Death By Dissertation...

Today along with the rest of the week has been dedicated to dissertation research and writing. Uni starts again on Monday and I have a hand-in due on Thursday so it's all pretty go go go at the moment! I really enjoy writing and surprisingly am loving doing dissertation work but I do find that at times it's so easy to become unmotivated. I keep looking at the final hand in date and it seems so far away. I get into the bad habit of thinking, "oh it's fine, I've got ages to finish it," but I know it'll come round quickly. It's such a scary though that once this chunk of work is done, that's it, I'm practically finished with my uni life. I think the thing I'm most scarred of is not knowing what's going to happen next. I've been in education since the age of 5, which has meant I've gone straight from school, to Sixth Form, to uni. I've never experienced "the real world" and it's a very daunting feeling knowing come May I'll be flung into it. This year will be scary but I'm hoping it will also be a new adventure :)

As today is my Dad's birthday (and as a cheeky break from dissertation), my sister and I donned our baking hats and made some celebratory cupcakes. I absolutely love cakes and what's better than eating delicious sponges that you've made yourself?! We stick to a pretty simple recipe of equal quantities of butter, caster sugar and self raising flour combined with two eggs and a tablespoon of milk. We put them in the oven and a short while later (about 20mins) they're done! The best part of baking is definitely the decoration. As these ones were for my Dad, we decided to add a drop of blue food colouring to give the butter icing that little extra zing.

I've found that baking is also a good stress relief mechanism - think I'll be baking a lot more as April/May draws closer!! Anyone else found anything that helps them cope when work seems like it's going to tumble over and crush you?