The calmer days are here

The main highlight of this semester for me was clinical psychology, where we concentrate on psychological disorders such as OCD, ADHD or schizophrenia. This is definitely the field that I would interested in following in my future career, so understandably I enjoy its content. In other subject we keep writing endless amounts of lab reports, essays and doing presentations.

The interesting thing I noticed about specifically Reading, when talking to my ex-classmates from high school is that I seem to be the only one who has subjects that only related to their main subject. Everyone else is doing subject like biology, philosophy, that are not directly connected to their field, but my syllabus is revolving only around psychology, clinical, developmental, applied, perception, cognition and learning, psychology at work, psychological research (statistics), etc. I must say that I am really happy and excited about this, because I truly get to do the subject that I am interested in and do not have to be concerned with subjects that are there just to fill in the space. Especially when I hear references from my ex-classmates studying in the Czech republic I am happy that I chose this university and this field. There is a bit workload, but with the interest it all seems much better than any tedious work I remember from high school. All in all, concerning the education side of Reading I am very happy, motivated and ready for more challenges that are coming my way.

In my last blog entry I expressed my discomfort in the place I used to live. When I came back after Christmas the noise, parties and everything that made my life a living hell got even worse so I made the decision to move to different halls. The process was quite simple, just submitted a form online and the office got back to me really quickly, giving me multiple options. Within a week I was living in new halls called Stenton Townhouses, with a nicer room, nicer kitchen, nicer flatmates and a overall more happy Adela. My halls are now on campus very close to all my lectures in a greener environment. I cannot say it was easy, leaving the place where I had all the friends I made so far, but now I know that it is not a problem to make it work.

I also have another activity that fills up my free time, which is work. I found a job at a place called Sprinkles Gelato, where I work about 2-3 times a week. It´s an ice-cream parlor, where we serve original italian gelato alongside with waffles and crepes. I must say it´s a very valuable experience for me, because I was used to a job where I worked for about 2-3 hours a day. I used to be a tour guide back at home, but this job entails me being there for 6-8 hours, which is much more exhausting, so it's another challenge I am taking on myself. I think it's essential for one's life to experience manual labour to be able to decide whether that is something they want to do during their life or not.