But everything in life is about its timing. You have to be ready to receive certain things. The delays are designed to test your self-resolve and patience, your perseverance and faith, your strength of character. It is your personal journey of growth and the wait, the wait makes the success so much sweeter. The person I am today isn't the person I was a year ago. She is stronger, more patient, more accepting of fate. She is more confident and appreciates her journey - and where she is now - with a depth you can't possibly understand unless you've been through it yourself.

To anyone who has/is facing setbacks in their pre-reg journey, or anyone who has had to re-sit OSCEs - once, twice, three times - it is painful. I have been there. More times than you know. That sense of despair is gut-wrenching and it hurts to hide because, yes, you have to take the next day smiling, and the next and the next. And it is exhausting. To feel, to hide, to keep going like it doesn't matter. To pretend like it doesn't hurt when you see everyone else around you succeed - and you can't work out why it's not happening for you. I have felt all of that and more. But take heart in that you will be so much better for it. Grieve, stand up, dust yourself off - and go again.

As much as this post is me officially calling time on documenting student life, it is also a reminder - not just to budding optometrists but to anyone who needs to hear this - to keep believing. In yourself, in your journey, in your prayers. Trust where God takes you. Trust His timing. Trust that He is making space in your life for so many beautiful things - things that you want, things that you don't see coming - and He is withholding from you to teach you patience, to protect you from things you are blind to, and He is guiding you, maybe not to a life you imagined, but an altogether different but good life that is everything He wants it to be for you.

I wish, back in the day, I'd had someone else's journey to read. I've said this before, but I put this blog out there, not for views or self-indulgence, but to make even one person feel less alone. Because I have been there, feeling incredibly alone, not having someone else's unconventional success story to give me hope. It's okay if things aren't happening for you in the conventional way...if they're not following everyone else's timeline or the "natural" sequence of events. Life happens and shit hits the fan sometimes; there are rejections and disappointments and sometimes a complete re-routing of your journey. But you will get there...you will get to your destined milestones, all in good time. Keep going.

I wish I could go back in time and read this post to 17 year old me. Because she is confused and devastated, and has no idea just how tumultuous, heart-breaking, unexpected, challenging the next nine years will be and I wish I could tell her... 

Third year optometry students. You're about to cross over into your final, busiest year of a degree that has, undoubtedly, made you question your career/life choices and wonder why optometry ever appealed to you. Well, congratulations! You're almost there holding the degree certificate to prove that questionable life decision that has led you up to this point. And if you think you won't make it, trust me, you will. It's just one long grind until then!

I say long, but in actual fact, third year will fly by. You'll blink and it'll be over. And it's simultaneously a comforting, dreadful thing. There's just so much going on that the weeks carry on going and before you know it, finals are around the corner and you're stressing about the Big Stuff. From exams to pre-reg positions, you will be emotionally drained come May next year. But, with a few tips, I hope to make your stressful journey towards graduation, well, a little less stressful.

Third year opens with intro week. Timetables are thrown at you which resemble Ancient Runes and take an age to decipher. The term "clinic" fills you with dread because, really, are you even ready to be testing patients? I can already hear your internal screams of "but I know nothing!" You will be told about all the competencies you need to complete by the end of the year, the multitude of places to which you need to travel for placements, you will hear about looming deadlines and dissertation advice and you will hear the word OSCEs thrown around so much you'll want to cry and it won't be long before you've had a complete breakdown - and hey, this is only week one!

My advice: YOU WILL BE FINE. Not advice, but true nonetheless. I had a fully blown panic attack after that intro lecture and I look back and laugh at what the hell I was so worried about.

Actual advice: Take each day as it comes.




The timetable looks so crammed you need a magnifier to look at it, but you're in clinics for only half the time you think you will be. You'll never be alone in anything during third year; travelling to placements is as easy as abc when you order an Uber and split the fare between your group who, incidentally, will be your lifeline throughout this year. Write up every lecture with each day. You have no idea how much it'll lighten the burden when exams come round and your notes are up to date. And don't panic about your dissertation; your supervisor will guide you through it so ask lots of questions and do what they tell you (even if you don't agree) - they're the ones marking it after all!


THE LECTURES

Binocular Vision

• Even if you don't attend the lectures, listen to the audio
• MEMORISE THE MODEL Q&As
• Learn the journal articles inside out - don't memorise the journal but read through the abstract, know the aims of the studies conducted, briefly what was being assessed and why, and the results
• You'll be told to learn book chapters for each topic - it's intense and virtually impossible because who's going to memorise a 600 page book on top of everything else this year? Skim read with your lecture notes at hand and simply add additional notes you think are necessary
• UNDERSTAND the content. If you don't understand it, you don't stand a chance in hell. Watch Youtube videos and read Kanski - they help massively. And try to supplement the lectures with your BV clinics - they help more than you know

It feels almost surreal to be sitting here in my room typing out this post on the other side of three years that I thought I would never get through. Isn't hindsight the most wonderful thing? I realise that  after almost a year of not touching on it (for the sake of my own sanity and also because final year occupied any free time I had to breathe), I'm back writing about the thing I have been writing (complaining?) about with a yo-yo status for the last few years. That is, of course, life as a student optometrist. Or, soon-to-be pre-reg optometrist. Because yes readers, much to my surprise (dismay?) and likely to the surprise of you all, I graduated! Shocker, I know. Who would have thought, ey?

I guess this means I'm in it for the long haul! Committed 100% to the profession of optometry. Yeah, right. But for now, I am. Semi. Can we say 50%? Okay, let's push it to 60%. *insert upside-down-face emoji here*

There's still a way to go. It's a journey that's far from over, but it's a journey that's come a hell of a lot further than I thought it would. If you've been a reader for as long as I've been studying optometry, it's no secret how much I struggled with it. And then felt halfway optimistic/okay with it. Only to then struggle with it again. It came, if I'm brutally honest, with more lows than it did highs. I fought with my parents to drop out, I rebelled against the idea of following the career through and I stopped wanting to get up in the morning because I hated it that much. The fear of the job I was trapping myself into, swallowed me whole. And here I am, well and truly trapped! But for the first time in three years, I am close to the end. And that's what this journey was all about. Powering through three years to get the cap on my head until I only had to power through one more year (and a bit) to actually get to the end. And then maybe I can start to write my story in a new direction. Or keep it going in the same one, who even knows at this point.

Because if there is anything I have learnt, not just over the course of this degree but life in general, it's that life has a funny way of not turning out the way you wanted. Or imagined. Or hoped. But that doesn't mean that it can't be just as wonderful. 

Not that mine is, you know, wonderful as such. I mean, that would be pushing it (to say the least). But it's okay. It is what it is. And sometimes, that is enough. 

I still don't agree with settling. Be that a job or a university degree or a significant other. I still believe that when you know you deserve so much more from life, you should do everything in your power to fight for it. You owe your dreams that much. But I also believe that, sometimes, you just have to bide your time. You might not know or understand where the journey is taking you and my God can it be the most frustrating, heartbreaking thing in the world, but trust it. Trust the journey. Know when you're settling, and know when something is just the stepping stone to the thing that is more. 

Sometimes, we can hate something so much despite knowing all the ways in which it is right for us...I think that's the hardest curve ball life can throw. And we channel so much energy into fighting it that we forget that it's almost easier to embrace it. Know when to give up the fight. Some things are simply so far out of our control. And sometimes, you just have to ride the wave before it drowns you. 

|   the only way out, is through

I think, that in so many ways, ploughing through optometry was the hardest thing I've had to go through. Because, for so long, I couldn't see the bigger picture. Or refused to see it. And is that really so different? Me graduating hasn't taken away the fact that I don't enjoy it, or that it still reads as a foreign language to me. I think that it'll remain to be the hardest part of my life for the foreseeable future. The only difference is that I'm somewhat on the other side. With a little bit of hindsight, faith and the patience of a saint. Well, not really. I'm still praying on that last one. But. If I could get through three years of hell, I think I can get through another three. (Let's hope it doesn't stretch to that long, hey.)

The silver lining is always there. You just have to squint hard enough to see it. (See what I did there? No? Never mind.) Whatever life throws at you, the setbacks, the difficult choices, the struggles, have faith that one day you'll be looking back from the other side thinking "hey, I made it". It might not be unfolding according to your plan, but what do you and I know about planning anyway? The different plan has been written by a greater planner and I think it's safe to say that our small minds couldn't comprehend the hows or whys. We'll never know, why, even after praying for it time and time again, God still keeps certain things from us. We'll only know that some things are just never meant to be. Or are meant to be, just not now. And that it's still a life infinitely better than one we'd write for ourselves.

|   it could all be in the palm of your hands but still not written for you

My optometry life - and, by extension, this blog - has some journey ahead. I know beyond measure that my pre-reg will be the most gruelling year (and a bit) I will ever experience. I know that it will break me and make me pull my hair out five days a week and I will lose the little sanity I have left. I know it'll hit me with full force, just how much I hate this profession. I'm not excited nor looking forward to it, nor do I have any hope for it. I know that it will put me through the grinder and there will probably be nothing left of me when I'm through. I also know that you'll read all about it on here. After all, what kind of writer would I be if I left out all the gory details? There is so much still to come. But, for now, I made it. And that is enough.

Maybe you're here because you're about to enter second year optometry (it's not too late to drop out...) and you're freaking out about the pressures that come with it, or maybe you're about to start your first year (consider a career change), or maybe you're thinking of applying for optometry (don't!), or maybe you're just here for a touch of nostalgia and/or to laugh at the plight of us aspiring optometrists - whatever it may be, I've got you covered.

This is optometry - tips and tricks to have up your sleeves, the little tidbits that I wish somebody had told me before going into it (because, I mean, if there was ever a misleading degree/profession, optometry is it...), and anything I deem necessary for you to know before signing your death sentence - all under one roof.

I suppose it's worth noting that my advice is versatile; for the most part, it can apply to pretty much any profession, particularly those in healthcare, and to those of you who are our patients, this is how damn difficult the journey is to get into a testing room to treat you - and how capable you are of making our lives difficult. I kid. Somewhat.

Good luck and godspeed folks!

O P T O M E T R Y 101 | 

The Crash Course

MY EXPERIENCE: THE SNAPSHOT


THE GRADES & EXTRA-CURRICULARS

THE DEGREE

THE CLINICS



THE PRE-REG

THE PROFESSION

Practise the art of small talk. You're trapped in a room for twenty minutes with your patient and many times those patients will be kids - you're going to have to throw away your anti-social persona and get on their level

This is becoming quite the habit. Writing in September at the start of the academic year about how much I hate optometry and in February, take those words back and have some deeply profound revelation that makes me change tack and view it differently. STORY OF MY LIFE. No, but all joking aside, this blog has always been an honest reflection of my life so whilst my university-related posts have felt like a brutal cycle of ups and downs, they have catalogued how very much up-and-down it has felt. And so, it would be an injustice to not write this particular post.

A much happier version of myself (or so I like to think...?) - Contact lens clinics, 07.02.17

Optometry; bane of my life, destroyer of my sanity, inspiration of slightly depressing, if not outright miserable writing material. Yet now, when I say that I hate optometry, it almost feels like a lie. Almost. (I can literally hear the collective gasp of shock as that sentence sinks in). I would have begged for someone to tell me this last year. I wish I'd have known that if I were to fast-forward fourteen months, my perspective would have done a complete 180 with my feelings catapulting all the way to the other end of the spectrum. Then again, I'm not sure I'd have believed it. My first year - and to some extent, the first half of second year - was absolute hell. It was a torturous, mind-numbing sense of entrapment in which thinking about my future would fling me into a bottomless pit of despair. It wrecked my peace of mind, cracks and fissures criss-crossing madly and deepening until it disintegrated into nothing. It broke me.

Now - and this is so absurd that it nearly makes me laugh to say it - it is now something that I am entirely at peace with. I can't tell you the exact moment it changed; looking back, that moment when burning resentment melded into a soft acceptance blurs from memory, but I remember a prayer tainted with crushing desperation in the middle of the night and days turned into nights and back into days, and I was hit with the jolting realisation that everything felt right. I was no longer coming home and wishing my life was different, dragging myself out of bed at crazy hours in the morning to study for my degree no longer made me want to curl up into a ball and cry, thinking about my future no longer made me want to tear my hair out. It was like all the pieces were suddenly clicking into place and life felt good. Everything had changed. Everything. And I wish I could tell you what triggered it but the truth is, I don't even know. It just did.

The sharp awareness of that subtle shift from "hate" to "mildly like" i.e. "I am totally okay with life as an optometrist and I am going to embrace it and do my damned best at it", tripped me up faster than I could blink. It slammed home when someone asked me "do you enjoy the course or do you wish you were doing something else?" and when I was tapping out my reply, I thought "no". 
No, I do not wish I was doing something else. Because optometry is, a hundred percent, the perfect fit for me. Don't get me wrong, I don't love it (I mean, does anybody really?), heck, I don't even know if I like it, but it's good. It feels good and right and just...good. And beyond that, (fingers crossed) one day, I am going to be in the unbelievably lucky position to be practising as both a biochemist and an optometrist and I realise how wonderfully rare and amazing that is. Had you asked me last year if I were to do life differently, I would have said yes in a heartbeat, that optometry wouldn't even remotely feature in it. Ask me today and I say that I wouldn't do it differently if you came to me with a do-over in the palm of your hand.

Funny, how fast the human mind changes over time but more than that, how it can change with a little perspective. How some doors keep banging shut while others swing wide open and with it, the trajectory of our lives alters irretrievably and sometimes we are so blind to what we are being saved from, or being taken to. Once upon a time in this little writing space of mine, I said that our detours and heartbreaks always lead us to something so much better. That sometimes, what we want isn't necessarily what we need, or isn't meant to fall into place at that particular moment in time. But what's happening now, in the present, in the here and now, is exactly what is meant to happen and it is exactly where we are meant to be at this precise moment in our written fate.


Believe me, no one more than me can understand how horrible it feels to hate how life is turning out. Or how it feels like it's falling apart instead of falling into place. I have felt the latter for the better part of five years. And that is completely okay and normal. It's okay to not enjoy a degree you're studying, it's okay that you failed that exam and you're being set back a year, it's okay that your dream career is delayed by three years or even not transpiring at all. It's okay to feel all of that and you don't have to feel guilty for it. I felt guilty for the entire time I hated optometry - that I was privileged enough to be in my second degree while some people don't even have the privilege of an education and I had the nerve to want to drop out, made me feel like an awful human being at times. It took me so long to accept that I was entitled to feel like that and it didn't mean that I was ungrateful, but just unhappy. And so if, like me, you find yourself feeling trapped or unhappy with a life decision, acknowledge it - if you have the guts to do something about it, then do it and don't look back. Life's too short to not do what makes you happy.

But I will also say this - give it time. I tried to drop out of optometry - it was a very real decision that I considered and almost made - but here I am, halfway through my second degree, nearly at the finish line of my second year and it's because I faced obstacles that didn't allow me to drop out. Something always came in the way. That door that I kept trying to exit from, kept slamming back in my face. Trust me when I say that at any given moment in time, you are where you are meant to be. Wait for it. Wait for that moment where it clicks into place like it did for me, because believe me, it will. Little things are forever slotting into place for you and you don't even see it until one day, a close-up image of the bigger picture flashes into view and it makes sense like it never did before. I have waited and waited and waited for it to feel like my life is coming together. I can't tell you how often I have thought that maybe it never will, that I'll be hanging on to this thread of hope for an eternity. It seems almost miraculous that now, for the first time, I feel it. I feel like at least some of it - the parts that I had actually given up on -  are finally falling into place and all it took was a sincere prayer, a little bit of faith, and the common sense to stop focusing on the bad and instead, directing that energy in finding the good.


It blows my mind how much hidden wisdom you can stumble upon when you stop dwelling and spiralling on what's going wrong instead of what's going right, making that negative cloud of energy hanging over your head so much bigger than it needs to be. Count the blessings. Always count the blessings. You might surprise yourself; sometimes, a rose-tinted perspective of a life you maybe wouldn't have written for yourself, sets you on course for a life that is a hundred times more wonderful, fulfilling and infinitely more beautiful than anything you could have ever imagined.

For what it's worth, I stand by that; I stand by the belief that it's something I have to see through to the end but that doesn't mean that it feels okay all the time. Accepting it and being happy with it are not equivalent. There are days that aren't so bad. And by that, I mean that they're mediocre, but bearable. Maybe because we had lectures that appealed to the biochemist in me, or I didn't fail spectacularly at basic optom-ABC in clinics. Though admittedly, those days are few and far between. Then there are the days which make me feel like the world has me beaten. Those days, I come home dying for an escape. The built-up frustration at being trapped in a career I loathe and see no future in, or want no future in rather, is so heavy that it crushes me with its weight. The nagging, ever-present fear of being an incompetent optometrist is one so real that it makes my blood run cold. The suffocating thoughts of how the life I'm living is everything that I don't want eat away at my mind until it crumbles to dust. Those days, I feel like I'm losing the handle on my own life. Like I have no idea what I'm doing with it and it's just running away from me at a hundred miles an hour and when I finally catch up with it, it's going to be something that I don't recognise, something so unfamiliar from what I had imagined my life to be and so far removed from what I wish it would be - and it makes me want to smash something against the wall.

|   Holding on but I keep falling back

     Holding on but I keep falling back 

    It's driving me crazy - Still I Rise, Ilyas Mao

I can't tell you how it feels - knowing that you have so much to give in a field and wanting to make it your life yet feeling the love and natural knack for it being stifled and suppressed, all the while itching to break out and do something with it. Instead, there is the dull ache, a strange sensation of loss at having lost something so deeply profound that you can't put it into words. And I finally understand. That maybe that's what passion is. Something that speaks to us on some deeper, inexplicable level and when we can't have it, it always feels like our life is missing something. Something that we can't place but that defines us in one way or another. Maybe some of us never find it. Maybe some of us do, stumbling upon something that we feel drawn to, that catches our interest and you realise you could spend your life studying it, learning it, finding your way around its crooks and crevices - and you'd never get tired.

I feel it now more than ever. That pang of regret when I'm teaching my brother bits and pieces of biochemistry and in that moment right there, I am right back in my element in a heartbeat. And even if it's for a fleeting moment, I am in a world where it all makes sense. Despite the gap of time that's worn my knowledge thin, it is a language that feels as natural as breathing, one that clicks into place and as hard and complicated and complex as it is, it is a language I can decipher, make sense of, and be fluent in. It's cruel, so-cruel-it's-almost-funny how much re-visiting it makes me fall in love with it all over again.

|   Don't look back in 10 years time and wish you'd done things differently

Results Day. The day hundreds of thousands of hearts across the UK either break in perfect synchronisation or sing in perfect harmony. The day that makes students up and down the country lose sleep as their throats close up with the silent dread that when they open up that fateful piece of paper, they're not going to like what they see. The day that has the power to either make or break your life.

I would say I miss that whirlpool of emotions - but I would be lying through my teeth because my God was A-level results day hell. Actually, both results days during my A-level years take the award for being the worst days of my life. My AS and A-level results day both consisted of me sobbing so hard that I couldn't breathe, unable to pick up the phone and tell my parents that I had seriously under performed. The crushing disappointment, the cold fear that dowsed me as I sat there motionless, staring at my phone as I tried to summon even the tiniest amount of courage to ring home - it was debilitating. That first year, I could get over it. I fed myself convincing lies that I would make up for lost marks in the coming year and pull my grades up heavily. But that second year, when I saw what I saw on my results slip, I was a mess. I had, well and truly, screwed up.

Not only was I not holding a place for Dentistry (which was the course I'd applied for at the time), but my grades weren't good enough for me to take out a gap year to re-apply, nor could I take out a year to retake my exams because Dentistry admissions boards don't look at applicants who've had to resit papers. The Dentistry dream was over. Or it was at that time. Going through UCAS Clearing, I took a place for medical biochemistry, and here I am, four years later with a degree on my belt and (hopefully) a soon-to-be-added second one.

Ultimately, my wise words of wisdom are that results day isn't the be-all-end-all. Believe me, I know what you're going through - I've experienced the night-before nerves, the elation of a perfect score sheet (what I would give to re-live my GCSE time period...), and the turmoil of a not-so-perfect grade list. And so, from the other side, I can tell you that it's okay. Maybe me telling you that isn't enough. So, coupled with my personal experience, here's a run-down of my results day advice.

R E S U L T S   D A Y

& how to deal with what it brings

Having a contingency plan for, well, the rest of your life, is an absolute must for results day. Think about alternative courses you would consider studying that are eligible to get through Clearing. It could be something related to the course that you initially applied for - maybe a foundation course or something similar that would allow you to transfer to your chosen course later on, or if you're happy doing any other course in that field just because the subject matter is similar enough. Or you could have a completely different career in mind, a course in an entirely different field but which appeals to you. Whatever it is, find out the different courses that are eligible through Clearing, the unis that offer them, the grade requirements, and most importantly, their subject content.

Make a concise list in order of priority, depending on what is most important to you, be it location or what you'll be learning on that course. But whatever it is, make sure you're happy studying for that course for the next three, four, five years of your life. You may have a plan of applying for your initial course again after your first degree, which is fine, but account for the fact that you may change your mind, or it may not work out, and you'll be doing whatever it is you've decided to do for the next forty odd years of your life.

Yes, it's a back-up. But make it one that will make you as happy as your first-choice.

This is so important. Go into college with a compiled list of unis, their direct line numbers for the course you're ringing up for, and the course(s) they're offering that you're interested in. On the day, you're going to be all over the place and you can't afford to lose time by faffing about looking for uni numbers and courses they have available through Clearing. Not to mention that places through Clearing move out fast. You need to be on it the second you find out you haven't met your grade requirements.

If you haven't met them, your first move is to ring up the uni. They may have a little leeway and if you only missed the requirement by a grade or so, they may be willing to accept you anyway. Regardless of whether or not your UCAS Track has updated, do it anyway. If they refuse to take you on, they may have advice regarding any resits or deferred entry.

Then move on to any courses that have caught your eye through Clearing. If they offer you a place and you're in two minds as to whether or not you want it (be it because you're unsure of the course or the uni location), take it anyway. You can always decline it once you've rung up other places and found something more appropriate. But it may be that you have to take what you can get and you don't want to refuse the place, then ring other unis only to find that nothing else is available and ultimately you've lost out both ways.

If you don't get the grades that you need for the conditional place that you're holding for the course you want to study, and you are adamant that you want to study it, know that there are ways round it.

* If your course allows for it, you can take out a year to resit the papers you didn't do so well in, and re-apply the following year. Meanwhile you can work part-time or get experience in the field you want to go into or even find an apprenticeship which may work out better for you than Higher Education.

* You can take a course through Clearing that will allow a transfer after one year into your initial course - in which case, you need to look at unis that offer that beforehand as well as their contact details. I know for a fact that medical schools offer this - so you'd be wise choosing to study a science degree at a uni that does, and also a uni that offers a medical program you are most interested in. Dental schools don't allow the transfer route, in which case you'll have to look at the next option I've outlined.

* You can do a full degree like myself, and re-apply for your chosen course. Naturally, the courses that most people choose this route for are Medicine and Dentistry. Again, make sure you know which course will be the best for you because it could well be that that's the field you'll be working in for life. For Medicine and Dentistry, you'll obviously need a degree in a science subject but science degrees vary significantly in their content so choose the one that appeals the most to you.

Be smart with your choices. Maybe choose to do your Clearing course at a uni that also offers the "best" initial course that you wanted. I'm not saying it works in your favour to do so, but sometimes it can when it comes to reapplying or taking a transfer. You'll be familiar with the uni itself, and for courses that come with an interview process, it may give you an advantage over other candidates.

Easier said than done, I know. Believe me, I know.

But like I said, there are so many routes out there to get into the field/career that you want. Honestly, the list is endless but I've only given the few that are the most common and that I'm most familiar with.

When you're eighteen, and you're looking at alternative routes, taking out three years for another degree, or even just one gap year, it seems like a huge loss of time. It's really really not. One year will fly by so fast you won't have time to even breathe, and a three year degree goes by so much faster that before you know it, you're graduating and results day is a distant, forgotten memory. So please don't let the fear of losing so many years factor in when making a decision. At the end of the day, your career is your life. Do whatever the hell you have to do to get there, however long it's going to take.

Then again - if you don't get there, that's okay too. You change as you grow older and it's okay to change your mind about careers or subject paths. Me, personally, I took medical biochemistry through Clearing because it not only had subject content that was right up my alley, but it gave me the scope to progress in it as a career, as well as apply for Medicine or Dentistry afterwards. I did re-apply for Dentistry - that didn't fall through, and by that time, I'd figured out that it wasn't what I wanted for the rest of my life anyway. It actually felt like a colossal relief. And now I'm studying Optometry as a much more mature, realistic version of myself and when people wonder if I should have just taken Optometry at eighteen through Clearing, I just think no. No, because I had the chance to study a subject I have a deep-rooted passion for, and I have the option to pursue it for life, for the rest of my life. No, because I wouldn't be half the optometrist I could be at 21, than I will be at 25. No, because studying medical biochemistry is one of the absolute best things to have ever happened to me.

I know people - who were studying med biochem with me - that had initially applied for Medicine or Dentistry, who applied for the transfer. When they didn't get that, they applied again through UCAS before the start of our final year. Some got in, some didn't. Those that didn't, some went on to do a Masters in med biochem and are likely to go on to study for a PhD. Others took out a gap year after they graduated, then re-applied - again - and got in.

My point is this; it will take detours and heartbreaks and some devastating failures, but at some point in life, you will find yourself in exactly the place you are meant to be, in exactly the degree course that is best for you, in the career that is exactly right for you. Your A-level results are not the end of the world. Yes, you need the right grades for the course you want, but if you don't get them there are endless opportunities out there for you that will lead you to it, or you may just find that there is something else entirely different written in your destiny for you.

At the time it will feel like your life is falling apart, it will feel like the crushing end to your dreams but in actual fact, it's just the beginning. I understand the disappointment of your parents, I understand that it's difficult to accept a different life plan and the decisions or choices you will have to make, I understand sleeping in bed for a week, drowning in the hurt and regret and crying like there's no tomorrow. I understand it because I went through it. It's also why I'm in the privileged position to tell you that it's temporary. You've done your best and whatever happens will happen for a reason, and your life that you think is crumbling to dust in front of you will in fact come together in the coming year or the coming three or the coming ten. And you'll look back with that degree certificate in your hand one day, thinking that A-level results day was far from the end of the world, and you'll feel sorry for the new eighteen year old generation that will be going through what you're going through, and you'll wish that you could tell them that in the grand scheme of things, a bunch of grades won't even make it on to your CV because all that matters is the degree that you're holding in your hand and that is yours for life.

I guess all that's left to say now is good luck to any of you waiting on results - if you get what you need and desperately want, then congratulations! You've made it through the two most gruelling years of your life! If you don't...just know that you're not alone. And my story and experiences are not a naive perspective on what to expect - it's a real one, and it's proof that even when things go horribly wrong, they can go wonderfully right :)

The end of semester two. Cue the Hallelujah chorus. Actually, that would be a tad premature because when uni starts up again, I'll be subjected to three more weeks of teaching before lunging into exams, but yes, Easter break is a relief. Not because I can spend three weeks in bed binge-watching TV shows, because let's face it, Easter break basically means cramming a semester's worth of work in the space of 21 days, but because uni has been keeping me on my toes since January exams. It's been one assignment after the next, deadline after deadline, so much so that it's been hard to keep track of what's been due when - and in-between working at Specsavers and prepping for summer exams, I feel like I haven't had space to breathe. So these next few weeks - or this first week at least - I'm going to just wind down and have a breather before getting back into the full swing of things.

Three weeks feels like so little though! When I was at Leicester Uni, we'd have seven weeks of Easter break before going back just for our exams. And before you all jump to the inevitable conclusion that seven weeks of holiday is the dream, I'm going to cut you off right there and tell you to snap out of the illusion because it really wasn't. I mean, it was the dream, but in the sense that we had seven weeks to solidly revise (and by revise, I mean teach ourselves the entire degree). So yeah, Easter break was always one to look forward to. On a serious note though, I can't help but think that Leicester Uni had the right idea because three weeks is virtually nothing. I'm going to struggle adjusting. And I just know that it's going to fly by and by the time uni comes back around the corner, I'll be as unprepared for exams as I am now.

Speaking of time - I can't comprehend how fast it's going. Yes, yes, we all say that "time's flying" and "where has the time gone??", but seriously guys. Where has the time gone?!? I'm struggling to wrap my head around the fact that I'm prepping for summer exams of first year already when this time last year, I had handed in my dissertation and was knuckling down to revise for finals. It simultaneously feels like just yesterday, and yet a lifetime ago. Almost a whole other life. I feel like my life is divided into two, like I'm split into two halves that are mutually exclusive. There's the me pre-optometry, and then there's the me post-optometry, and the two are disjointed. Two detached lives that I can't bind together. And boy, do I miss the old one.

I kicked off the holidays with a shopping, lunch and movie date with two of my friends. We went to Marco & Carl which is fairly new and only just opened so we decided to make a date out of it and see what the hype was about. It's pretty deserved actually! The food, ambience and service were all on point and I'll definitely be visiting again soon - so any of you in the Midlands, I'd make a point of visiting it!

Then we went to watch Allegiant, which for those of you don't know, is based on the final instalment in the Divergent trilogy by Veronica Roth. And ohmyword, what an awful film. Seriously the dumbest film I have ever watched. I feel sorry for anyone who watches it without having read the book. Or who watches it, period. The only highlight - and I truly mean this - was having Theo James on screen and being able to swoon over him for the better part of 120 minutes. It lacked plot and depth, the visual effects were downright laughable, and the acting was mediocre. Aside from Miles Teller whose quips made the movie bearable. But God how is it a film?! I have never been so bored watching a film in cinema, nor have I have ever been tempted to walk out of one (and I was so close to doing so...). The best part of those torturous two hours was laughing uncontrollably with the best friend at the comically awful scenes. And you know what the sad part is? It does no justice to the book because in my opinion, the books are pretty great. They've just done a bloody horrible job at translating it on to screen. They should have just stopped at the first film. And why they decided to make the third book into two films is beyond me. There was absolutely no need. They could have wrapped it up in one, and after this horrendous part one, they should just be done with it and call it a day.

I think I ranted about it for like, half the journey down to Gloucester that night. So that was my hilariously bad film experience, but then my trip to Gloucester was fun! I love going to visit the grandparents because it's home - sometimes, it feels more like home than home-home. And withdrawal hits when I leave. But I got to spend time with the uncles and little cousins too which is always lovely. I slyly set up Tangled on my laptop and got the kids into it so I got to watch my favourite Disney film with no one judging me whilst simultaneously keeping them entertained. Win-win! Then I did a spot of baking for them (I made them Frozen cupcakes) because I haven't baked in so long and it was the perfect excuse to whip out the baking trays and funky decorations. And then we did dessert night because really, you can never have enough of the sweet stuff. Ultimately it was a weekend where I did nothing but enjoy good food and good company, and I loved every second of it. Honestly, weekends in Gloucester are some of my favourite weekends.

And I have a last piece of news for you guys - my little brother got a place for Dentistry! Which is super exciting and I'm so mega proud of him. He'll be moving out to London though. In like, six months. I'm going to miss him like crazy. But I'll leave that emotional stuff for another time in another post. Until then - happy revising folks!