NYE | Thoughts and Resolutions

Source: Sarah Ackerman, Flickr.

I have been making new year's resolutions for as long as I can remember - eat healthy, do more exercise, get more sleep, help more around the house etc - and this year is no exception. 

My resolution for 2015 is to be more organised. I feel like this encompasses a lot; which is why I chose it. It covers housework, university work, going to bed earlier, meeting friends, writing posts for my blog, attending lectures - just about everything in my life at the moment is centred around having a plan and being organised.

My first semester of uni proved to be a very stressful one, and I found myself falling asleep in the back of lectures and seminars because of the lack of sleep I got on a night due to stress. So to avoid this, I have decided that improving my organisational skills and being more pro-active towards actually getting stuff done will help me find my second semester a lot more fun and a lot less like the bane of my existence.

This year I'm spending NYE with a small group of close friends, which I love because it makes a change from spending it with my family (which is what I had been doing up until last year). I'm looking forward to socialising, drinking and just generally spending time with people that make me happy. 

I love the new year, it makes me feel like anything is possible for the 12 months ahead of me. I always find myself thinking about the range of different twists and turns my life could take in the next year, and that feeling combined with the fact that it is the first few seconds of a brand new year makes me very excited. 

What are your resolutions for 2015? And how are you planning on celebrating the new year?

Christmas away from home

Christmas is strange for me this year as it's the first one where I will have spent the build up to it away from home.

Although I'll be home with my family in time to put up the Christmas tree and decorate the house, and I will have around a week and a half to spend with them before Christmas day, it's still felt a bit odd getting excited about a time that is normally spent with family away from them.

That said, Christmas in Lincoln has still felt special. The town is already pretty enough without lights, but when they decorated the whole of the high street with Christmas ones it just made it look even nicer. 

The flat all really got into the Christmas spirit and decided to buy a tree, decorate the windows with snow spray and put some lights up. I was so proud of the way it turned out, and this weekend we're exchanging Secret Santa presents at the same time as having a lovely Christmas dinner!

Holidays are coming

 Not only that, but at the beginning of this week the 'Holidays are coming' Coca-Cola truck made it's way to Lincoln for the day. My friend and I went down to get a free can of coke and a selfie with the truck itself (however the ones we got are far too uncool to ever grace the fact of the internet).

They also had the Christmas market here (that I was far too cold to take photos of), with stalls selling mulled wine, mince pies and hot chocolate, a choir singing in the background and plenty of places to pick up quirky little stocking-filler presents. 

I also went for a skate on an outdoor ice rink with my course mates, which is the most fun I have ever had whilst feeling completely not in control of my limbs. I've never ice skated outdoors before - I felt like I was in some kind of cliche Christmas film or something!

I think I've realised that although Christmas is always going to be a family-orientated holiday for me, the feeling that Christmas gives is so infectious you can't help but get into the spirit no matter where you are. 

Providing you're with people that love Christmas as much as you do, you can almost guarantee that you'll have an amazing time anywhere.

Why we need the Porn Protest

So today, people have gathered outside of Parliament to sit on one another's faces as a protest against new laws restricting pornography in Britain.

On December 1st, new legislation banned a number of acts from being filmed in British porn, such as caning, spanking, face sitting and, brace yourselves, female ejaculation.

Yep, you heard me. Female ejaculation.

I'm sure you guys don't need me to talk about how damaging this is in our supposedly sexually liberated, gender-equal, 21st Century. But just for fun I'm gonna do it anyway.

Banning acts that put women in a position of power in porn, such as face sitting, as well as making the documentation of female ejaculation illegal while keeping male ejaculation 100% legal, promotes the idea that a woman is only involved in sex to help the man achieve pleasure. 

In short, it creates the idea that a man should use a woman as means to an end.

These new laws instill further into our society the idea that a woman should not have sex for her own enjoyment, implies that any woman who does enjoy sex is vulgar, and insinuates that any behaviour of this kind should not be seen. 

If they don't show females enjoying sex in porn, how is it going to be acceptable for women to enjoy sex in real life?

The ironic thing is that this has been introduced as a way to 'protect' women and young people. But to me, and everyone else currently sitting on each other's face outside of Parliament, all it's seemed to do is oppress female sexuality even further.

And that is why we need the Porn Protest.

You know you're a university student when...

1. You can look back over the past two weeks and pinpoint at least one embarrassing thing you said or did whilst drunk/out with friends/at a party etc.

2. You've had chocolate for breakfast

3. You've slept until mid-afternoon, done nothing until around 9pm and then got in the shower to get ready to go on a night out

4. You've experienced the feeling of complete outrage because you planned your whole afternoon out to finish all your work, and then you realise you need to go food shopping...

5. You try to make food like your parents make back home and it turns out to be a complete mess

6. You've attended a seminar that in no way relates to what your lecture was about

7. You've stayed up until half 4 in the morning trying to meet your deadlines

8. You decide that own-brand ketchup is worth the sacrifice of it actually tasting halfway decent in order to save 50p

9. You've taken a trolley from a supermarket and brought it back to the flat with you to save having to carry your weekly shop

10. You literally don't care who sees you in your pajamas with no make up on anymore 

11. You've sat in the back of a lecture trying and failing to keep your eyes open when all you want to do is sleep

12. You start hand-washing your underwear because you can't justify paying so much money for such a small load

13. You've received the obligatory weekly text off your grandma asking if 'you're sleeping well and eating right and not drinking too much'

14. You see the same people on nights out constantly, but you've never seen them in the light of day and you're almost certain they're actually a vampire

15. You wake up in the morning to find that God exists in the form of half eaten take away from the night before