What to expect on breaks

I just thought I would clarify something before reading this post. I’ve so far got all A’s for my work and 1 B. But I’m only talking about my experience on breaks and workload. 

When at university, it’s somewhat like school. You get term breaks (example - Christmas and Easter) I think the first year I generally didn’t study that hard during my breaks. The second year was a little more hard-core and involved a bit more studying even during weekends and term breaks. But now in my third year, I don’t get “traditional” breaks. I’m a lucky guy in the fact that I really do enjoy what I do. So I don’t mind working 8 hours straight modelling a character, I almost find doing the practical side of things as the actual break for me. I find that my final year project takes most of my time. Mostly researching or writing the paper itself. Although, one thing I tend to do is game. Usually a few hours at night on Skype with friends. Even then, we often talk about either what we are working on, or upcoming assignments. For example one of my assignments this year is a group assignment with quite a few of my friends. Because we all play the same game, we can just count playing the game almost as a casual group meeting. We can come up with quite a lot of ideas just by being on Skype for a few hours.

On the other hand, the break between years is huge. I would recommend finding a small job, if not at least working on your portfolio in whatever course you’re studying. It’s quite unnatural to have so much time off after you’ve been working every day for the previous 5-6months. I can't say I got a job during this time and I regret it.

One last note, RIP sleeping pattern. Especially in my field, a lot of people game during night hours. Plus if I have an assignment I tend to stay up all night working on it. Within no time I’ve screwed my sleeping pattern and end up sleeping at 7am. This can’t be any truer during term breaks. I have time to lie in, so it piles up rather fast. But not to worry, I think being a university student teaches you to work/wake up with little sleep every now and then. Generally, 1 early wake up fixes this. So it’s usually back to normal in no time!

Extracurricular Activities!

At the University of Bedfordshire, there’s a huge amount of groups and societies to join. Some of them aren’t even course/ subject area specific. As I’ve mentioned in my last blog post. I travel to university, so sadly I don’t actually personally attend any society. But, luckily because I’m studying a computer science related subject there are some societies that the university hold in which you can attend online. For example there was a CGI society run a few years ago. You could enter the weekly challenges on Facebook. Another great example of this is games jam. This may not be a weekly thing, but every year or so the university hold a games jam. I think we still hold the Guinness book of records at the university for the biggest games jam.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19622596

Link is above, if you wanted more information. I know the university is holding another games jam soon. It’s something which will obviously help your CV, build your technical and your social skills. They are not compulsory but I personally think they are great fun and another example of how the university goes the extra mile! Although I think personally as a student you should try and attend as many things like this as possible. I’ve currently attended 5 game jams, a few only 12 hours others 48 hours.