PRO - I'm down in High Wycombe at my dads

CON - Dad is speaking AT me BLAAAH

PRO - Mossfest done and dusted, no one noticed how many times I totally forgot what song we were doing!

CON - My laptop DIED!

PRO - Salem ad Jasper are the most hillarious cats ever

CON - I miss the North a little...but just a little!

PRO - I don't have lectures till Wednesday

CON - I forgot I was meant to meet Rach tomorrow!

Opportunity is behind every door when we are open to new ideas!

I have four options for after uni three of which include foreign countries ...scary yes but I'm opting for exciting! who knows what'll happen...but it doesn't look like I'll be staying still for too long!

We have nothing to fear but fear itself...and we deffinately have no reason to fear our future!

1)  I love the sun in Winter! It's beautiful and makes me smile EVERY TIME!

2)  Dinner is always better when there's a sense of occasion and you have excellent company...
...there was both tonight!

Silence is the language God speaks.
And everything else
is a bad translation.

~Thomas Keating~

"You are my sweetest downfall
I loved you first, I loved you first
Beneath the sheets of paper lies my truth
I have to go, I have to go
Your hair was long when we first met..."

The lyrics to the opening verse of Regina Spektos Samson are beautiful! There are many other words that could be used to describe them, but I think beautiful sums up exactly how I feel about them! I still remeber the first time I heard this song and how it simply made me stop and listen.

This past month I have had this song doing laps of my head, and when I thought it was going...I found myself sat around a piano singing it! Rather than have a post dedicated to the feelings that Ms Spektor causes to stir inside me when I listen to her music I thought I would instead share my tohughts on a certain part of the first verse.

I loved you first...it seems simple enough; but then you start to think bout the value of this statement and if it has any at all. How can one be certain that they are the first, what are you first to? what time scale are you working towards? What's so good about first? First has no measure when it comes to love. Also there is no measure of love, the whole concept is subjective. Life is not a race in the strictest sense. Things do not always follow an order, and even when there is order in things chaos may still ensue.

I enjoy the chaotic elements in life and the excitement hidden in not knowing what may come next. First means minimal in realists terms. Achieving your goal first, or quickest may seem like the completion of one's goal but the true test starts in maintaining all those things that you have to do to achieve your goal and staying on top of the game. Being first just means you have longer to work at something.

...as Imogen Heap sings...There is beauty in the breakdown...and I'm a good fan of living through the process and not getting cause up in the end. What's the point in the journey if you don't enjoy the ride!?

Regina can be found hiding here

I started with an interest in Business and Economics and the science and theory behind the two; I leave with an insane passion for Political Theory wanting to read it all and just sit and think...and then argue with people about it...I mean discuss! In the past three years I have been to four new countries, made many friends and fashioned so many memories I wouldn't know where to start counting! I have grown as a person in so many ways and have pushed myself in areas I'd never considered. I m a better friend, daughter, aunt cousin ....it continues. I am leaving university a better rounded, more mature person; even thought sometimes I have questioned why I am even here at all. The experiences of the past three years are priceless and I will carry them with me forever. My future has been shaped by those I have interacted with here and the choices and decisions I have made, they are forever etched on my heart. When I am old and grey I can already tell that these are some of the times I will look back on most fondly. There is magic in these streets.

As I walked about campus today laughing at my degree I felt comfortable. That campus feels like home. I saw so many familiar faces from lectures, tutorials, seminars, halls. Nearly every corner I turned unveiled another person who has shared my experiences of the past 36 months.

I was laughing about my degree as I found myself speed walking to John Rylands, thinking to myself that only Political theory could make me feel so excited about Protest and Punishment, even Corruption managed to raise a smile out of me.  I love my scholarly puruits even tho I'm not best suited for academia; it doesn't stop me enjoying it.

Ten weeks.... that is it! What a disturbing thought! After that I will be revising, then some exams... [I think it's two] and that's me done! Where have the past three years gone!?

I was speaking to an old friend and reading some old emails when we ended up in one of those chats that get you thinking. The outcome of the talk was this...I really do not like manipulative people! I've had far too many encounters with people who fit quite snuggly under this umbrella shooting their fiery darts from under their cover!

Stop trying to mold me into something I'm not, into something you'd prefer, into something you wish I was!

I am me, flaws and all! I know I'm flawed, there are things I know that I need to work on! I can think of enough things for me to be working on, not to need someone to list off all the things that they may, or may not like about me for the purpose of me changing to please them! It's a pretty selfish outlook which ever way you look at it! If you have a problem with someone then that is where the problem lies...with you!

This is not a rant!...nor is it a disclaimer... but while talking I realised how often in the past people have felt it their place to tell me where I am going wrong and all of the places in which I can improve. I've also sat by and watched my friends question their own self worth because of something that someone has said to them, taking no though of the implications. Maybe other people need to stop being so judgement alnd self righteous. We all need to take an inward look and see if we are the best we can be befor we even think about telling someone else how they should be. Where do peoepl get off thinking that is their right?

There are things that I am working on changing because I feel that I would be a better person if I do so, that change is for me not because someone else thinks I should! If I change things that I do, or how I conduct myself just because someone else has told me to, then all I am doing is conforming to ther image of what I should be. I'm quite happy with myself the way I am and in a world of nearly seven billion I think I'll manage just fine ignoring the critics! If you spend your life trying to change with the purpose of pleasing others in mind, when are you going to stop and be yourself and just get on and live your life... you've got to start sometime! Wether in friendship circles, relationships or even family groups changing to please another by fitting to the mold they have set just restricts you from fulfilling your full potential and being all you could be. Why be with someone if you want them to change who they are? why claim to be someone's friend if you only tolerate them  while they aren't as you wish?

...as the title states; it's like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die...you're poisoning yourself while trying to change someone else; it's never going to have the desired effect and you end up doing more damage than good!

I am me! I am not someone's ball of clay to be molded as they see fit! take me as I am...

...or don't ...it's as simple as that!





Here's to living in a flawed reality where everyone is themselves and not some weird twisted Alice in Wonderland type place...please?!

As predicted the joys of exams took over for the latter half of January and the first hing to disappear was my blog into the technological ether that is the internet! Painful as revision can be (...global justice was painful beyond belief!) I found myself enjoying my revision for the Corruption module that I had detested during the term! Going through my notes I found myself reflecting on many of the points scrawled down . So these don't go to waste the next few posts will most likely be expanding on points I hve found in text books or excercise books and what I have thought about them.

One of the first ones was a quick fleeting comment from a passage in Skinner where he refers to Laziness and Ambition as twin evils. Adding some context I was revising republicanism; not the American party "The Republicans" but the idea of Republics such as Sparta! All was done in support of the Republic, anything which was not empowering the republic was seen as being not of virtue and therefor corrupt. Keeping this in mind the idea of laziness and ambition being the lrgest evils of equal strength makes sense; laziness being the refusal to take upon themselves the burden of fighting for the cause whatever the cause may be, coupled with ambition blinding individuals to the greater good. I thought for a while what I thought may be the evils of today and after much thought I decided upon Selfishness and idleness....which is pretty much the same as laziness and ambition, wether in a republic or a democracy a love for your fellow man coupled with  good work ethic always come out on top.