Hello my lovely readers! As you may know, I am a university student at the University of Lisbon (check out my previous post "The Reader Diaries #8: Exhausted University Student Syndrome"). In my course, I have a few classes that require a hefty amount of reading and analysing materials.
Unfortunately, this does not leave me much time to read for fun and to review books for you (which I love to do). I am currently studying Shakespeare's Hamlet and will soon be starting Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen. These are great books that I love, the only problem is that they are not the only books I have to read and deeply analyse.
I have a class that could which name could somehow be translated as An Introduction to Cultural Studies. Do not get me wrong, I love this class, it is actually really interesting. It talks about many worldly issues and has exposed me to pieces of history that I had never studied in such depth (coming from a scientific area in high school). My only problem is that it has a lot of materials to analyse and study. We have talked about Stuart Hall, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Raymond Williams and others and we usually study two papers (with an average of 20 pages each) per week. That requires a lot of work at home.
At the same time that I do all of this I also have to learn Italian verbs, tenses and vocabulary and read other books for my other classes. This sounds very dreamy and I love reading but my time does not stretch and I often find myself lacking time to do things like going out or even (most days) sleeping. I believe I am becoming a kind of sleep deprived zombie. I also believe that this problem affects university students in general.
When things like this happen we have to be aware that there are people supporting us and we can't forget to take care of ourselves. Even if you feel stressed out and like everything is falling apart, you must not forget to sleep at least 8 hours a night, eat right and exercise. Believe me when I say that these things make a very big difference.
If you are like me and had to move in order to go to university you must not forget to enjoy your time with your family when you go home. Play with your pets, drink tea with your mum, go to church on Sunday morning... Do the little "homie" things that make you happy, because when you're happy you will be more focused and you will enjoy yourself much more.
I know this post turned out to be a little of university advice mixed with my life but I hope you still like it. We readers suffer a lot in times like these.
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