Hi everyone my name is Ese and I have just finished my undergraduate degree in
Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Nottingham. So today
I'm going to be getting ready for my online graduation
and I'm also going to be answering some questions about my university experience
which would be quite interesting. So let's begin.
[Question: How do you feel about graduating this year?]
I suppose like anyone else I wasn't too happy
that lockdown had to affect the way my graduation would happen.
I'm still very proud of myself for reaching this point
and that's kind of what I'm focusing on as a graduate.
Typically I'm someone who can be quite hard on themselves and
set a lot of very very high, almost unattainable standards for myself. So to
be able to complete something and have something
I can be proud of for myself, it's just something that's quite
personal to me. When I started uni, so this was all the way back in
2017 which is actually years ago now how, how does time fly!? I remember vividly
having the perfect image of what type of pose I'm gonna do on the
day of my graduation, what type of outfit I wanted to wear,
what my caption was gonna be, what time of day I was gonna post it on
Instagram. I was that prepared guys, I was that ready to
graduate and I'd literally just got into uni. And so for all of that to
be flushed down the toilet, it's not really happening
in the way that I expected it to, nothing's really panned out the way we
initially planned, it upset me, it upset me quite a bit.
As it would, but as I said before, I'm so happy to
have graduated this year.
[Question: Who are celebrating with and how?]
I'll be celebrating with my family mainly and that's because
just before lockdown began in March
I moved back home. So university lectures went online and I moved back
home and so I'm just with my family and they
are who I'm celebrating with initially. However, in the long-term future I
hope to also celebrate with my friends who I did go to uni with because, you
know, those are the people you had all your
experiences with, it means something as well in its own special way to
be able to celebrate with uni friends as well so eventually I hope to do that.
[Question: How has university changed you?]
The first thing I want to say is that uni, as you would expect
for a lot of people, is it's made me a lot more independent
so I can actually think about budgeting and like know what I'm doing a little
bit. It's made me know how to develop my
own routine so that I'm able to do you know my my uni work while also being
able to make sure I've got all the groceries I
need, do my laundry keep her keep my own personal
space together if that makes sense. Uni has also made me
have a better understanding of myself and what I need. So this kind of loops
into the whole independence thing. It's made me kind of understand
how important having my own alone time is. So what I mean by that is like
having hobbies that don't relate to other people or doing things with other
people. This was more towards final year of
uni because final year of uni was less about
social life for me and more about really studying. It's worth 66% of my grade.
I was really thinking about that a lot. I wanted to still have
good mental health, good mental well-being and my second year of uni was
very challenging you know. I went through a lot of different things,
it was hard for me socially going into
third year I decided to purge everything that wasn't
working for me and I was pretty much alone a lot of the
time. But I wasn't unhappy, I was very very happy in
first semester of third year before lockdown began.
Doing things by myself, it could be anything from like taking myself to a
restaurant for example. I tried that out for the first time when
I was in third year and younger me would have said 'Oh that's
such an uncool thing to do, like why would you go to a restaurant by
yourself?'. Because it's very important to have a
relationship with yourself and that's some mature people thinking
you know. Like taught me the value of self-love.
Before I was in 3rd year I didn't really know what self-love was
and I decided I was going to go on a self-love journey in my final year of
uni and a lot of things, even socially, fell
into place when I started doing this. I began to attract the things that I
wanted in my life socially and even though things aren't
perfect not even now. I could just see the improvement it
made me me loving myself and giving time to myself and I really
appreciate the fact that being at university, not not living with
family, having to do things by myself, gave me that
opportunity. And the last way uni changed me they
didn't really change, this isn't really a change per se, this
is more about an emphasis on something is
uni doing my specific course emphasised to me personally that yes
I really do want to do this career that I had in mind before I started uni.
So that's all about mental health, Psychology all that stuff.
[Question: What advice would you give your younger self?]
The advice I would give myself is the formula that I finally managed to
create for myself. I had a big question when I started uni, which was, 'How do I
achieve all my short-term and long-term goals?'
'How do I actually go about doing it?' So I will use,
for example social aspects. I was like how do I attract
this specific type of friendships. I wanted to have really close
bonds with people, a certain quality of friendship. And I was noticing that it
was quite a challenge for me to do that. I started uni wanted to do that and
first year and second year was really hard for me. I still wasn't getting it,
third year clicked by being alone it clicked
and this is the formula I would give myself this formula.
First thing is you need to do more things alone.
It doesn't matter whether you think you're going to like it
or whether you think you're not going to like it. The point is you need to really
say hello to yourself, 'Hi, we're going to try
and go swimming today', by yourself for example. Or 'we're going to go to the
cinema today' or 'we're going to try out a different
recipe today' and try a different meal. Let's see what
we can do in the kitchen. And I just decided to slowly do
different things just by myself. Why? By doing things with yourself it
tells you what you like and what you don't like. It was through
me having a better understanding of what I liked.
I had a much better understanding of what I wanted and what I was actually
going for. Because often, you know, we want certain
things, like we want a general thing in life, so
really really good friendships. But what we want isn't made specific
enough because we don't have a strong sense of self.
So as deep as that sounds, that is basically the advice I would
give myself is the formula. You know. Know thy self.
And this is how you come to know thyself and then you can,
you can see a lot of things in your life fall into place. I feel personally you
could you can apply that formula to any aspect of your life. So not just
with people, but also in terms of career and
profession. So maybe the general idea was Psychology,
well, what aspect of Psychology do you want to be a Clinical Psychologist or an
Educational Psychologist. I would have to seek out specific
types of work experience, different volunteering opportunities
and see which one worked for me. The formula
I actually found it to work so well. For me personally so the advice I would
give myself a few years ago is, to not be afraid to really go out
there and do different things by myself, which was important for me
because I'm somebody pre-university Ese
wanted to do everything with other people. And it was almost like I was
afraid of really being introspective about who I am.
[Music plays]
[Question: What are your hopes and plans for the future?]
So my, I have a lot of hopes and plans and dreams and wishes.
Short-term future, I hope to be able to successfully complete my Masters
course. I've applied for a Masters. I hope
to get through that smoothly. Or relatively smoothly because I don't
expect the Masters to be not challenging. And then in the long
term I hope to one day become a psychologist.
[Music plays]
So my makeup is pretty much done. Quite a simple makeup look.
We're not bothering eyeshadow because every time I do eye shadow it's an
uphill battle, so yeah!
[Music plays]
I'm wearing a very simple outfit, mainly because I will be staying at home.
And yeah, just this shirt, black jeans.
My family surprised me with this cute
banner and balloons. So we've got that going on. This has
actually been here for quite some time, like probably like a week or two weeks
now. And it is not coming down until there's
another celebration. Because who doesn't want their face
to be the only thing on a wall, like thank you!
Thank you guys very much for watching my get ready with me. I hope you enjoyed it.
Thank you very much for watching. If you liked today's video don't forget to
give it a thumbs up. Bye.