Year 2: Week 47 & 48 - One Assessment to Go!

Week 47 & 48: So very nearly there!!!

When mind mapping goes wrong....

Straight out of placement and straight into manic preparations for my last viva! Who needs sleep anyways! It was easy to establish that I can't study at home, its far to distracting! Everyone talks about having the right study area, a desk good lighting, and all your resources available to you! But for some reason this didn't put it for the last assignment and I needed to explore other options.

I am going to blog about the Occupational Role with Refugee and Asylum Seekers (which was my service area) when I get a moment so won't talk about it in this post!

Study venues considered & trailed over the process:

1. Debenhams Cafe Ocean Terminal - Free wifi, generally pleasant and mostly occupied by elderly couples enjoying lunch. This created a positive space to study as there was limited distractions. I could plug my headphones in and focus.

Taking over a bench in Ocean Terminal

2. Costa Coffee Ocean Terminal - Free wifi, good cake. Alternative to the Debehams cafe, wifi was much more usable however, coffee shop always busy and tables quite small, meaning harder to type and write at same time.

3. Costa Coffee George Street - Free Wifi, comfy seating and larger tables, worked well for a change of scenery.

4. Starbucks Ocean Terminal - Free wifi - lots of plug sockets so I often used this towards end of the day with laptop battery was low, only problem was the smell of coffee was often a distraction.

5. Gym - Primarily used when listening to recordings of information whilst doing a gentle 'wander' on the treadmill.

6. Ocean Terminal general seating - Last resort when everywhere was busy, and laptop battery had died, used seating to read over and highlight journals and notes.

Im thankful that although I did most of my prep in these two weeks, I had already started reading journals and articles on topic area whilst on placement to enable me to really focus on what my service idea was going to look like. It still help chaotic and on reflection I wish I had done more of the prep before finishing placement, but it just wasn't doable whilst on placement as I was so exhausted and focused on working on that.

I must mention the massive support my friends were in these two weeks, listening and asking questions about my service so that I could work out what I was actually 'selling' during the viva.

For more insight into my journey to become an occupational therapist; follow me on twitter: @OTontheTracks