In the lead up to Christmas there is always a plethora of events going on in Lancaster. Christmas themed clubbing nights out, society end of term socials and general celebrations of completed exams and coursework. Last week I attended an art exhibition in the centre of Lancaster town with one of my housemates. All the artists involved were PhD Fine Art students, who had come together to put on an exhibition of what they had been working on that term. The event was based in The Storey near the railway station, so after a quick bus ride, it only took five minutes to walk the rest of the way. Upon entering the exhibition hall, we were plied with free glasses of wine and a programme of the work on display. Truly, the talent of the artists was phenomenal. My housemate and I happily spent an hour gazing upon watercolours, canvases thick with paint, apocalyptic screens of mushroom clouds that were represented as chicken drumsticks, photographs full of white silhouettes where the people in them had been removed and heavily graffitied books that had been published many decades ago, judging by the state of their spines and the discolouration of their pages. All the artists were in attendance and available for answering questions concerning their work, so we took full advantage by asking what the inspirational origins, and the underlying meaning, behind their creative accomplishments were. With many abstract pieces on show, this was frequently necessary!

 

Such cultural events serve to break up the stresses of exams and the inevitable and much dreaded end of term deadlines. Brief periods of respite are incredibly helpful in allowing you to re-approach work with a refreshed and alert mind and can help no end in increasing motivation.

The end is in sight! This week saw the last RocStock of term, my only exam of the term over and the end of my term as PhilSoc treasurer. Everything seems to be drawing to a neat close with only essays to finish off and a karaoke to get through next Monday;  not that this week went at all smoothly as our headlining band pulled out of our RocStock event a night before, typically the one thing I didn’t revise came up on my exam as the biggest question and, well, I still have three essays to finish. With this in mind, this week I will offer a little advice, or at least my experience, on surviving the final few weeks.

 

The last couple weeks of term can be considered the homeward straight where it becomes both the hardest and most important time to resist temptations of student life. This is especially the case for first term as, on the run up to Christmas, societies’ hold their special events, the execs want to have Christmas meals and campus has its Christmas market. The holiday season mood also gets people feeling frivolous and so impromptu drinks and nights out are even more tempting. For me the only way to handle this in previous years has been to essentially lock myself in my room and not come out until I’d done enough work to justify it (albeit this is a slippery slope given that I got to set my own standards, and I was incredibly lenient when it came to myself.) This year I will be trying something slightly different and working as if it was a 9 to 5 (maybe 7) job. Whilst this still means I can’t really go out of an evening or drink much more than the odd solitary ale, it may mean that I won’t be running about like a headless chicken come deadline day; I will let you know how that works out.

 

At the very least it should also help to save the pennies as all this extra socialising, on top of present buying, will leave your bank account in a sorry state if you’re not careful. One way to get around this is agree on a maximum cost for presents with friends or to agree to only get ‘silly’ presents so neither of you breaks the bank; similarly you could just make an agreement not to buy each other presents, but risk this getting awkward when one party decides to buy one anyway. The other way is to budget in everything so you know exactly what you will be spending, including ‘goodbye nights out’ and travel costs to get home, which are costs most easily forgotten yet some of the bulkiest. Having said that, budget a little extra to treat yourself in the final few weeks as a box of mince pies knocking around and maybe some sneaky mulled wine really can help to lift the mood and get you through to the end relatively unscathed.