It is crazy to me that the academic year is over. Exams are finished, lectures are done and FND’s are now no more until October – I’ll miss you so very much Cogs. Even though summer means a whole two months without the Luff bubble and everyone in it, it also means HOLIDAY TIME.

Like nearly every other 21 year old at the moment, I love to travel. When I graduate, I would like to travel for a couple of months with various friends before stepping into the big wide world of actual adult working life. As soon as I finished my placement year with the School of Business and Economics at Loughborough University, I headed straight to Croatia.

Literally, in less than 12 hours, I was in the air on my way to Split. I only went for four days but they were pretty full on. I love anything water related so my family and I went on the Five Island boat tour, which was incredible. We stopped off at the Blue Caves, Hvar, Stiniva Island (one of the top ten beaches in the whole of Europe), Vis and Palmizana.

We also visited the infamous Krka Waterfalls and National Park. Without a doubt, I would return to Croatia with friends and family in the future as I know there is so much more to see and explore! Also, just to add, as I am writing this blog post – I am sitting on a sun bed in Gran Canaria looking out onto a whole lot of the deep blue. I know – it is such a hard life.

July also brought with it Grad Ball. The theme was Beauty and the Beast and gosh, did the LSU team do a brilliant job of bringing it all together! Fireworks, a decked out union, all of the film characters around for photos and the whole of the union singing along to Ella Eyre – it was a pretty great night!

Once the end of September hits, I am back for my third and final year. I work as a Student Ambassador so I get to help out at a lot of student recruitment events. The September Open Days are always a brilliant event to work; you get to meet prospective students and essentially talk their ear off about how great Loughborough is. When you go to university, try and find out all the volunteering or part time work opportunities available. Not only is it something extra to do away from academics and a jam-packed social life, but also it will help fund a couple of extra pub nights!

For those of you who have now received your A-Level results, I hope you have gotten into the university of your choice and are full steam ahead to become a fully fledged Fresher come September. A little advice from me to anyone reading who didn’t quite get the grades to get into your number one university – don’t give up. Keep calling up the Clearing help line and asking if there is anything the university can do for you or if there is a similar course that you might be interested in. And if this happens not to work out, then there is always the choice to do an apprenticeship or even take a gap year. This was always my fall back if I didn’t get into Loughborough – I planned to take my exams again and use the year to work, travel and grow up a little in prep for the independent university lifestyle.

So that is it for this month. Like me, I hope you all sit back, relax and enjoy a little Summertime Madness!