Life after university is fast approaching and I feel that although I am ready to leave in many ways it is still pretty daunting to be finally leaving education after 17 years of school/ college/ university. I am very lucky to have a Graduate job secured for September (provided I get the required grades) which I am doing in Bristol, so I do not have any plans to leave the city I came to love during my degree. I will be working for a large professional services company doing audit, and gaining an accountancy qualification, which will be a pretty big departure from Religious Studies and Theology. Accountancy is not an uncommon next step from a humanities degree but I know a few friends who are less mathematically minded so are doing work in HR, teaching or are continuing on with a Masters, which sadly means we will all be living in different places in the country.

I am, at least compared to other people, not having the most exciting final summer of freedom. I am going on a couple of short(ish) holidays to Greece and Germany and then I plan to spend some time visiting my friends around the country and generally relaxing prior to starting full time work. I will also have to start house hunting at some point as I want to live with other professionals (to avoid the issue of council tax if I live with students) so I have that to look forward to.

I have had a great time at UoB and I am grateful for all the skills it has taught me as well as giving me the opportunities to become involved in university life. I feel it has left me reasonably well prepared for the next part of my life and I am especially thankful to the theology department who are genuinely brilliant and incredibly supportive.

– Katherine

“My final year at Bristol University has been the most rewarding year of my life so far. The work has been harder, and I have been rather stressed at the prospect of getting a job post-graduation, and there was the constant worry of my dissertation. However, I have had an incredible time with being a student ambassador and, as you may know if you have seen me on open days, meeting prospective students of the university. I have also greatly enjoyed just making the most of Bristol as a student, as I will (probably) not have this much free time ever again.

Exam time itself was in some ways less overwhelming than in previous years as, due to my dissertation, I had fewer units to be examined come June. These exams (Neoplatonism, and Sex, Marriage and Deviance) were subjects I actually enjoyed revising, I managed to bring them up in conversation fairly regularly as it was relatively easy to make them relevant to any discussion I was having. This may have aided my revision (even if it made me somewhat of a conversational bore) and that meant I felt reasonably confident come the actual exams.

My proudest moment of the year was definitely finishing my dissertation. I do not know what mark it will get, as I have never written anything like it, but I was incredibly pleased to have completed it in and the topic I chose grew more and more interesting to me. It is quite bizarre that my time at university has ended and that never again will I be an undergraduate. I can confidently state that the time has flown by and it could honestly have been only last week when I was coming to university for the first time.

– Katherine

This month I have been on a big push to get my dissertation first draft finished. Although I am not quite on target to have finished this by the end of March I am finally starting to get the hang of writing and will (hopefully) finish before Easter. As the dissertation is so long I am eternally glad that my dissertation supervisor warned us to pick a topic we were interested in as otherwise I think I would find the whole writing process far more stressful. Obviously this means I have not been having much fun but finally edging towards finishing a first draft is enough to keep me focused on work. I think the main piece of advice I would give, when doing the dissertation, is to take a break when you feel overwhelmed as coming back to it, refreshed, makes me far more productive.

The only thing I did that was vaguely interesting, although also dissertation related, was to deliver a presentation on my dissertation topic at the annual Bristol Religion and Theology post-grad conference. All final year undergrads have the opportunity to present but only eight of us took up the challenge in the end. All the other presentations I saw were brilliant and it was really interesting to learn what other people were researching and what they found most interesting about their topic. Furthermore all the feedback received was incredibly useful and something we will all try to incorporate into our dissertations. In terms of my own presentation I was very nervous speaking but in the end I am glad I took the chance to try something outside of my comfort zone.

– Katherine