Midterm Season = No Fun Season (See Mom & Dad, I do homework here!)

I'm honestly just going to start calling Mondays "Movie Monday" because that's what they are, movie days. In class this week, we watched a movie called Four Lions which was a satirical movie about suicide bombing. Yes, I'm just as surprised as you are.

It wasn't bad, but I also didn't 100% think it was good. The time I was watching it, I was completely weirded out by the fact that the movie was made in 2010 and the target for the suicide bombing was the London Marathon. As a class of Americans, we all agreed that this movie would most likely not do well in the United States, but all understood that it was supposed to make fun of the serious topic, so none of us seemed to be too offended with anything that we had just witnessed.

In between my movie class and my internship class, I sat down and wrote my entire midterm paper for my movie class. It was on the sound design of the movie Under the Skin, which was the first movie that we watched in class. The topic was easy (part of the reason why I chose it) and writing it was a breeze. I didn't struggle at all and having that paper done a week early was definitely going to help with reducing the amount of stress I'd be under for the next week.

My internship class had a guest speaker instead of a lesson which I figured would be a nice change of pace, but it ended up just being a different lady teaching us the same things we already learn every week. The only thing I can remember from the presentation is a video on the difference between sympathy and empathy and the fact that one of the animated characters was kind of funny; I couldn't tell you why the character was funny, but I remember laughing in class so at least that's something.

That night, I finished the midterm for my advertising class which was more like an annotated bibliography instead of a paper so it was weird to write. I prefer a paper set up, but the professor gave limited instructions and specifically said DO NOT write a paper, so I didn't write a paper.

After the stress of two papers was lifted off of my shoulders, Billy, Liz, Emilia, Colleen and I saw how cheap the flights to Edinburgh were and we had been talking about going (especially because I may or may not have already scratched it off on my map, by accident!) On top of that, Billy has a friend who is studying abroad there and he really wants to visit them so we impulsively booked flights and a cheap AirBnB within 1/2 an hour.

Tuesday was Valentine's Day which literally means nothing, but I just want to recognise that it was Valentine's Day. I spent my Valentine's Day at work doing the normal social media posting, writing a blog and then focusing on my main project of branding a toolkit for various companies to buy.

Wednesday was the day after Valentine's Day and no chocolate was on sale. I would like to emphasise that this is a borderline hate crime.

I spent my morning in the office working on social media before I made my way to Canary Wharf where I met up with Torie Robinson, one of the ambassadors for the Corporate Alliance who specialises in social media presence and how to grow a following. This is important because we just launched our Facebook page and although I'm posting articles and what not, it doesn't mean much if we don't have people who like the page.

Torie went over with me the objectives of our social media presence and we started to work on a social media plan which I found extremely interesting. Although I'm a marketing major, I have never had to start a company's social media page from nothing so seeing the base work of it all was helpful.

Thursday was full of classes and me not wanting to be in them. My advertising class consisted of us talking about how charities market. Due to the fact that most of these charities have smaller marketing budgets, they have to use the element of shock when advertising to people and trying to get them to donate.

In Marketing, we talked about paradigms and the conference that we would be attending next week instead of going to class. I'm a little bitter that the conference is the Thursday night before spring break, making it impossible to leave Thursday night. Everything worked out with the planning obviously, but still, I'd rather not have to wake up early Friday to travel.

That night, Tori came over and Billy, Rose, Liz, Tori and I sat down and planned out our spring break day by day to ensure that we'd be able to hit all of the attractions that we wanted to see. I don't think that we can even call it spring break anymore because we are all fully aware that we're going to be exhausted from midterms, the constant traveling and the concept that we want to do as much as possible, even if that cuts into our sleep schedules.

Oh, also Emily Mason and her flat tried to cook and set off the fire alarm in the entire flat. Just wanted to throw that in there incase anyone was wondering what happened to Emily Mason.

Emilia and I woke up early on Friday morning to try and buy Ed Sheeran tickets. I'm just going to let you know that despite trying for a hour we did not get any and we are very salty about it so please don't trigger us.

As if not getting Ed Sheeran tickets was bad enough, we weren't even going to have a fun day.

Due to the impending, never ending doom of midterms, Billy, Emilia and I spent our Friday in Shoreditch at the British Institute of Technology where there is a free library where we could focus. It was so quiet that I swear to god you could hear a pin drop. Once in a while there was a tour or group of people being lead through so I imagine that this library has some sort of significance attached to it.

After six hours of homework, we made our way to Spitalfields Market which was just around the corner. Billy heard about a burger place in the market that makes an amazing New York style burger (which is exactly what Americans need in London?) so we made our way through the market to a little booth called Belcher Street.

On Friday night, my friend Adrienne from Pitt, who is studying abroad in France started her spring break which started in London. It was nice to see a familiar face from home (beyond the people I came with, duh). It was nice to catch up and hear about her study abroad experience so far, especially because she's in an area of France where she speaks almost only French.

On Saturday, Rose and I rolled out of bed because despite the homework we had, we wanted to do a little something because it was supposed to be a nice day and you can only do so much homework before you lose your mind.

We made our way to Shoreditch which is home to Brick Lane Market. The market was filled with vintage stores containing everything from clothing to old vinyls to old posters and signs.

We also went to Rough Trade East which a record store. I forget how I heard about it, but I know that it is something here that has moved to America. There's a Rough Trade record store in Brooklyn that I've been meaning to go to, but never have the chance to get to so I was excited to go to the one here. Rough Trade was also Rose's first time in a record store which was exciting, at least for me.

We walked down the street before we found Beigel Bake which is a bakery that is known for being over 24/7, something that isn't too common here in the UK. The line was out the door, but it smelled so good that we decided to wait in line.

After enjoying our lunch, we headed home to work on our midterms which is just about as boring as it sounds. However, later that night we headed to Ice Wharf which is a bar in Camden because we were going to meet Emilia's older sister who was visiting her boyfriend in the UK and wanted to meet us.

Despite the fact that I hate mornings, being here has made me realise I have no time to do anything so I need to start waking up early to pack as much as possible into my day.

Billy, Rose and I woke up right and early at 7:30am in order to catch a train to Brighton. It was a short two hour train ride that brought us directly into the city center. From there, it was less than a mile walk to get to the Bristol Pier where we ran onto the rock covered beach.

We made our way to the water, wanting to make sure that we touched the English Channel without getting wet (for the record, I was the only one who accomplished the task of not getting wet).

After touching the water, we walked onto the actual pier where were spent too much time and too much money in the arcade that was located directly in the middle of the pier.

After finally escaping the grasp of the arcade, we walked around the pier to see the carnival rides and games before grabbing Fish and Chips from a stand on the pier because we had this theory that the best fish and chips were probably ones that were located to close to the beach. Rose can confirm this theory due to the fact that she's the only one who actually likes the fish part.

Due to the fact that it was getting colder and windier, we left the pier itself and walked along the boardwalk area before deeming that it was still too cold. From there, we walked up into the actual town of Brighton and towards Hove which is about a 30-40 minute walk from the Brighton Pier.

As the sun came up and we realised we had to head back soon, we made our way back closer to the beach where we found colourful shacks, something that is usually associated with Australia but had managed to also find a home in Brighton.

We ended our walk and our beach day with ice cream because it was finally warm enough for ice cream and what's a beach day without ice cream?

After the two hour ride (and nap) home, we ended up working on midterms again, surprise!

I just wanted to make sure that people who are planning on studying abroad understand that the classes here require real work and that's the worst part! No matter where you are, midterm season still sucks!!!

However, midterm season means that we're that much closer to spring break :-)