 Hi everybody and welcome back to another vlog. So today's vlog is going to be all about being a mature student. And for those of you that don't know, I am 35. I know. I don't feel 35. I still feel like I'm in my 20s. It's crazy. But here I am. I was a late starter to university just because life happened. A lot of things happened. I think I've spoke briefly about it in previous vlogs. I'm not going to go too much into detail about it but I was a very late starter and here I am loving life at university. So first things first. If people are telling you you're too old to go to university, if you feel too old to be at university, please erase it, erase it, erase it, erase it. Nobody is too old to do anything in this life. Life is for living and do you know what? You might live until you're 110. You don't know that. If you're in your 50s you're only halfway through that life. Come on. Live it. So no, university isn't just for young people. My university in particular, Birmingham City University is amazing. It's supporting older adults, mature students. It's absolutely fantastic. And just please erase those doubts that you're too old. We've got so many actually quite maybe about half of our cohort. Possibly. I'm trying to judge it in my head now because some people I don't know how old they are but I'm going to guess half of my cohort are over 30. We've got people in their 50s, we've got people in their 40s, 30s and then we've got the people that are sort of 20s. I don't know if there's any 18, 19 year old. I'm not sure. It's just amazing. They are doing fantastic. The people in their 50s are doing amazing. They are smashing this course. Yeah. So please if you are in your 50s or 40s just debate on whether to go to university, do it. Just do it. So for me personally, I'm not married. I don't live with my partner. I live in a shared house. I am very much estranged from my family. As some of you may know, my mother passed away. I've never met my biological dad. But my dad that I call, my dad who's amazing, lives in Liverpool and he struggles to feed himself, let alone to even help me. So I am completely on my own with this degree financially and do you know what? I've coped all right. I've done well I think and I think the key to coping well when you've got rent to pay, bills to pay, loans to pay, phones to pay, all of that, books and stationary and everything for you need. Let's not forget that. Oh my god. But I think the key to doing that is you need to prioritise your workload. You need to prioritise physical work to get money as well on the side of the degree and you really need to organise your time and just do that wisely so that you've got enough money to keep you going throughout this degree. Because let's face it, it's horrendous. It's not funded and all the new students are having to pay yourselves to work basically in theory. But actually as new students you do get more than I get right now. So I get around in total with my bursary and student loan combined. I get around 7,000, 7 and a half thousand a year. I know who can even live on that. But I think with the new system you get a little bit more but it does depend on your circumstances if you've got children, if you're married, you live with parents, all of that jazz. So please look into that for yourselves and work out your own financial situations and your own budgeting and all of that. This is just me, my own personal circumstances and I'm just going to run through sort of how I cope and how I've managed and I'll probably tell you my bills. I'm not ashamed to tell you all of my bills. It's fine. So I live, I don't have my own place. I live in a shared accommodation. I have amazing housemates who I love to bits and we all get on. Luckily I've landed myself really well with that which is amazing. I pay £360 and that includes all of my bills included which is much cheaper than living in halls. So if you're weighing up living in halls or getting your own place, have a look around. Don't just jump straight into halls, please have a look around. But it's up to you, it's your life. You want to experience halls and university life then go for it but it is that little bit more expensive. So for me I have my rent, I have my phone bill, I've got an old loan that I'm paying off still. I've got my credit cards, I know it's horrendous but they're there unfortunately. I also pay for my Apple music because I need that in my life obviously. I also have Amazon Prime which is absolutely amazing. Amazon Prime, we get student discount, have a look at it. I've also got Netflix and I think everything just combined into one, all these little tiny bits of payments that I've got that I probably could cut out but if it comes to that point that I need to cut them out I will but they're my little luxuries that I add on so I keep them. So for now I think my total outgoings, this does not include travel and food is around £770 a month. I know £770 that is horrendous, that's a lot. When I sat down and I thought okay I need to figure this out and work out what I actually pay out completely so that I can let you guys know. And to be fair I do keep a document but then there's new things that I hadn't added on yet which I've added on now and it is £770 which is shocking. Yes and my incomeings for the month with the bursary and the student loan combined I get around 650 something a month so I need to physically pay well work to pay the extra £100 to pay my physical bills. That's not including travel and food like I said and general living so what I do is I do all of my bank shifts, all of my work or through my annual leave so I work just as much as possible from my annual leave which no it's not ideal but I have to do it to live so yeah nursing has to come first. So I work all of my annual leave and then when I'm at university I will pick up so if I'm only in university for two days a week I will work for the other few days of the week and just pick up the extra money there. I try not to work when I'm on placement just because I'm very cautious of how much we're doing out there on placement. All of the hours that we have to do I don't want to overdo it and burn myself out so I try and avoid that. So I managed to luckily manage to get enough money together to cover me for all of that and I can live comfortably off of that. I do have to budget, I buy things like rice and bulk, pasta and bulk, all sort of tinned soups and things. I buy frozen veg, I buy everything oh and tubs of sauces I've got actually a whole rack of spices as well which is amazing because they last forever so if I want to make a rice dish I've got all the spices there and I can just make it together so I'm not forking out for sauces and things all of the time but I do also have backup sauces just in case I fancy a change and I'm lazy but yeah so that's the way I do it. I book by everything and make sure I've got enough things to make my dinners and eat and live and I really really really do budget with things like that. I will always look for bargains, on groupon, on line vouchers for dominoes and things if I'm going to eat out I will I'll be really really strict with myself like that but I'm also okay with treating myself every now and then that's okay too as long as I've got the money to do that. Anyway moving on from the money side because this is going to be 101 hours long if you want any more advice or anything just let me know I can talk to you privately whatever let me know and I'll talk to you about it. So yeah so moving on as a mature student though I did my access course back in 2012 so I've been out of school for all of that time five years I didn't know I completely forgot about Harvard referencing and all of that I completely forgot physiology I know is horrendous so I was starting I felt like I was starting university with a fresh pair of eyes and it was really daunting and I felt my first few sessions of physiology there was so many people in the room that were putting their hands up and they were answering the question I was like how do you even know this how do you know this and I'm sat there like oh god I need to revise and you do kind of feel like that to start with but once you get into it and once you start revising and reading up on things you're going to be amazing I promise you I like I've said before in previous vlogs I'm not academic I left school with no GCSEs nothing hadn't been in a classroom for five years because that's how long ago my access course was and first year I smashed first year I oh god like all of my grades were 80s 90s and I think you will find that everything everyone will find that as well in first year your grades will be up there and then when you get to third year they sort of dip a bit my grades have dipped a lot in third year which is unfortunate but I've passed it doesn't matter I've passed either way but what my point was was that if I can do this anyone can do this because I'm not academic I have never been academic it is really daunting and to start with I knew I felt like a new nutting I didn't know anything especially with the physiology and essay writing side and things like that so for me I found it okay I genuinely find it okay as long as you put in the work and the revision at home do loads of independent study you're going to be amazing and please please please don't worry about any academic side of things because you can do this if I can do it and actually there's quite a few people in that class in our cohort as well that are exact same boat that haven't been in school for 20 years maybe and they can do it and they have successfully successfully passed this course and done this course and they're getting really high grades as well so please don't think that you're going to be too stupid or you're doubting yourself or feeling unconfident about the academic side because you're going to smash it there's so much help out there for you as well you've got your library you've got your personal development departments you've got your personal tutors you've got your module leads you can have one-to-one tuition please don't think that you're alone in this because you will have all of the support at university as well as your friends that you're going to make at university and it's a massive massive help and one of the other things I wanted to mention as well is about making friends as a major student I know that might sound weird but I think for me things were so much easier when I was younger because I was so much more confident I would go up and speak to anybody I wouldn't care what I was saying I'd be like hi how are you I'm you yay let's go be my friend please wow people also really hated me when I was younger but anyway I'm not like that now and people often question oh my god you do vlogs you're you're like really outgoing you're confident no I'm not this is me in my room on my own talking to people that I can't see the whites of the eyes so it's very very different for me and when I first started university it was a bit like get your head down don't speak to anyone don't know anybody just get down do your work don't worry about it and there was a couple of occasions I think I've said this previously in a vlog but I'm just going to repeat this just in case you didn't catch it or didn't watch that vlog there was a couple of times I tried to make friends I won't mention the people's names because I do speak to those people now they're not in my group but I do know them and we do speak but they're in our year but not my group so I tried to speak to two people in class and I was like yes I made a friend I made a friend I made a friend yes I've spoken to someone and they just sort of got up and left and didn't say bye and I was like oh I don't have any friends and I was gutted I was like oh today's not the day I'm not making friends today and I think oh god I feel myself going red thinking about it and um and I think after that I was just like do you know what I'm just not going to speak to anyone I'm just going to keep going with my work because I'm really bad at making friends and luckily it was my I don't think she'll mind me saying this but it was my friend Emma and I was in the Costa Que getting a coffee and I remember her just coming up to me and be like do you want to come and sit with us and I was like yes I've got a friend and it was just so good um it's making me emotional thinking about this because I'm coming to the end oh my god why am I so emotional do you know what so as you know we've just had our final week at university and I've been waiting for it to hit me and um and yeah I've been waiting for it to hit me and it hasn't hit me and I thought this is really strange because it's my final week at university I should be sad I should be really upset like why am I not emotional about this oh there it is I'm emotional um yeah I need to sort this out I'm gonna ruin my makeup I've got the health and social care awards today and I'm doing a vlog before it sorry anyway it's really emotional thinking about when I first started and how far have come and what amazing friends I've made um so I think my point was I think was you will make friends um please don't worry about that you're gonna make amazing friends and they will be your friends for life wow I did not expect that that came out nowhere okay move on so um yes you will make friends who will be your friends for life and just please don't worry about that because you will feel really daunting it will feel really daunting to start with and you'll feel like oh my god I'm not gonna make friends I'm older I'm not gonna get on with people is everyone gonna be too young that might be another worry but actually no there's so many mature students in nursing you are gonna be really shocked that was one thing that shocked me I thought because I was thinking the same I thought it's gonna be all young people there's not gonna be anyone my own age and actually everyone is in the same boat and there's a really nice mixture of younger and mature students and it's really nice and those younger students are really mature I know the ones in our cohort the younger ones are really mature they've got the headscrewed on and they're going to be amazing nurses so that's really really nice to see as well that you can get on with everybody so please don't worry about that you will make your friends they're going to be your friends for life it's going to make you emotional when you come to the end but yeah don't worry but just all in all just wanted to say please don't worry if you're a mature student you're going to be fantastic academically work balance life you will be okay and you will get into that routine of doing things and you'll just adjust eventually and it will take a few months I'm not gonna lie to you it took me good three four months to get into it and to adjust to uni life and all of that but once you get into it is absolutely amazing and you will not regret making the decision to go into nursing whatever age you are just do it because it's the most amazing reward in career it's been the most amazing journey and you're going to absolutely love it and I just wanted to say on a final note if you are struggling if you need any help if you need any advice please please please contact me my inbox is literally always open it doesn't matter where you're from who you are what your struggles are please message me and if I can help in any way at all I don't know all the answers obviously nobody knows all the answers but if I can help in any way I will and if I can't help I will at least try and signpost you to somebody or something that can help you and just hopefully you're gonna be okay but my inbox is open on Instagram Twitter Facebook emails YouTube anywhere you want to contact me please just contact me and yeah so I just want to say if you are a mature student and you're going into nursing in September good luck I'm really excited please please please document your journey please blog about it tweet about it Facebook it put pictures and everything everywhere because it's really nice to keep those memories that's my last ever tip for this video and it's just amazing to look back at and I really want to follow your journey as well so please let me know if you've started blogging vlogging tweeting Facebook in anything please let me know so I can follow your journey because it's so nice to see and if I can help I will like I said so yeah so that is it from me I will see you all next week I'm not a hundred percent sure what video is going to be next week it'll be surprise yay but hopefully it won't be a mess like this one so have a great week everybody and I shall see you next Sunday