So, here I am, a few months into the final year of my undergraduate degree and how is it going? I don’t quite know yet.

I started the year by telling myself I would stay completely on top of all my work. It is final year after all and it’s time to get organised. Honestly, it has worked so far, I managed to hand in my first assignment a day early and it felt great. Let’s see if this mentality will last throughout the year, I hope it does.

Planning your time until deadlines helps so much in terms of minimising stress levels about getting everything done. Weekly goals help dilute that hefty deadline into little manageable ones and before you know it the deadline comes around and you only have a few things left to do to finish it off. This has massively helped me last term, as well as my previous years, but it is so much more relevant now with the extra workload that comes with final year. Yes, heavier workload. The rumours are true.

I feel like my course has eased us in so far, but now the work is really going to hit and show us what final year is really like. I recently had a ‘writing week’ for my dissertation proposal and I didn’t have any uni to attend, so I took some time to relax. I even went home (still doing some work of course). However, I have this looming sense of being in the calm before the storm. Things have been going well so far, I have kept on top of the workload. But I know things are about to step up and the workload will increase significantly as I move along further into the year.

For now, I have handed in just one assignment and I am awaiting my results. It is scary that this is the first assignment where I can’t reassure myself, “It doesn’t count toward my final grade anyway so if I do terribly then in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t actually matter – learn from it, move on.”

That’s the thing about final year; it is all very… final. Every grade counts toward that final degree so if you are aiming high for a first there is no room for error, which is a daunting thought. The result could knock or boost my confidence, spur me on or demotivate me completely – I am worried to say the least. Although, no matter what the result, I need to take it and work with it. If I do well then great, if I don’t do well then rather than let it get me down and negatively affect my view on future assignments, I need to use it to motivate me to do better next time and not let it define my final grade.