Quarantine Diaries - Week 1

Monday 23rd March - Sunday 29th March

I'm spending quarantine at home with my family. This includes my Mum, Mum's partner, my brother (21) and my youngest sister (13). I don't have my own bedroom at the family home anymore which means I'm sharing a room, and a double bed, with my sister. This is how I spend my university holidays too so it's not a new concept, however, I usually stay out a few times a week which I now cannot do.

Honestly, the first week in quarantine wasn't so bad. My little sister is now doing home school so it provides a useful timetabled structure to my day too as I currently don't have any teaching from the university.

I had a few lectures which I had missed during term 2 for various reasons and so I started the week by tackling two of those on Monday. I also helped my Mum with some baking - we made banana and nut bread - and I made up a batch of seitan (meat substitute). In the evening I cooked a meal for my family - fried rice stir fry. I spent the evening with my little sister and we played some minecraft on her xbox, which honestly I'm still very slow at!

On Tuesday morning I tackled another two lectures before lunch. After lunch I set up our USB microscope and my sister and I had a look at some plant cells and talked about their features. I spent the rest of the day having a sims 4 marathon. I've been working on an underground quarantine bunker in Strangerville.

Wednesday morning I did some work on Duolingo. I usually do this before bed but I was feeling motivated that day! I'm currently studying two languages: Italian, which I have been learning for a few years; and Japanese, which I have just started a few months ago in preparation for my Brother moving out there.

 


While I was feeling motivated I worked through another two lectures. On Wednesday afternoons my sister finishes school about an hour earlier so she has kindly agreed to let me work through my clinical skills with her for an hour on Wednesdays. I also roped my Mum into marking me with a scoresheet I made from our OSCE crib sheets. I actually found it to be a really useful little session. I treated myself to Planet Zoo for my PC while it was on sale and so I spent a couple of hours starting it off before I had a test call with my tutor group on Microsoft teams. I then continued playing it after dinner.

Early on Thursday morning my Mum finished my Harry Potter Marauders' Map jigsaw I've been working on for 6 months! It was worth figuring out how to bring it home from university in the car!

When I got up I happened to mention to my Mum about a fleeting thought I'd had before bed the night before about moving the patio furniture down into the sunshine in the garden and giving it a fresh coat of paint, as the paint it had when we acquired it was starting to look quite sad. To my surprise she agreed and we got started straight away.

After this, in our infinite wisdom, my Mum and I thought we could paint the side of the duck house to match and it would look like a lovely beach house.

By the end of the day they were looking fresh and ready for spring/summer.

On Friday morning the weather was nice again and Mum and I wanted to add some detail to our beach hut!

After lunch I played some more Planet Zoo until dinner, and then I ran a hot bath and chucked in a lush bath bomb I'd been saving - Sakura. It had a beautiful smell but was very anticlimactic as it simply dissolved. No whizzing around, glitter or colour. I settled into the water with a brand new book.

Having read another book of this style by the same author I was fully expecting the story to be dark and disturbing, and it delivered. However, it was less disturbing than I expected, and I have to say I was relieved! It was a brilliant read, I couldn't put it down and finished it around 11.30pm the same night!

Over the weekend we baked some more, I skyped my friends from university, and spent most of the time playing games ... a fairly normal weekend for me! Topped it off by cuddling one of our ducks.

Thanks for reading!
Katherine x


Running Totals

Lectures - 6
Tutored hours - 0
Hours reading around - 0
Clinical practice hours - 1
Hours working on essays - 0
Total hours - 6

Books read - 1
Total pages - 318
Total hours - 5

Online fiction stories read - 1 chapter
Total words - pending
Total hours - 1

Films watched - 0
TV series episodes - 0
Total hours - 0

Hours on Sims 4 (approx) - 12
Hours on Planet Zoo - 17
Hours on Parkitect - 0
Hours on Cities Skylines - 0
Hours on Minecraft (approx) -8
Total hours - 42

Hours spent outside - 7
Hours of exercise - 0.5

Boxes, boxes and more boxes!

It feels like I've been packing forever! I'm moving out of my current bedroom at my Grandparents house so my sister can move in. This means that everything I own needs to be sorted. Probably more than I need will come to uni with me, some has been binned or recycled, some has gone to charity shops, and some will go into storage in my Mum's shed! Trouble is, I already have some stuff in storage at my Mum's and at my Grandparents because I used to live in my own house, and when I moved out of there I had to store some of my things. So to make room for the new things to go into storage I also have to sort through all of the old things. It's a long job to say the least but today I finally felt like I was making progress.

Because of this, packing has been a bit disorganised. Instead of just neatly packing the things I need I've been opening each cupboard and deciding where each thing is going. So, I don't really know what I've actually packed for uni! This could turn out to be a nightmare!

For this reason, I won't be publishing a suggested packing list until I've arrived at uni and unpacked my things so I can see what is actually useful!

I'll definitely be glad when the packing is done, and I can't wait to get to university and unpack and see what I can do with my room.

You may have seen my earlier blog post about "Design Plans for my University Room" and seen that I've decided on a theme for my bedroom. It will be themed around nature colours, so greens, whites, browns and greys, with woods, but also metals, and some contrasting colours such as pale pink. I've been gathering various things for this theme and can't wait to see it all come together, hopefully without being too chaotic.

I've also since decided on a classic nautical theme for the en-suite and just have a few little themed bits to go in there, as I know it will be very small, so I'm looking forward to seeing that too.

Kitchenware I already had in a black and white (mostly) theme, and so I'll be sticking with that but some other things will be coming which don't fit the theme, but I'm less fussy about my kitchenware.

I mostly just want to make sure that my bedroom and en-suite are spaces where I feel calm and peaceful, where I can escape, where I can study, and so I've chosen my themes around colours which make me feel calm. Hopefully it will work!

Thanks for reading,
Katherine

P.S. Not all of these boxes are mine, my Mum is having a sort out too!

Design Plans for my University Room

I recently saw this picture, I think on Facebook (I'm sorry I didn't note where), of a room full of calm, clean colours, and nature.

It got me thinking about my university room and I decided I would set a theme of green and white, with greys and browns, in the hope that I could create a space which would feel peaceful and tranquil, so I could focus and relax. And so, the following mood board was born.

All items featured were found on wilko.com

These items are not necessarily the exact things I will buy but they are to give me an idea of what I want. I have priced it all up just to see what kind of expense I'm looking at, and I can get all of it (plus a few items not pictured, and some items multiple times) plus home delivery for easily less than £300. This might seem like a lot for a student to pay out to decorate their room but, as I am a mature student I am working and earning and so can afford to decorate a little bit nicer, and all of these items can continue on with me into my student housing and beyond. 

You'll be able to see how my room turns out to be decorated when I move to halls in September.

I hope you don't mind the slightly different post this week, but I do want this blog to cover my whole journey and that includes some things that are not directly related to applications or study.

Thanks for reading,

Katherine