This stress is unreal.

I'm dying of lack of sleep, over-fried brain, some out-of-nowhere motivation to revise when I should be resting. I'm pretty much on zombie mode right now because of exams. 

So I had my 5th exam today and surprisingly what I thought would be a disaster actually turned out pretty well. Considering I revised less than half of the content, two questions actually came up that I could answer! I was celebrating before I even started the first question. Although they were strangely worded questions, I feel like I managed to answer the question properly to some extent. I made sure to include all the keywords from the questions into my answer so that also helps. Well, it was not like I had the choice to do any other questions was there? 

I had a very sleepless night yesterday, when I woke up, I felt worse than the day where I only had 3 hours of sleep and a day out with my boyfriend straight after. Either I woke up whilst I was in deep sleep or I actually didn't get much sleep at all. I remember tossing and turning for a good hour before I actually dozed off and then I remember waking up sometime around 5-6am and then managing to get back to sleep. Disrupted sleep sucks. I can never get used to sleeping at 1-2am and waking up early. 

Anyway, the point is that driving back home after my exam was hellish. Not to mention, some golf tournament had me stuck in traffic near my uni for a good 20 minutes. 

Last exam in 5 days! The only positive thing in life at the moment.

I need to stop staying up till 5am every day.

Although I've proven to myself that I can go and sit an exam with 3 hours of sleep it's not ideal for me. This is a result of not having any 9am lectures for the whole of my third year - it's turned me into a lazy shit at most. How can psychology have lectures set at times like 4pm-6pm but the exams are mostly 9am?

Another reason why I've been up at such nocturnal times is my boyfriend. He's completely screwed up his sleeping pattern derp. So we have phone calls at 3am, ending around 5am. I don't think either of us can fix our sleeping patterns, it's just not possible unless we have 9-5 jobs. On another note, he really made me smile yesterday, he told me he left me a note from 3 months ago when he first came round to my house LOL. Obviously, I didn't find it so I was searching around for it and eventually found it crumpled up in the corner of my bookcase squashed by my huge folder. Ahh he's so adorable.

So I'm supposed to be revising right now but I've become so lazy because freedom is almost here. Instead, I'm sat waiting around for my deliveries. I bought quite a lot of clothes to last me for the summer (providing there is a summer this year), I bought a cardboard box (yes, a cardboard box) so I can ship my books away for money - I'm getting £60 for most of my textbooks. It sounds like a lot but it really isn't considering all of my books were bought for around £300 =/ I'm getting like 1/5 of the money back... sigh. But oh well, they won't do any good sitting on my bookshelf and will just end up in the attic a few years later. Finally saying goodbye to psychology!

On the positive side, I've been losing weight - the pill didn't really affect my weight, actually, it made me lose weight. I'm back on the patch now which didn't do much to my weight but I really feel like it makes me retain weight easier, so I might need to be careful. It's not worth staying on the pill for big breasts and weight loss in exchange for depression and paranoia.

Mum and Dad are going to Edinburgh on Sunday for a 3 day holiday. I hope they don't get lost, we've taught Mum how to use Google maps on her phone like 100 times already. Somehow she's still under the impression that she can't use Google maps on holiday even though she's in England. She thinks she can only use Google maps in London LOL. My parents and technology really don't go well together, yet they both have an iPhone each. Doh.

Time to revise...

2 more weeks.

Well, less than that actually.

Less than 2 weeks until I get my freedom back.

Less than 2 weeks until can say goodbye to psychology - these 3 years of study has taught me more about myself than I could ever have thought. I remember choosing psychology because I didn't have a strong interest in anything else at the time. It was pretty much choose a degree for the sake of being a graduate by the next three years. The first year was horrible because I wasn't sure if I actually wanted to do this, I didn't make the effort in revision and ended up with a bad grade by the end. Second year was when I started developing an interest for the things I was learning. At that time, I had learnt a lot about myself and somehow, the interest in speech and language sciences became my interest by the end. Now third year, I found reality, had time to think about my future, found my future, and now working towards my future.

I don't regret taking psychology at all, but if I could turn back time, I do wish I took something that could get me a degree-related job, personally. For me, it was more like I went with my interests rather than think about what could benefit me the most. Ideally, we all want to graduate and use our knowledge in that subject in our future jobs. The lack of jobs in the scientific field is actually striking - the majority of people I know that study science at degree level either go on to study PhD or end up getting a job completely unrelated to their field. But like I said, I don't regret taking psychology, it hasn't led me into a dead end, in fact, it's made me a better person. I finally understand myself compared to the me 2 years ago who was unsure of many things, unconfident in myself, a complete worry-wart. The only downside is me trying to analyse the behaviour of everyone around me - damn psychology influence. Not saying people have a hard time finding a job doing psychology though, it's all about transferrable skills rather than the degree you study. True enough, some jobs want you have a degree in something specific, but those jobs are highly specialised ones. No one said someone that studies psychology can't go on to work in an office.

So it's quite sad to be leaving Royal Holloway, July 19th will be my last time at Royal Holloway when I graduate. I'll be saying bye bye to the castle, bye bye to the Wolfson building, bye bye to Bedford library which is always overpacked. I wouldn't say I had much of a student life living at home for 2 years and only being out there in the countryside for my first year. But during the first year, I met many awesome people who I still remain friends with and hopefully will always be a part of my life even after we go separate ways. It's always hard to keep contact with friends when you part ways but if they really matter in your life, you'll make the effort to keep them in your life, and they would do the same if you mattered to them equally as much.

With that said, roll on the last 2 exams. I CAN'T WAIT TO BE OFFICIALLY A GRADUATE.

Microgynon 30.

DO NOT TAKE THIS PILL.

After doing some extensive research on this pill, I've come to the conclusion that many women experience the same side effects that are less well documented in the leaflet and are actually side effects that are more damaging to everyday life than the ones that are listed.

Microgynon 30 is a contraceptive pill, like all contraceptive pills, they contain a fair amount of estrogen and progesterone (female hormones) to prevent ovulation every month, hence, preventing pregnancy. Side effects listed are things like weight changes, skin irritations, bloatedness, nausea, headaches, breast tenderness etc etc. Depression is sometimes listed but they really fail to highlight how damaging the depression can be.

Different women respond differently to medications but from a personal experience, microgynon made my life hell for 3 weeks. Within the 2nd week, I started to feel depressed, anxious and paranoid, the only thing distracting me from these feelings was exams. Nothing changed about my concentration but when nightfall came especially, I became a different person, I would doubt everyone and everything. My relationship became a little strained when it was comfortable before, I started doubting my boyfriend, questioning him for my own reassurance. I barely spoke to my parents, but they didn't suspect a thing because of exams, they thought I was working hard when in reality I was hiding away with my own depression and paranoia in my room. Things gradually got worse on my 3rd week, the pack was finishing anyway so I thought maybe symptoms might improve the longer I took the pill. I was wrong. I was inconsolable by the 3rd week, luckily I had done most of my revision the week before hence I didn't have a tonne of stress from exams but my relationship was stressing me out, I was only stressing myself out to be honest. I was paranoid, I had doubts about my feelings for my boyfriend, I felt like it hurt to be with him because of all these doubts I had. I cried about 3 times a day, I found myself crying to sleep every night during the week, I cried until I was too tired to cry anymore. I would wake up the next day, have some lunch then proceed to get back into bed, curl up and cry some more. My life was awful, a complete mess.

The pack ended on Thursday so after not taking a pill on Friday, I started to feel a little better. I took it upon myself to research about this pill and what led me into such bizzarre behaviour. I read about what different women had to say about microgynon 30 and I found pretty much the same responses in terms of depressive symptoms and paranoia. It was nothing like I'd ever experienced before - some reports even say that some women when assessed, had symptoms of clinical depression. I even heard that some women were turned away by their GP when they raised their concerns about feeling depressed, some even saying that it was "nothing to be worried about" and that these were all "normal" side effects associated with this type of pill. If my GP told me the same, I would demand to be switched onto a different brand at least, not turned away saying that it is normal.

So yeah, these are my experiences with Microgynon 30. Definitely not a contraceptive pill I would recommend or take again. If I were on this pill for longer, my life would be so different. The only benefits of this pill is that it cleared up my skin marginally and my breasts got bigger *shrugs* - definitely not benefits that I would put myself through that again for.

Most stressful time of my life.

Almost halfway through my exams, my exams are going well but I can't say the same about life. 

Whether it's these pills I'm taking or not, I'm experiencing some episodes of extreme stress, sometimes depression, withdrawal from the world. The only upside is that I can concentrate on my exams but I have a feeling doing nothing day in day out apart from waking up to revision is depressing me in many ways.

Along with this, the stress is affecting my relationship as well. Because it's early, it's also very fragile. I realised I've become needy because of exam time. I'm depending on nobody but him and it's not a good thing, for us both. For people that have known me a long time, I don't like depending on other people too much. So for this to happen, it's stressful. It's affecting my daily life. It's a problem that will resolve itself with time though so I think at this moment, I just need to concentrate on exams and hopefully after, things will be different. 

Sometimes, I'm a paranoid mess as well. Ugh.