An extremely late take on the local elections

First of all, apologies for the late post, third year is definitely beginning to take its toll on me spare time now.

Ahh, how sweet this is. There was nothing better than seeing just about every Lib Dem in the country repeating "this has been an extremely disappointing night for our party", or words to that effect. The message was loud and clear from voters, the coalition government is not working. Yes, you may argue, mid-terms are always like this. However, what is different this time is that the Tories do not have a majority in the House of Commons. They only need to lose a few seats in the next election to Labour and they will be out on their arses.

The real dent, however, will be to the Lib Dems. Normally, large student areas are a stronghold for the Lib Dems. Not this time. Headingley: Labour gain. Hyde Park & Woodhouse: Labour gain. Rusholme: Labour gain. Withington: Labour gain. The sooner the Lib Dems are out of the office, the better. Echoing the words of Chuka Umunna, I actually respect the Conservatives a lot more. They may have a view different to that of us Lefties, but at least they stand by that viewpoint and try and explain their logic behind that. In contrast, Nick Clegg and his travelling circus pretend to oppose the Tory propositions, but still happily vote them through parliament, all to stay up David Cameron's arse.

Of course a lot of this bitterness is still to do with the tuition fees. You know, Scotland can give their students free tuition, but for some reason, England sees it as necessary to charge us £9,000 a year. Ridiculous. And yes, undergraduates can get loans blah blah blah. What infuriates me the most is that they haven't considered what this means for postgraduates. I am currently trying to get onto a graduate entry dentistry course, which comes with NHS bursaries and student loans. Only 5 places do this in the UK, each ranging from about 20-60 places on the course per intake. So you can imagine the level of competition there is. There is also the option to do the standard undergraduate course with your degree going in your favour, and there being far more options and places, meaning it is far more likely to get a place. The major HOWEVER here is that you cannot get any funding as it is a second degree without 'graduate-entry' status. Now, before the coalition government, this would've meant finding around £15,000. Very difficult, but with help from parents, bank loans and savings, it was possible. Now, for undergrad dentistry, I would have to magic up £45,000. Christ, I could have a new Range Rover that. Therefore, I cannot possibly afford the less competitive course!

I really didn't want to descend into that sort of rant, but it gets me so riled even talking about it. The whole point of the coalition was to compromise on these sorts of decisions. Torys want £9k, Lib Dems want free education. Surely the compromise would be to keep fees as they are?!

As always though, my view as student will be shot down by most. It seems these days that a student with a political viewpoint is instantly a moron. However, this is an issue that is directly putting a strain on my life goals, so I'll be as vocal about is I see fit. To summarise, seeing the coalitions faces at this election was priceless. Here's to 2015!

Dissertation Finito!

It's finished! Yes, after long hours of blood, sweat, PubMed downtime, MS Word crashes, MS Word layout fuckups, hungover practice presentations and tears, my dissertation is finally finished! I took it in to get it bound the other day, and (rather begrudgingly) handed it in. After all the aggro surrounding it, it was a bit of an anti-climax when the guy at the undergrad office simply said "thanks, sign here please..." and that was it. 70% of my Research Project module was disappearing before my eyes, to appear on some random tutors desk for them to (metaphorically) tear to pieces. Another 20% was a simple mark awarded based on how our supervisors think we did, effort-wise. Easy. However, the last 10% was the most dreaded part....the presentation.

I already had done a practice run through with my supervisor, which I stupidly attempted hungover, and it wasn't really a good preparation for the main thing. The basic setup was that I had to do a 10 minute presentation on my dissertation to an audience of other students, along with 2 academic members of staff, with 5 minutes of questions after it.

The presentation was fine, far better than I expected! The questions started off ok...the student questions were fine, managed to brave one half of the staff's questions... then came the second member of staff, who basically used me as a scratching post. She just would not let this drop! It was clear from her questions that she basically thought my alternative model was a load of shit, and she would come out with question after question until one of them would trip me up. In the end, after the question time going up to almost 10 minutes (which I deemed pretty unfair seeing as most others got 5 questions tops), she came out with a couple that I couldn't answer. She got me. It's a shame, because it all went well up to that point, I just hope I won't get harshly marked for it.

So now, 100% of the module is done...which means, one more exam and then I'm DONE! I can't wait, it's flown so much, and I'm 50/50 as to whether I'm sad or glad to be graduating. I do sort of wish I had used the time more wisely, got a bit more involved at Uni, but I guess that's a lesson learned for my next degree.