnation time until your final exam, when you finally get to wear the coveted red one!

In case you're wondering, your college children (assigned to you as first-years) buy you your carnations, just as you would have brought them for your "parents" when you were in 2nd year (most people have major exams at the end of their 3rd year). The "parent" system sounds odd, but actually it's a great way to introduce students from different years and subjects to each other, so that people feel more connected in college. My college parents were there for me in first and second year when I had questions about the year ahead, and in the same way, my college children  were another group of people that I could do fun stuff with, and receive comfort food packages from during exams!

You can say what you like about Oxford...but it'll still look this good as you're revising. This photo is of a walkway known as 'Dead man's walk' - I don't know why! Maybe the city hanging tree and gallows used to be near here?

Sorry, can't hear you over the sound of the symmetrical stripes mowed onto this lawn...did I hear "perfection"?
Back of Christchurch and Merton college, with some of Christchurch meadow in the foreground. 

Oxford, the beautiful Botanical Gardens. Free entry for Oxford students! I always made an effort to come here in the summer months, meeting friends and getting out of college. Also for the Amber Spyglass references...  

Port Meadow, slightly rugged, and definitely needed in a city as busy and tourist-flooded as Oxford in June. I went here for the first time after my exams had finished, and I literally felt as though my life had started anew. Great place to bring a book and a packet of sweets. Or to sketch the wildlife, if you're as artistic as some of my friends! 

Farewell dreaming spires! It's been cool watching you when I was supposed to be looking at books...

This photo was taken from the cupola of the Sheldonian theatre, where I'll be graduating from in about 2 weeks' time. Again, I'd never been up here before (or up the spire of St. Mary's, which I also ascended) and made the most of my student ID whilst I still good! I'd recommend it as quite a quiet place to get a good view of Oxford's spires. It's indoors, which also makes it a decent call for overcast days.

Another thing that I did for the first time after exams was to play croquet! I surprised myself by being quite good at it (well, for someone who's never played before) and decided that I liked the game, though mainly for Alice in Wonderland references and the sheer cliche of playing croquet as an Oxford student.

I left Oxford with the feeling that I was happy of everything that I'd achieved, but that I was also happy to leave. I've never been one to cling onto places (although I'm sure I'll be more nostalgic when term starts again in October) so I felt like it was my time to go. After finishing exams I had little else to do, with is a weird sensation in somewhere as work-orientated as Oxford. I'll romanticise it in years to come, no doubt, but at times Oxford could be a very challenging place to live though. However, it is that experience that has made me who I am today, and for that, among other opportunities, I am truly grateful.

The term that was

Thought that I better get round to publishing this, this side of the New Year!

Ok, I'll admit, I'm lucky enough to live somewhere where everyday looks like the front of a postcard.

 

I love living somewhere where the seasons change. Where you can mark the passage of time in all of the things you see each day, trees, a lake, an orchard. Strange to think I'll never get last year back again, when it was my first term, and everything seemed so new, so exciting, but also so daunting. I don't miss that at all. Going back to college this year felt like going "home", rather than to some strange, exotic, unknowable place.

This is the face of a Pumpkin Champion. No joke, me and my friends actually won the college pumpkin-carving contest with him. For three days or so it glared out of our kitchen window, just to brighten people's nights.

Forget the fancy dinners, evenings out and Christmas parties. One of my favourite things about the last term has been living on a corridor with a kitchen (we didn't have kitchens in our first year!). It's made so much difference to the social-ness of my day. I think we all benefit from having breakfast together, even if the conversation means take twice as long as it does for us to prepare and eat the food!

 

How I thought last term would be...

So just to be clear, I thought this term might be slightly challenging. For once, this wasn't due to the work, but the fact that I was trying to balance a couple of time-consuming extra-curricular activities, AND eat, AND sleep. I suppose I also allocate a fair amount of time to seeing people...you can't live the life of a hermit-crab throughout your university years!

So I thought I knew what I was getting into. I'd even written the amount of hours that I expected each activity to take (per week) on a scrap of paper, just to check that it was physically possible.

I was wrong.

I guess in the end I forgot to factor in several important variables;

1. As term goes on you need more sleep to continue, fact.
2. Unexpected social events, e.g. Bonfire night, people's birthdays, charity events, pop up every week or so (ok, not Bonfire night, but the others, yes) and they are always very, very tempting.
3. You never quite get through your work as efficiently as you plan too... (I handed in 1 piece of work late this term, and all of the others were literally on their deadlines. I am writing this in public to shame myself into not doing that again...)
4. The good old "can you help me out" dilemma, in which people you know need "just a couple of hours" of your help in running an event, returning library books, buying the communal Christmas presents for the staff you work with etc. This always takes more time than expected, and you don't tend to think about these things in advance as they're beyond your control.

How last term actually felt...

 

Stuff I was trying to balance;

- work (ok, so we get set a lot of work. I try to work around 6 hours a day when I'm at uni)
- the obvious, eating, sleeping, social life
- being on the Student Council for my college (helping to run events, meetings both council-only and college-wide)
- being Student Union represent for the college (going to extra meetings outside of college, keeping up with university-wide elections)
- being a Sub-editor for one of the major student newspapers
- volunteering with a group of local school students, as part of the university's Access & Outreach programme

In addition, I also helped with Fresher's Week (see last post) and stayed behind a week after term officially ended, to help out with the candidates called to interview.

I mean, I don't regret any of it. University is the time to try new things, and learn stuff when they don't all work out. Plus, this is the advantage of 1st & 2nd year, if a single piece of work is late throughout the entire term, the world won't end (or if it does, it's a coincidence). I doubt I'll be doing Fresher's Week or the Interview period again (they're linked to the fact that I was elected to the Student Council for this year) but they were a fantastic opportunity to welcome new students into the College, and something very few students get to take part in.

In addition, I'm not doing the Sub-editing again next term, last term the editing deadline clashed with my essay deadline every week, and I felt my eyes turning physically square after reading all of the copy, then having to come home to my half-finished essay. This also resulted in some very late nights, and in all honesty I can't say that I've produced my best work this term, due to all of this extra stuff on the side-lines, competing for my attention.

Now I'm home and I can evaluate things, and appreciate all that I did, too. It's been great to get home and rest up a bit, when I was in college I was constantly running from one activity to the next, snacking as I went because I'd missed some of the conventional meal times. When I wasn't running I was trying desperately to cram work.

Yet, the stuff I did last term has added so much to my experience of life. I'm better at reading, editing, grammar-fixing, time organisation and being able to condense lengthy material. Not to mention, I have my name at the bottom of all of last term's newspapers, which is a bit of an ego-boost! Next term I think I'll aim to do a little bit less, and maybe a few more different things too. I think I might help out at some local museum events, because I loved my time working in the Navy Yard museum in D.C, and I'm living in a city which has to have the most museums outside of London, I'd say. Volunteering remains the most satisfying thing I do with my time outside of studying, and it'll probably always be that way, even if it's stressful at times.

My advice for all university students....

1. Try new things, outside of studying, could be useful for future, could just be for fun. Or potentially both...
2. Try and plan for these new activities, and see how many hours they'll take up a week, which nights are the most suitable etc.
3. Realise that trying to plan all of this stuff, and account for the unexpected, is impossible.
4. Rather than giving up, try new things anyway, and work out the plan as you go along, within reason, and adjust as you go. What could possibly go wrong?

I've met new people, learnt more than ever (what I've written in this post doesn't even begin to cover the amount of material regarding Britain 1500-1700, which I was officially meant to be studying), and most importantly of all, I'm actually excited to go back. Ok, moving in will require effort, and I have a lot of prep work for next term to complete, and a mock-exam to revise for, but aside from that, I feel pretty sorted for the term ahead...

116 days

Since I last wrote. Apologies. What do I have to show for those days? A few photos, (see below), some great memories and 12 assignments (well, 11 essays and 1 presentation to be precise. And I've written another essay since I've been home this vacation...that's another story!). In addition to a Neon yellow vest (for dressing as a Bumblebee) and what feels like about 10 hours sleep (across the entire 8 weeks)...

Not that I can talk now, it's the middle of the night here, and rather than genuinely get a good night's sleep, I'm updating this blog. Why? Because in the long term I'll be thankful, even if right now I'm stumbling in the half-light (don't want to wake the rest of the house up by turning on my bedroom light, which is non-energy efficient and the equivalent of a mini solar-flare) and trying to remember what I've just written, so that I don't repeat myself.

Actually, this is quite a good frame of mind to be in, I've decided. Good in the sense that this is an accurate representation of how I feel 99% of the time I'm at university. For 1% of the time, I function like a normal teenager/ student, I eat, sleep and socialise. For other 99%, I am an Oxford student. I work whilst other people sleep, I study whilst they daydream (well, I attempt to, is the point) and I (often accidentally) laugh at anyone who tells me they've done less than an essay a week (usually people I know at other universities...I don't mean to, I'm just so tired).

So last term. Went by so quickly (much quicker than the first term!) that I can already hardly remember it (this is promising for my exams...) but I found it less overwhelming and so more enjoyable. Like I was ready for the flood of work (though it still came) and I was better at locating myself (though I still took time to get lost in the architecture...you can tell I'm back in my hometown!)

It's going to be weird going back and seeing the college in a different season completely. When I left it had been snowing, and looked like the middle of winter. My life's like that though, all these snapshots in different places, different times. Seeing as I'm at home approximately 50% of the time and at university 50% of the time, I get this strange, disorientated sense of having somehow missed things in both my worlds, as though they move slightly out of sync with each other. In reality, fixed places remain the same, like rocks against the tide. It's that's changed, but I just don't feel it, like the fact that currently the earth is spinning and keeping us on it, but I can't feel it, and I doubt you can either.

So, next term. It's a longer and harder term than previously (not sure how I feel about this...) my exams are after term ends too. I have more hours of exams this year than I have for the past 2 years of A-levels. I haven't sat more than 7 hour's worth of exams since GCSE. Now I'll have to sit 12 hours of exams, probably in the timeframe of about a week or two. Fantastic.

As soon as exams end I'm hopefully going away, literally within 2 days, (ok probably 3 days, I don't have a timetable yet but it seems unlikely that even Oxford would put exams on a saturday...but hey, it's Oxford, they do what they want. I've already made travel arrangements, so the exams had best not continue into July!) for six and a half weeks. Basically, seeing as I last wrote 116 days ago, what I'm saying is, it's probably going to be over 116 days until I write again. If I'm busy now, I can only imagine what I'll be like for the duration of next term, and the weeks that follow! In 116 days from today I'll be in the middle of my vacation, and so I shall return to Blogger some time at the end of August! Time flies! A year ago last August I was still waiting for my A2 results!

Scary thought.

PS, I'm now a year older!

The more sand has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.

- Niccolo Machiavelli

Experience: it's gained in retrospect.

 

I'm back! Back after a 2 month-blogging-break, and first term at university!

I was right, by the way, about having limited time whilst at university. I think my decision not to blog during term-time was a good call, I've kind of missed it, but in a weird way, seeing as I've been living at a mile a minute, it's only now that I can really sit back and reflect on an incredible 8 weeks.

I've been to concerts; talks, lectures delivered by people who wrote my course books, comedy nights (too funny to forget), cocktail nights (too good to remember clearly - just kidding! I only had two :P) and even a carol concert in the college chapel! Not to mention the standard clubbing nights, or the multitude of nights in which "staying in [college]"was actually the beginning of a great night out (in somebody else's building/ staircase party!)

University life is exactly what I hoped and worked for. No, it isn't - it's better. I feel as though I've learnt so much - and not merely in an academic sense - although I've also read approximately 100 books and journal articles!

Contrary to popular (read: media) expectations though, student life for me (I can't answer for my friends at other universities...) is not restricted to a week-long alcohol-fuelled party, with an assignment on the side, perhaps. Oh no.

I have without a doubt worked the hardest that I have ever worked in my life this past term. I'm talking everyday (well, except those 3 days at the end of term when I only had meetings to attend, seeing as I spent some of my Fresher's week beginning work, I got to do some Christmas shopping!) and for around 6 hours a day. Seriously, not including library runs across town, lectures, classes etc. But I live for it, - that's another thing I've learnt from the past term - I couldn't have it any other way. Maybe then, it's a good thing that where I am we're made to work constantly, we're reminded that that's what we're there for. And ultimately, £9,000 a year would be a very expensive party!

So, all of this work, all of this "play", where does that leave me? Well, I'll tell you. Though I may have been preoccupied with work whilst I was physically at university (the irony!) I can now tell you that absence makes the heart grow fonder, and in the last few days at home I have indeed been missing university life (and, admittedly, the independence and freedom that comes with it) which I think is mark of just how much perspective/ friends/ knowledge experience I've gained over the past 2 months.

 

3000 views!

I am genuinely excited by the fact that I've now had over 3000 page views on this blog, which is pretty incredible considering that 99% of it is made up of random thoughts (usually abstract and with some kind of motivational overtone) that I would have expected to only make sense to me.

Saying that, I have no gurarantee that anyone actually viewing this blog actually knows/cares/ understands what I'm talking about. They might just like looking at pictures or something...


Speaking of which! It's been ages since I did any image editing on GIMP, so guess what I did last week? Yep, you're looking at it, and I know it's kind of "Valentine's-Day" themed, but love can last the whole year, right? The layers aren't quite as well-blended as I would have liked, but overall I'm quite happy with it, but that's mainly because of the quality of the original images, I think.

I haven't done a crazy amount this week (like every week) but it's still been pretty good, so I'm happy :) oh, and last weekend I went to a city I'd never been to before, and it was sunny, and the whole town turned out to be massive and had loads of different sections to it, so I had fun just exploring - it made me want summer now :( I miss just being able to roam around "foreign"/ new places, for hours, without a timetable and with the weather being nice...

I'm back! I have some great photos of my holiday to Croatia (Rovinj) and day trip to Venice and can't wait to start editing them for use on here, however I have about 10 days worth of emails, work, schoolwork and general sorting out to do as is always the case when returning from a long holiday :( this image is made up of photos I took from a mini-break I had in Hayling Island, on the South Coast, a lovely few days of sunshine and Great British scenery which I must say I missed slightly in the hot climate of Eastern Europe.

In other, amazing news I achieved AAAA in my AS levels and am still celebrating! It seems a year of almost solid hard work was well worth it and I'm now aiming for AAA next year, and being able to apply to some really great universities! Nothing beats this kind of feeling (even if I did have to open my results in front of loads of people in Stansted airport terminal!) and right now I am just so happy - bring on the rest of the summer holidays!

Day dreaming again. Can't believe that;

a) it's my last year at school

b) it's almost halfway through the year

c) on my next birthday, I will be 18

Where has my life gone?.... time seems to be going so quickly recently!

Must have been too busy day-dreaming, instead of writing my personal statement draft, or doing some sort of productive work, as usual...

 

"Oh what can it mean? For a day-dream believer and a home -coming queen....."

Spent the weekend in London, Tower Bridge, The Globe, Waterloo, Euston and the Brixton Academy to be precise, should have probably done some work during the approximate 7 hours I have spent on trains these last two days (not to mention the underground!) but...meh, better sights to see, such as Canary Wharf and St.Paul's Cathedral - I think I may adopt the Londoner's work ethic of "work hard, play harder!"

And... here are the final outcomes, after 10 hours (5 hours each) in my GCSE Art Exams, here are the pieces I produced, one in coloured pencil the other in watercolour, same design different effects, everyone I've asked seems to have different preferences too....

Decided to put things into context and show you how I used my "wor,k rest and play" ideas (at the beginning) to develop the outcome of my art exam, here is some of the planning I did in my sketchbook.

GCSEs are over, and it's one of my summer resolutions to start an art blog, no matter what the outcome!

Will now begin to demonstrate the main purpose of this blog, art, by uploading various pieces I have created, for all the world to see :D

The programme I used is a website called Polyvore, which is free to sign up, and I found easy to use - all of my work I have posted was made using this site - it's great;

I'll start with oldest work May 2010, this piece is part of a set I made for my GCSE Art Exam brief, based around the theme of "Work, Rest and Play"