A Life Update: Growing Up

It has been a while. To be honest, the past few months have been amongst the most intense months of my life because of how busy every day has been with learning to drive, having a job, going out with friends, and studying at Sixth Form. I have been wanting to get back into writing blog posts for a while now, and I feel that I am currently at a good place with everything, so hopefully, this will be the first of many.

This post is split into different sections, discussing each major event that has happened in recent months. I will start with the biggest one, Sixth Form. As I previously mentioned, I am studying Maths, Physics at Chemistry which means I have not made it easy for myself. I was planning to also complete an EPQ, which is a side project worth half of an A-Level, but my school could not arrange it, so I just stuck with my three original subjects. I am enjoying all three of them now that I have got stuck into them and understand what is going on. On the contrary to my post about University, I am almost certain that I would like to study Physics at University. It seems like the only subject I could see myself having a genuine interest in. Chemistry was also an option but the University course contains too many Biology modules, which put me off entirely.

Aside from the study side of it, Sixth Form has been fairly enjoyable. I have a great set of friends that I have enjoyed many studies and break times with, which have made the stress of everyday Sixth Form life much more bearable. I am not saying I love it, but I no longer dislike going to school which is a major positive compared to my opinion of school before this year. Hopefully, this positive attitude will continue through the next two years.

The next topic is my first job. I applied for the job on Monday, had the interview on Wednesday, and then had my first shift on Saturday. That first shift was 9 hours which was horrendous in terms of anxiety, but I managed to push through and since then I have continued to improve. This happened in November, so it was been a long journey but I feel much more comfortable in my position there now. They initially hired me as a Christmas temp, but after heavily working on my communication and retail skills I proved that I was a good enough member of their team to be kept on. At this current moment, I still feel slightly anxious before every shift, but once I’m there I feel much better than I used to. I guess that is largely down to knowing that I can be an asset to the team now because I can do everything that they ask me to do. There are still skills I need to work on obviously, but I continuously remind myself that this is my first job and I am still learning so I cannot do everything perfectly. The main benefit of having a job is being able to earn your own money, but perhaps more importantly it has drastically improved my confidence in speaking to people.

The third stressful experience has been learning to drive. I have always wanted to be able to drive, but what I did not expect was how stressful it would be. At this current moment, I can drive so I enjoy the lessons, and my instructor has been amazing throughout the entire process. However, in the beginning, I found the entire experience extremely stress-inducing because there were so many unpredictable and new elements/actions that I had to learn from scratch. Additionally, I get extremely anxious before exams so before my theory test, which I passed, and now just before my practical test, all I can associate driving with is the pressure I feel to pass. Therefore I cannot enjoy the learning process as much as I would like to. Besides that, the thought of having my car and being able to drive wherever and whenever I want is very exciting, so that is the thought I am focusing on currently.

One thing that is going great at the moment is the social aspect of my life. I am going out almost every week with different friends, shopping and having meals, which is just really fun. We have been getting the bus all over the place and since one of my friends can now drive she has even taken me out in her car, which is strange because it doesn’t feel like too long ago that we were kids. This aspect of growing up is the thing I enjoy the most because you can go out and not care about what anyone around you thinks, which is something that I have been able to do more and more.

Overall, I just thought that I would share my thoughts on everything for my first post in a while. Over the next few weeks and months, I hope to explore more about University, specifically exploring topics of Physics that interest me. I also want to do more of these posts where I talk about everything happening in my life because those are the ones I enjoy writing the most. I hope you enjoyed reading this post and will stay around for the ones I have planned for the future. Thank you.