However, before I lock myself out of Facebook and into Hallward for the next month, I’ve squeezed in a week of fun. It started on Wednesday when I saw the New Theatre’s awesome production of ‘Educating Rita’ by Willy Russell. The play was a heartwarming and thought provoking story of a depressed, whiskey loving English lecturer who takes on the task of educating 26 year old, eager to learn ‘everything’, Rita. The two person cast played their parts perfectly. Ginny Lee who played ‘Rita’ was as funny and feisty as she was heartwarming. Her co-star Nick Barker who played ‘Frank’ the professor was equally as entertaining and gave a great performance of someone at least twice his age.

On Thursday I dusted off my suit and boarded the party bus to the ‘English and Mech-Soc SummerBall’; the oddly matched societies make more sense when you look at the boy to girl ratio on each course. The evening festivities included a three course meal, a band, an UNLIMITED CHOCOLATE FOUNTAIN and centre pieces made of chocolate (the Ball was Willy Wonka Themed). Needless to say everyone was more excited about the chocolate fountain than the bar, and we danced the night away to live music before heading to our after party. If you have any society balls this year, they are so much fun!

Then the main event of the week rolled around: my 21st birthday night out! As I took a gap year, a lot of my home friends have already turned 21 and I took full advantage of teasing them about being a ‘real adult’ now and having to grow up. Well, karma is knocking on my door and its pay back time. I feel like I’m Rachel in that friends episode when she has a break down about turning 30. But there’s nothing you can do to stop it, so I guess I just have to embrace it. So with Ocean Fridays being my favourite night out in Nottingham I assembled my friends and we went for an almighty splash in the Big O. A fantastic night was had by all and saturday was spent on the sofa in the company of a ‘New Girl’ marathon (side note – exam time is the wrong time to become obsessed with a TV show).

I had my birthday night out on Friday because I wanted it at Ocean, but my birthday is actually today 🙂 On the one hand I’m staring into the face of my mortality asking myself ‘what have I accomplished in my life …?’, yet on the other hand feeling very fortunate to be where I am and excited about what my twenties are going to bring me; after all, I’m twenty one years young.

Posted in 2012 ShaneUncategorized