Elle

I was looking at my blog the other day and realised that one of the things I wrote my blog was about was being a teenager. I realised that this needs to be changed soon, I'll be 20 in October and past the point where I can chat about what it feels like to be a teenager . To some extent, I feel I am already past this point, I have left school, am legally an adult, can drive and live alone for the majority of the time . When I began blogging, I think I was 13 . I began this blog in 2015 but prior to it, I had another, the name of which I cannot remember and any trace of which is loooong gone . So, as I leave my teenage years, I thought I would reflect back on what is nearly a decade, in the hope that a 13 year old somewhere will read this and at least take something away from it, no matter how small . Without further ado, here is a list of things I would tell my 13 year old self . 1. stop obsessing about your weight  You've been conscious of your weight from a very early

There have been very few posts on this blog over the past year. Probably the biggest reason for that is being incredibly busy after starting university. Now two terms in to my time studying Law at Oxford, I feel as though I can reflect on the ups and downs since I arrived and give my thoughts on the university as a Northern, state school student. Quick note: these are my experiences only and may not reflect those of all students  The work  I feel as though this is the most frequent question: is it hard? Quite frankly, Oxford wouldn't be able to maintain its prestige if it wasn't hard. But realistically, university in general is hard. Living away from home, making new friends, finding your way around a city whilst juggling work and extra-curricular activities is always going to be difficult. However, Oxford does take this up a notch. Oxford students generally are not allowed to take on paid employment during term time, with exceptions of working occasionally for the Univ

This blog post is a little (a lot) on the surreal side. If you follow my on Instagram you may already know this but if not, I thought I'd just add a quick note on here. I am about to officially become a first year Law student at the University of Oxford! I'll probably post a little bit more about this at another time but for now, I thought I'd just briefly highlight the process. Flashback to September 2016. I'd just started A Level and for the past few years, Durham had been at the top of my list for university, followed by Bristol. I had never in my life even considered applying to Oxford or Cambridge. At all. My head of Sixth Form came and spoke to me and said that a student from Cambridge was coming in to school to speak to students about studying at Oxbridge and he thought I should go. I said I really wasn't interested; I didn't know anything about the universities, I was 100% sure I wasn't smart enough, posh enough or just good enough to even co

It's probably a bit strange that my first blog post in a while is a foundation/makeup thing. It really has been a while since I've done anything like this because, let's be honest, anybody reading this is likely 100x more experienced and knowledgable about makeup than I am after spending the year rarely wearing it. However, when I look online, I struggle to find foundation recommendations for people with similar skin to mine so I thought this might be of some use. I have very fair skin so struggle to find anything from high street makeup brands (and high end most of the time) that's the right shade as my skin, despite being pale, doesn't particularly have pink undertones, which most foundations at the lighter end of the shade range tend to have. The only foundation that I tend to buy other than the MAC Studio Fix fluid in NW10 (a tad too dark but good for going out) is the Revlon Colorstay Normal/Dry in 110 Ivory. When I first started to use this foundation, I

If I'm being entirely honest, not that much has happened so far this year. I haven't been to many places in 2018, instead spending my weekends at work waitressing and revising. However, as we're now 7 months (?!?!) in to 2018 and I haven't posted on here for a while, I thought I would write a post with a few of things that have been happening - or what I can think of off the top of my head.  NOTE: You might want to skim read this, I've rambled quite a bit   January  The year kicked off with trial exams as soon as we returned to school so I ended up spending all but one day of the Christmas holidays revising. I am glad that I did the revision that I did as not only did it help me enormously in the trial exams, but by the time I came to revise for my final exams, I didn't have to start from scratch with revision resources as I had re-read some of my Literature books, made revision cards and refreshed the content from the previous year. I do still think i

2018 has been hectic.  I could possibly end the post there but that doesn't seem like a great way to come back.  I've spent the last 6 months pretty much sat at a desk studying with very little time for anything else, hence the absence of posts on here. At some point soon I'll write about everything that has happened so far this year, but for now, I just wanted to quickly say that A Levels are over and I'm back. Hopefully I'll get some stuff up over the next few days but right now, my main priority is to try to destress and return to normality after what has been a pretty tough (although at times wonderful) year in more ways than one.  In the mean time, for anyone with exams coming up or having finished them, I hope you too have a restful and well deserved summer.  Elle xxx