December, For Me

 

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Main highlights

  • ❄️ It snowed this month!
  • 🖥 I attended Local Hack Day where my team and I built a gif-powered advent calendar. It was a lot of fun!
  • 📹 I vlogged the whole event in the attempt to capture the excitement, learning opportunities and fun of hackathons. Remember that creative project I was talking about last month? This was it! It was a great learning opportunity for me – from the filming all the way to the editing process. I’m hoping to take on more creative vlogging projects in the future.
  • 📖 I finally completed and submitted my dissertation and the video component of the project. Initially, I got quite stressed because I had to make a lot of changes (cutting down and changing experiments for the research proposal) last minute but I got everything in on time and truthfully just happy that it’s done and dusted and out of the way.
  • 👭 The Code First: Girls Autumn/Winter 17/18 finished this month. As always, I get attached to attending twice a week and riding the hype of the course so I was quite sad once it finished! The students who took part in the course were incredible, some amazing websites and projects were made. Check them out here!
  • 🎤 I spoke a lot this month which have been an opportunity for me to develop my public speaking skills and nerves:
    • In front of first-year Biomedical Sciences students who were interested in taking a year out to do a placement. It was great to share my story of doing something that wasn’t typical of a life sciences student!
    • At GitHub Field Day during the Keynote on getting involved in the tech community as a BMS student and two discussions on self-care and building up hype on social media.
  • 👩🏻‍💼 Once my placement finished, my team nominated me for the National Employability Awards for the “Best Intern” award. This month, I found out that I was shortlisted!
  • 🗣 I also did an interview for the University of Sheffield’s Placement team where I had the chance to talk about my placement for a promotional video. I enjoyed being filmed by a huge camera and having a microphone attached to me. 😆
  • 🌎 SheNomads approached me at the end of the November to take part in her interview series on YouTube. It was a lot of fun to collaborate with her on it! Video coming soon~
  • 💪🏼 Chin featured me on his mini-project showcasing fitness journeys from people across the world with the aim to encourage people to get fit and take control of their health. You can find my feature here.
  • 🎄 I had a wonderful Christmas in Sheffield and Derby with Matt. Grateful for all the food, love and gifts 😊 Matt took me to London and we watched The Lion King Musical.
  • ⚡️ I wrote about the main things I learnt in 2017.

3️⃣ things I’m happy about

1) Having the opportunity to be creative

From my highlights, you probably gathered that over the past month I’ve done a lot of video editing and filming for others and myself. Over the year, people I’d meet who had read my blog said that it would be great if I could start exploring videos and YouTube to get my excitement across better (I hope I do this well written too!) I’ve been playing with the idea especially with my recent public speaking gigs but felt that writing was my safe place and comfort zone.

But as I have been saying at least once a week, staying in your comfort zone is boring and I do love a challenge. Almost at great timing, I was approached for a vlogging project. Although I have created videos in the past and uploaded on my YouTube channel, I never really got created a vlog. My video for Local Hack Day pushed me to try it out. It turns out, I enjoy video editing and can’t shut up sometimes (initially, I thought I wouldn’t be able to talk at all, that’s why most of my previous videos were just cool music.) I’m super thankful for the opportunities.

I’m excited to try and create more videos in the next few months. I’ve got a few ideas already which I feel I can’t describe by writing a blog. Sometimes, you just gotta watch and see for yourself!

Speaking at GitHub Field Day
Speaking at GitHub Field Day

2) Stepping out of my comfort zone

I feel like this has been something that always shows up in these round-up posts recently! But I am honestly so thankful that I have had the opportunities to get my story out there and heard. I hope my talks have inspired others that they are more than capable to do anything they want to do and shouldn’t feel “held down” by their degree. You always have a choice to do whatever you want!

3) Christmas

I spent Christmas away from home this year and spent it with Matt in Derby. It was my first Christmas away but my family were very supportive! I essentially had two Christmas celebrations which means double food. 😆 I did loads of different things this holiday season like having a morning in the spa and going on refreshing walks on Christmas morning!

I really enjoyed it and am very thankful for all the love over this Christmas season. Matt, who likes surprising others a lot (remember New York?), surprised me with a trip to London to watch Lion King at the Lyceum Theatre. All his little hints up to this point started finally making sense 😂

Lion King was exactly as everyone had described: incredible! You bet I was an emotional wreck throughout. My favourite scene was when the cast sang “He Lives In You” and “Circle of Life“.

The Lion King
The Lion King

December in photos

December in photos!
London, Christmas Day, Lion King, Christmas @ Sheffield, Gym w/ Matt and GFG Week 7.

Monthly favourites

Books:

100% recommend this book for women who are interested in a career in tech – Dream Big, Hustle Hard by Abadesi.

Music:

For some reason, I can’t stop listening to this album…


Next month

Goals

  • Survive my first exam period in over a year in one piece.
  • Keep up the positive habits – this is so important for your mental health and managing stress. 😊

Events

My calendar just has tears…

Quote of the month

 

 

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7 responses to “December, For Me”

  1. I’m so jealous you got to see The Lion King! If there’s one Disney movie my husband and I absolutely love, it’s that! I’d be an emotional wreck, too, if I were in your shoes! I felt the same when I saw Beauty and The Beast (theatrical play) two years ago! It was amazing!

    1. Ooo, I’d love to see Beauty and The Beast! I just want to watch all Disney live! It was such a great show.

  2. I’m happy to see you keep pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. It’s so nice to have that feeling of really LIVING. It’s been a while since I’ve really lived.

  3. Sounds like you had a great month! You had a lot going on and made some new heights. Congratulations on the nomination for the best intern award! It’s great that you learned a lot and became more comfortable with certain things.

    Having a degree doesn’t mean you have to be held down in any way.

    1. Thanks Nancy! Fingers crossed on the outcome 😊

  4. Glad you had lovely December, Pauline!

    I love having more than one Christmas dinner. We usually have three dinners a year, because of all the family, which is great. All the food!

    The Lion King is such an amazing show. I went to see it when I was in sixth form and I couldn’t believe how fantastic it was. How do they do it?!

    Good luck with vlogging! I love watching vlogs but I definitely wouldn’t have the patience to make them on a regular basis. Editing is so hard!

    Hope January is just as amazing!

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