{"id":9205,"date":"2024-01-25T11:32:37","date_gmt":"2024-01-25T11:32:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/students\/?p=9205"},"modified":"2024-01-25T11:32:37","modified_gmt":"2024-01-25T11:32:37","slug":"5-month-placement-round-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/students\/2024\/01\/25\/5-month-placement-round-up\/","title":{"rendered":"5-month Placement round up!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just like that, the first half of my placement is coming to an end, so I thought I would do an (honest!) reflection of my time here so far!<\/p>\n

Settling in<\/strong><\/h3>\n

I feel so settled here now, in my job and the friends I have made, so it feels funny to think back to the first couple of months when that wasn\u2019t the case. When I first arrived, I was full of nervous excitement, everything was new and usually I would find that quite overwhelming, but I think I had so much adrenaline in me all the time that I kind of just coasted through the workdays\u2026<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/h3>\n

At first, I was also enjoying life outside of work, there was so much for me to explore and therefore easy to keep myself occupied. I think I was just on this high from the move, however it\u2019s fair to say this didn\u2019t last.<\/p>\n

Don't be too hard on yourself<\/h3>\n

Being at work was good, I was surrounded by people and was always keeping busy.\"\" But as the weekends approached, my mindset would start to go downhill, I started to view them as two days of loneliness looming ahead of me rather than two days of freedom. As I have said in a previous blog, there really weren\u2019t many people here when I first arrived in August, people were still holidaying, and the students hadn\u2019t arrived at the uni yet. I tried very hard to keep myself busy, but nothing ever seemed to take as long as I thought it would and then I was just left with empty space where I would just spiral. What was I doing here? Am I just bad at making friends? Am I doing enough? These questions were constantly swimming around my head. Now when I look back, I realise how silly it was of me to be so hard on myself, I had just moved to a new country, where no one speaks the same language as me and I had only been there a MONTH.<\/p>\n

Luckily this all changed when I went on a student lead hiking trip \u2013 honestly one of the highlights of my internship so far! I remember the morning of the trip I arrived at the meeting point, and it was SO awkward, people were stood in small groups but no one was really speaking. I quickly started to panic, wondering what I was doing and if it was going to be like that the whole trip. But I decided to put my big girl pants on and make the first move, wriggling my way into a group of girls, and luckily it worked.<\/p>\n

\"\"I spent the rest of the trip with the biggest smile on my face. Hiking, it turns out, is a great way to learn a lot about another person and I came away from that trip with some amazing friends, who I now see on a regular basis.<\/p>\n

Since that trip my happiness here has just grown and grown and those rough first couple of months feel like a lifetime ago!<\/p>\n

Don't give up!<\/h3>\n

I think the point I am trying to make is that if you\u2019re going through a period of loneliness, change or challenge, whether that\u2019s at uni or placement, please please please remember that it WILL get better, just don\u2019t give up! I think it\u2019s important to remember that when you embark on these big life changes it won\u2019t always be easy \u2013 (if it was everyone would do it), so if you are finding it difficult, cut yourself some slack and just take things one step at a time and things will work themselves out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just like that, the first half of my placement is coming to an end, so I thought I would do an (honest!) reflection of my time here so far! Settling in I feel so settled here now, in my job...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1858,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[598,24,310],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-department-for-health","category-faculty-of-humanities-social-sciences","category-placements"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/students\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/students\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/students\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/students\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1858"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/students\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/students\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9205\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/students\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/students\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/students\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}