Just a note to say hello...

Hello, and thankyou for reading my blog! (even if you are just here for a passing visit/because you got lost/looking for something else/because I have harassed you into taking a look!) This blog really only exists because I love to write, and talking/writing is how I process and make sense of things…I have been writing stuff for years even though nobody has ever really read it, but I have set this blog up because 1) I have become slightly addicted to reading other peoples' blogs and wanted my own, and 2) because they have helped me see things differently, and I want to do the same! I hope at least some of what I've written does this for you.

From July 2015, this blog is taking a bit of a break from its usual state, and becoming a travel blog (something I never thought I, Katie Watson, would ever write, but there we go) as I embark on my adventures across the Channel, and go and study in Brittany, France as part of my degree. I hope it helps any of you who are reading it whilst planning your own year abroad, and that the rest of you reading just for the entertainment factor are suitably amused by my attempts to understand the French mode de vie!

Monday 30 December 2013

MY story of Freshers' Week


I wrote most of this post (unconsciously chucking in a rhyme there...mark of a language student) in about Week 3 of my first term, to try and make sense of the beautiful chaos that is Freshers Week. Looking back on it now, it was an insane time…uni generally is pretty intense, but Freshers is on a WHOLE other level! Which is unsurprising really…a few thousand 18-19 year olds from all over the world thrown together, all with very different life experiences and worldviews, yet for most of which this is their first attempt to live as an independent adult away from the support of family and friends, and then told to go and 'mingle' (a word I was completely sick of by the end of the week) at the huge numbers of getting-to-know-you events organised. Add to this an average of 4 hours sleep a night, homesickness, freshers' flu and trying to get used to living in just one room instead of a whole house and you have the makings of a very hectic week for all involved!

No matter whether people have been to uni or not, everyone has some nugget of wisdom to pass on to you as an expectant first year; get involved in everything, be selective in your society choices, make sure you get into a study routine in first year, use first year as a chance to try new things because it doesn’t count to your degree…its easy to feel overwhelmed. Now don’t get me wrong, as a first year who has come out the other side of Freshers and therefore considers herself an expert on all things university, I have my own gems which I am waiting to bestow on the less experienced; but all this advice can make it hard to know whether you are doing Freshers Week the ‘right’ way or not.

I definitely didn't appreciate just how exhausting Freshers would be; I was physically tired, and emotionally drained from having to constantly be sociable when really all I wanted to do was go home, curl up in my pyjamas with a cup of tea and watch Harry Potter with my family...but it's also so exciting. For the first time in my life I was truly making it on my own, and I have never been more aware of God holding me in His hand, and of His going before me. The one thing that really held me together that week was knowing that God had prepared the way for me, and that He was so close to me and understood me even when I felt like no one knew me at all. This foundation is what gave me the courage to slow down a bit, relax (to an extent: I was still totally terrified), and know that I would - in time - meet my friends. And, shockingly, I did.

So my best advice for surviving the jungle that is your first few weeks at university? Do what you want to do when you want to do it, take care of yourself, cherish the good bits whilst accepting and moving on from the bad bits, and trust God above everything. Take it one day at a time, and before you know it you’ll be dishing out your own advice.

Monday 23 December 2013

In the space between the pages...

These flat words become colours,
no longer sounds but images,
colours swirling as paint on canvas.
Imagination takes over and transports,
the language transcends,
and the mind travels.
To distant lands and unknown worlds,
to bygone eras and undiscovered futures,
or just into the mind of another.

You are no longer visible, but hidden,
seeing yet unseen,
the perfect escape and fortress.
You don’t just pretend, you believe,
and you don’t just imagine, you experience
the every detail of this new territory.
No rules or boundaries,
an everlasting journey of intense freedom.
Where dreams are real
and possibilities, endless.


It’s more than just a story.

Sunday 22 December 2013

So, how's uni?

I have just finished my first term as a Fresher at the University of Exeter, and on my return home there have obviously been a lot of people asking me 'how's uni?'. This question is near impossible to answer honestly yet without boring the person to the point where they wished they'd never asked; my entire life has changed in the last 3 months, and I have no idea how to compress all the experiences I've had, people I've met and emotions I've been through into just a few sentences! As most people have some sort of idea what life at university is like - whether they have been themselves or not - I'm not going to dive in to the typical, sometimes pretty rough details of what we like to call '#studentlife' (a phrase used to highlight either the 'seize the day' student mentality eg. 'I've got a lecture in 10 minutes, but I want to carry on with this Racing Demon tournament...' 'skip it, #studentlife!' or to highlight the quintessential idea of 'rough and ready' university living eg. 'sorry the pasta is pretty much raw, I cooked it in a kettle.' 'oh well, #studentlife.'). Instead, I'm going to focus on the things that have surprised me about this term, in the hopes of enlightening you all on the ins and outs of modern, post-tuition-fee-scandal university living. 

1) the intensity of university life. Everything is accelerated and heightened at uni; friendships form more quickly, emotional highs and lows are higher and lower, lecturers and tutors pack as much as possible into every minute of contact time and at any given moment there is ALWAYS some event or gathering which you could be going to (usually 2 or 3)

2) the workload: which in my opinion gets in the way of the university experience! Although I love my course, I'm somewhat ashamed to say I completely underestimated the amount of work expected of a university student. Even though as a humanities undergraduate I average at about 7 contact hours a week (minuscule compared to the 15+ hours of a scientist, which my friends are quick to remind me of) I was used to homework backing up class time at A-Level, whereas at uni lectures and seminars are really only there to guide your private study…or sometimes to show up your lack of it in my case!

3) the student bubble. When my friend came to visit she commented on how campus was like a little village, and it really is. Other than the odd visit to town to replenish my shampoo stocks, or an (increasingly rare) trip to a club in town, I spend all my time on campus, and other than church on a Sunday morning, around students. However I love the fact that all my friends are less than 20 minutes away…makes it much easier to go over and distract them from working and encourage them to go out instead!

4) how close I would become to my friends after such a short time. The first term at uni would be such an amazing sociological study (just a thought if you're a sociology student). A massive shift takes place a few weeks into term, as everyone stops being these hyper excited, always smiley, slightly terrified people who are still feeling wildly out of their comfort zone, breathe a sigh of relief, and start to realise it's actually OK to just be themselves (it would be a hilarious thing to watch if I wasn't one of the subjects!). A month at uni is like a year in realtime in terms of friendships, because you are with the same people ALL the time…so I feel like my best friends - who I've known for only 3 months - are basically at the 3-year stage of friendship already.

In some ways, uni has been exactly what I expected…I have grown up hearing stories of my parents' amazing experiences at university and so had high hopes for my own, and it has been very similar to what I imagined from their stories. But in many ways it's been totally different. I never would have expected that I would feel so settled after just one term, and never truly understood why people raved about it so much.

But now? I can honestly say I'm having the time of my life.

My friend and talented writer Milla has written this amazing post on her blog about our first term at uni…I would wholeheartedly recommend giving it a read! I will also write a post more focused on the insanity of Freshers' Week in the next few days, as it definitely deserves it's own piece!

Wednesday 18 December 2013

Why the weird title?

I think the first post I do really needs to explain my slightly ethereal, pretty out-there blog title (find a huge mug of tea and a really comfy chair, this could be a long one). I sat down one Wednesday afternoon (I'm trying to better use the often wasted time which is a Wednesday afternoon!) to create my blog, and my first job was to think of a name; I googled, brainstormed, procrastinated and scribbled until 2 hours and 3 pages later I had managed to get down every idea I could think of for my name. I read back over them and ruthlessly (you will discover if you continue to stick with this blog that I can be quite a ruthless person!) scrapped the worst ones, and started to notice a theme emerging. I looked back over my notebook with all my musings to date in it, and saw the same theme there.

I have always been convinced that there is more to life than we are aware of on a daily basis, and that these little pockets of wonder point to a place other than the one we live in. I feel like there is something in each one of us which longs for somewhere else; a longing that is most apparent when we glimpse beauty. Not superficial beauty, but real beauty, whatever that is for you; music, books, family and friends, art, nature, food, love, poetry…something that makes you think ‘these things don’t fit with this world I live in, there must be something else’. My blog is all about this something else.

I wish I had known C S Lewis, as I think he is something of a kindred spirit of mine. He put it like this:

“If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world”

Lewis is most famous for giving us The Chronicles of Narnia (which just happen to be my favourite books ever…and I like books), and in The Last Battle the characters and Aslan see the old Narnia pass away, and they enter the new Narnia. This is how he describes this new country;


"It is as hard to explain how this sunlit land was different from the old Narnia as it would be to tell you how the fruits of that country taste. Perhaps you will get some idea of it if you think of it like this. You may have been in a room in which there was a window that looked out on a lovely bay of the sea or a green valley that wound away among mountains. And in the wall of that room opposite to the window there may have been a looking-glass. And as you turned away from the window you suddenly caught sight of that sea or that valley, all over again, in the looking-glass. And the scene in the mirror, or the valley in the mirror, were in one sense just the same as the real one: yet at the same time they were somehow different - deeper, more wonderful, more like places in a story: in a story you have never heard but very much want to know. The difference between the old Narnia and the new Narnia was like that. The new one was a deeper country: every rock and flower and blade of grass looked as if it meant more. I can't describe it any better than that: if you ever get there you will know what I mean.

It was the Unicorn who summed up what everyone was feeling. He stamped his right fore-hoof on the ground and neighed and then cried:

'I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this. Bree-hee-hee! Come farther up, come farther in!' "

I believe that what I think of as the 'something else' and what Lewis is describing with the 'new Narnia' is also what Jesus talks about in John 14 v 4 when he says,

"You know the way to the place where I am going"

We are so mesmerised by beauty and beautiful things because they are examples of Heaven seeping through to Earth, and they remind us of our homeland, the place we were created for. In this blog I will write about the things of life which inspire me, and point me towards God, Heaven and this 'deeper wonderment', and seek to put words to the things I see and the emotions they invoke. I hope they help you in whatever small way to figure these things out for yourself, and that you read them and think the same thing I do when I read other blogs, 'THAT'S what I wanted to say!'