All Good Things.

This day exactly one year ago was the day I began my adventure so it only seems fitting that today I write my last blog post.
To those of you who have read from the beginning:
1. Thank you so much for your attention, and
2. If you were willing to read all that rambling then you probably should seek professional help.
There has been highs, lows, frustrations, anger, laughs, staying up until dawn, staying in bed all day and most certainly everything in between.
If for some unknown reason you want to continue reading the pixelated version of the nonsense that could only be from my mind (again, professional help. Just saying) I can be found here from now on. (Warning: Will contain ranting about Final year)

Thanks for giving me a place to rant and rave depending on the situation and hopefully managed to offer some nuggets of information that will actually be found  useful. This is now a place that can be revisited to relive some of the madness that has occurred over the last 12 months.

See you guys soon and all the best.
-Claire

Bureaucracy The Eternal Pain In The....

So I haven't updated in a while.
3 reasons:
1. Not being on Erasmus any more means there is a distinct lack of Erasmus-y type things to write about
2. The only Erasmus-y type things that have been going on have been insanely dull and bureaucratic
3 I've been watching quite a lot of Netflix.

However I said my loyal reader (thanks again Mom) deserved a brief run-down on the boring part because as I have previously stated it's not fun and games all the time.
So we all know that bureaucracy can be the world's biggest pain in the......neck, lets keep it PG. It can be an even bigger pain in the neck when you're trying to get things organised from a remote location. (More of which can be read about here. Hurray for shameless self promotion!)
All Erasmus students must apply for a transcript of records containing all their results for a date to be set by their home University. Unfortunately your home and visiting Universities may not work in tandem leaving you to send frantic emails on a borrowed WiFi connection on the outskirts of Manchester 3 days before you 'must' and I repeat 'MUST' have it submitted. Thankfully after many stressful hours and even more panicked emails said transcript arrived at the UCC international office just about on time....only to be followed by more requirements in the form of a confirmation that I sat the exam. Apparently the fact that I sat (and failed) the exam (with a 5,0 to prove it) isn't enough. Now tracking down these confirmations should be simple yeah? HA! Well this isn't entirely true.
Within 2 hours of emailing the Politics department I was in possession (we as in possession as a person can get of pixels on a screen) of my confirmation. Unfortunately the department of Economics, the department I was actually enrolled to keeps finding problems and issues and if someone was to tell me they invented the phrase passing the buck I would believe them without hesitation.
So in summation (the academic season is almost upon us. Closing paragraphs are now a must):

• Bureaucracy is a pain in the neck
• Getting what you need from offices without face to face communication is up there with becoming a fully fledged astronaut for NASA
• People tend to not be helpful over email and may refer you to an email that doesn't in fact exist
• Dealing with 2 Universities at once is hard

However I am glad to report that all remaining paperwork is simply to allow my final grade for the year to be finalised. A result which I am glad to report was a pass.
Yes dear reader, contrary to what I know you believed, I managed to undergo an academic enrichment worthy of the passing grade for a full University year.
Or at least successfully managed to convince someone important that I did at the very least.