Will you sit down?

As a child have you ever been shouted at because you have ants in your pants and cannot sit down? I am sure, that happened to me a lot when I was a child, especially when I was in secondary school. I found sitting down a struggle, I think it is because I just had so much in my head and needed to get it out, but also I always felt that I needed to constantly move.

Did you ever ask to go to the toilet at school and take the long route?

• Yes
• No

I would always ask to go to the toilet, and go to the toilet furthest away and walk a few laps, re-do my hair a few times in the mirror, go on my phone and then get back to the lesson.

I had woken up late in the afternoon and made myself a pot noodle as I needed to get on with catching up with my lectures. I sat down in my university room, with my pot noodles, a bag of crisps and a glass of water, ready to take notes and read through texts. Within 3 minutes, I was already sat on my phone scrolling through TikTok (SimplyCC04) and making up an excuse as to why I couldn't work at that moment in time. After some time on my phone, I took some notes for about 10 minutes and went back to my phone. I tried putting on some music, but that didn't work, I spent ages looking through Spotify to choose the perfect song.

I decided, it wasn't worth it and got up to speak to my flatmate who was working hard in the kitchen. I asked her if she would go outside with me as I needed to burn off some energy. I took my skipping rope outside and skipped on the grass, which was difficult. Part of me felt embarrassed, but the other half was annoyed that I couldn't just sit down and work. We moved over to the concrete when some year 8 boys rode through on their bikes, trying to chat both of us up. It was so sad, and funny at the same time.

Find your way of working, and then work like that. Everyone works at different paces and times, everyone has a different method of working. Fast forward some time...I found that for me the best way to work is in little stages. If I am in the zone and I can work for some time, then I will, but otherwise, I break it into segments.

After dinner, we invited some of our friends to play games in our kitchen. We played What

Do You Meme? and a few other games. It was nice to just have a games night, rather than drinking and dealing with anyone drunk. I had a good time and it made me feel so much better about being at university and living with my flatmates.

When moving to university, something to pack is card games. You are going to find someone who likes games, or someone will invite you to games night. All the games are fun, especially the silly ones. I would suggest games such as Cards Against Humanities Drunk, Stoned or Stupid, mainly just adult games that are fun to break tensions.

I went to bed feeling happy and content, I felt that I found somewhere to belong and just went to bed beaming.

Quote of the blog:

"It's like your brain keeps switching between 30 different channels and somebody else has the remote" - this is how my brain felt when trying to sit down and work, or when I was in secondary school trying to sit down and listen to the class teacher. If you feel this way sometimes, you are not alone. You need to find a way to help yourself, it takes a lot of time and effort, but once you get there you will be proud of yourself.

The next blog has nothing to do with university, but I was at university at the time and thought it would be good to include this topic.