Say hello to the University of Stirling's latest graduate! After four years and a lot of hard work, I have somehow managed to receive a BSc in Psychology with first class honours! 

Tuesday evening, I zipped through on the train from Edinburgh to Stirling after work (still feels strange to say that!) and met my family at the station. I got a blessed night in a hotel - a stark change from the student halls I had been staying in temporarily - and a free breakfast the next morning before we all piled into the car and drove to campus. 

It was a lovely day, despite the splattering of rain towards the end and the fact that the entire ceremony reminded me of a school assembly... I was 'doffed' by none other than James Naughtie (it was bizarre putting a face to the voice that lilted out of our kitchen radio as I powered through the International Baccalaureate) and the keynote speaker was Dr Rita Colwell who was being given an honorary degree for her contributions to marine biotechnology and and environmental microbiology. Super interesting woman, very glad I had the opportunity to hear her speak.

Above all else, it was so wonderful to see all my friends again! I brought my 'goodbye book' - the notebook I've had at every leaving day and graduation I've had since I was 10 - and received some very lovely and heartfelt messages. Everyone was in good spirits and overall it was a brilliant day!

Time for some gratuitous photos, I think:

Hopefully we can manage Adult Life better than our robes... although me tangled in a robe with a glass of prosecco isn't changing any time soon
Doffed

The 'Rents
With Mama

With the Sibling
When I wrote In 10: Fourth Year, I didn't know whether I would be in England or Scotland, if I'd have a job or if I'd still be applying for them... All I really knew was that I really didn't want to leave Scotland. At all. I was predicting getting very emotional at graduation but having crossed the "so what are your plans after uni?" bridge by the time graduation came around, I was on much firmer footing  and therefore wasn't a teary mess... 

That's not to say I'm not sad to be leaving Stirling! I've made some amazing memories here and met lifelong friends. I'll miss orienting myself using the Wallace Monument, quiet walks around the loch to clear my head and the incredibly distracting view of Dumyat from the psychology labs...

So here's to four freshers weeks, 22 exams and approximately 60,000 words in essays. To ASH, Wallace Street, Haultain Street, Pendreich Way and Willow Court. To studying in two of the most beautiful countries in the world and climbing to the roof of Africa. To moral support, face paint, sea monkeys, climbing into buildings through windows, roast dinners at midnight, ceilidhs, pub crawls, adventures in the snow, impromptu road trips, hikes to the viewpoint, bonfire nights, open mics, zoo trips, barbecues, Game of Thrones viewings, pumpkin carving, flat banquets, and last but not least, a cardboard cutout of Zac Efron.

Time passes – Gardeners die – They are remembered
1 - Into the Woods
2 - October
3 - Bonfire Night
4 - Flat Christmas
5 - Dissertation Lab
6 - 'Adventure'
8 - Balquhidder and Loch Voil
8 - April Showers?

9 - Bluebells in the Hermitage Wood


10 - Riverside

At the risk of becoming far too emotional (I'll save that for the graduation post!), I'll try to keep things brief! This year has flown by faster than any other academic year in my memory. I've lived with wonderful people, conducted my own psychology experiment, written a hefty dissertation, and somehow still found the time to explore new parts of Scotland. 

My room is all packed into boxes ready to be loaded into the car and it hasn't quite hit me that I won't be returning to this beautiful campus in September. I won't have another year of attempting to navigate the labyrinth of Cottrell, the weekly pub quizzes at the union, or narrowly avoiding an altercation with the swans when walking to the Atrium... 

All I'll say is people better watch out at graduation. There will be enough bittersweet tears to create Loch Airthrey three times over. ;)

It's April and the weather is all over the place. When I had this post in mind, I thought I was going to be welcoming the return of the sunshine but this week it has decided to snow. It's late April and it's snowing. If that isn't a sign of climate change, I don't know what is. 

Regardless, last week my flat had a lovely picnic in the sunshine. We took a walk down from our halls and round the loch, passing by this nesting swan. The groundskeepers have set up a protective fence as the nest is very close to the path so the mamma swan is safe (and more importantly, so are we...)


Up on top of the hill, we sat to appreciate the sunshine and fresh air and eat nice food. April is a month I enjoy a lot due to its warmth (usually..) and a distinct lack of grass pollen that has me sneezing for most of May and into June... 


This little picnic turned into my first time geocaching! For those who don't know, geocaching is like a modern day treasure hunt. You download an app to your phone, turn on your GPS and it directs you towards the area where the cache is located. Once you're close enough, you have to scramble around and look for the cache! We successfully found the Blue Whale, logged our success in the little blue book and left something blue, as instructed! 


Other than this nice afternoon, this month has mainly been finishing up final bits and pieces for my undergraduate degree, so not a lot has happened. It's hard to believe I've handed in my last assignment now. Rather anticlimactically too, via online submission. After receiving my TurnItIn receipt, I sat back and had to marvel at how fast these past four years have gone. All I have to do now is turn up to graduation in June. It feels so strange. 


Side note: I was featured by the University of Stirling's student newspaper, The Brig! A big thank you to them. The article displays some of my favourite photos that I've taken (some of which aren't on the blog). 
Winter this year has been rather unpredictable. There were murmurs of the worst snows in decades during autumn which actually turned out to be a whole siege of rainstorms. While Stirling wasn't too badly affected compared to other areas of the UK, we did have some floods in town and winds that got dangerously high on campus. I was very nearly blown off the bridge during Storm Abigail.

Weather side, this semester saw my very last exam of my degree! Fourth year psychology students aren't supposed to have any exams but I'm on the deviant programme which means I had to drop back into third year to complete a course I couldn't do in Canada (I'm not a student delinquent, I promise). To honour the biannual tradition one last time, revision appropriately descended into insanity, but this time in the form of writing incredibly well-received cat-related practice questions for the entire course (I wasn't joking about the insanity). This largely coincided with my addiction to the app Neko Atsume for which I refuse to apologise. It's too cute.


Over the course of December, our flat decorated the kitchen and corridors with paper chains, snowflakes and wreaths all in time for our magnificent Christmas dinner. It was probably one of the finest dinners I've had (no offense, mum!) and was entirely down to my good friend Ayumi, whom I'm trying to convince to start a food blog. Everything was homemade, from the salmon en croute to the two types of stuffing, right down to the pesto for the crostini starters! 


Four starters, three different mains, heaps of potatoes and vegetables, and two desserts all on a student budget! Afterwards, we swapped presents for our Secret Santa, played a round of White Elephant and far too many horrifying rounds of Cards Against Humanity. 


Then it was off home for Christmas, this time by train. I had a time of it getting to Edinburgh Waverley thanks to an assortment of different delays at every change I had to make, but I eventually stumbled out of Kings Cross after having snapped some shots of the River Tyne when we stopped at Newcastle. 


Mum treated me to a trip to the National Theatre to see Jane Eyre not long after I got back. It was my first time at the NT and I wasn't disappointed! The performance was very impressive and featured a band centre-stage surrounded by a very minimalistic wooden set.

The walk back to the tube afterwards along Embankment was unintentionally torturous, providing me with a fantastic reason to stay in London after graduation. Not only do I have no idea what to do with myself once I have my degree but I have no idea where to be either. 


...Not letting myself dwell on that for long, I was on the road again to go to Manchester. It was my first time in the city and I was struck by how similar it is to London. They're both big, old, industrial cities and it's easy to see the history in all the buildings, though Manchester seems to enjoy tearing them down and building new ones. 


Giant Santa made of fairy lights notwithstanding, the town hall reminded me a lot of London's Natural History Museum and the Gay Village overlooked the canals, which reminded me of the Grand Union Canal. 


We were only there for two nights and unfortunately a lot of what we wanted to do was shut because it was Christmas Eve. I'm pretty disappointed we couldn't make it inside the John Rylands Library but I suppose it's an excuse to come back one day! That said, we did manage a bit of sightseeing, including a wander around Affleck's (Manchester's equivalent to Camden Market) and peek into the Royal Exchange Theatre which had this incredible stained glass roof. The theatre itself sits in the middle of the hall forming an arena and looks very futuristic. 


We also managed to get a table at at a gorgeous vegetarian restaurant called 1847 (so named because the Vegetarian Society was founded in that year) and I'm still dreaming about those onion bhajis...

Anyway! On Christmas Day, we drove to Warrington for Grandma's 90th birthday and Christmas dinner (in that order). It was a busy two days with a lot of food, family and festivities which got the better of Grandad as you can see... 


You'd think they'd have a quiet life at 90 but my grandparents were just recently interviewed for Radio 4's You and Yours! I don't know how long it will be available, but for now you can listen to them talking about their frankly palatial retirement home at the timestamp 30:45.

I had a nice and quiet New Years Eve (just the way I like it!) hanging out with Kiran's house bunny and celebrated the following day with a roast with our neighbours. We have a tradition of having a massive roast dinner as two families when we're all in London for Christmas and we managed to squeeze one in for New Years just in time. It was lovely with a lot of wonderful food but after my third roast dinner in a month, I'm confident I'll be heading back to uni the size of a house.
The further I get into this year, the more bittersweet I feel. Most of the time I'm on autopilot trying to get my work done and recruit participants for my dissertation study but every now and then, something will hit me and I get particularly struck with the fact that this is genuinely my final year as an undergraduate. 


Realistically, this was probably the last Bridge of Allan display I'll ever attend... which is a pretty jarring thought. A thought that if I dwell on long enough will, without fail, turn me into a panicked, spiralling mess of a human, spending the remainder of the day job hunting for positions and graduate schemes I can't yet apply for.

So let's not do that.


This was my third time attending the display in Strathallan Park (you'll remember my post from 2013) as I missed the last one due to my semester abroad. It definitely wasn't as cold as I remembered but maybe I've finally acclimated to the Scottish weather. Or maybe getting as close as possible to the perimeter around the bonfire was a smart idea.


As always, I took way too many photos in a very short space of time but some of them turned out nicely.






With the display over, we all filtered out of the park. On the walk back to campus with the masses of families and students who had come to see the show, I was left to mentally cross off another notable event from my final year. Gulp.
Long time, no post! I feel I've been neglecting the blog lately but it's only because I've been so busy and tied down to my course. Fourth years (apparently) don't have the time to go gallivanting off into the wilds of Scotland and instead have to be good little students and stay on campus managing a triple-weighted module (gulp).


That said, I can't complain. My wide windowsill in my palace of a room is home to my succulents and orchid as well as my little souvenirs from Bali, Tanzania, and Western Canada to remind me of all the travelling I did last year. Four separate continents in one year is an incredible feat.


A significant portion of my time is spent preparing for and carrying out my dissertation research. Psychology students get to produce their own original research in fourth year and I'm very pleased to be able to say I am working in the area of evolutionary psychology, something I find unendingly interesting, and on a project that should hopefully produce some significant results (I promise I will talk about it later!). 

I also got to help out with the Science Grrl fair that was hosted by the university. The reason this was monumental and worthy of mentioning on my blog is not in fact because I inspired the next generation of female scientists but because after we were packing everything up, I was able to try out the Psychology department's Oculus Rift set up. And oh man, was it fun! It's still very much in the beginning stages of its applications and graphics but I seriously cannot wait to see what the future will bring for VR. Partly due to the gaming possibilities but mostly due to the psychological significance.


When I'm not hounding people to participate in my study, I'm at yoga classes. I rejoined the gym this semester with an eye to get back on the elliptical (because I wouldn't have made it up Kilimanjaro without that beautiful machine, it really deserves more love) and tried out the inclusive yoga and pilates classes as well. I enjoy pilates a lot and had tried it before but it was my first time doing yoga and I absolutely fell in love. I already know my new year's resolution: to keep practicing until I can do a full backbend!


With the end of October comes Halloween of course. We got some pretty successful pumpkin carving done in our flat...


I spotted a gorgeous and suitably dramatic sunset from our floor...


And I made a very good vampire if I do say so myself! Please excuse the terrible Snapchat-quality but I had to show off my contact lenses! They worked so well!


Anyway, I am truly very sorry for the radio silence! Fingers crossed I get a bit of travelling in here and there but in the meantime you can find me on an assortment of social media. I do have some more local posts planned for November so watch this space!
On the cusp of catching what may be my last round of freshers flu, I can now greet you as an aged fourth year. A large portion of my time this semester is spent preparing for my final year research project/dissertation. I'm so, so, SO excited to be researching in such an interesting area of psychology... but the details will have to wait for another post when I'm able to give more information away without compromising the results...

I'm living back on campus again this year in an astonishingly gorgeous en-suite room in the new halls. I've got a beautiful view overlooking the Hermitage Woods towards the back of campus which is going to look amazing when autumn really takes over. 

On one of my less busy days, I decided to make the most of the unseasonably good weather Scotland was having and take my camera for a walk into the woods.  


One way or another, Scotland has been having a lot of blue skies for September. I'm sure this post will jinx it but it's been very refreshing after a comparably damp summer in London. As this semester ramps up with work, I won't have much free time to go gallivanting into nature (nor will I be able to if the reports about this coming winter are to be believed!), so it's been nice to seize the opportunity while I can.

Mainly, I was letting my 50mm lens have a bit of an outing. It's rarely my go-to lens due to my SLR's cropped sensor, meaning I can rarely get wide enough for my subject when it's attached.  


Contrasting with that, I do love using prime lenses quite simply for the fact that it forces you to think about framing a lot more. When (and only when) time is on your side and you're able to play about with angles and focus, you can get pretty creative. 


The low F stop capability also doubles up as a pretty nice macro too, allowing for a lot of bokeh...


These pictures makes it look like a tranquil woodland. For the most part it is, although I was also almost run over by a mountain biking group who were taking the slopes a little too fast.


I found a fantastic opening in the trees where I could spy both the Wallace Monument and Stirling Castle. The skies here reminded me a lot of my trip up Mount Douglas back in Victoria, which is pretty appropriate as it was around this time of year when I made that trip as well. 


I descended from the hilly forest thinking that was all the hiking I'd be doing both that day and that week but two bonfires had been organised at the viewpoint/Witches Craig half way up Dumyat hill itself. The view in and of itself from there is incredible but the route up is certainly tricky and steep in places. Despite the fact I've done the walk more times than I can count, it was a little daunting to realise that, once we had the fire going, we'd be going down in the dark!


It was definitely worth it for the view of Stirling and its surrounding towns and villages. Of all the areas of photography, I find night photography the most difficult. It's an area I really ought to focus on (particularly now I have a lens that can cope with low light!) but I'm pretty pleased with how this misty shot has turned out.