The first week

On my first day I was so excited, it was like my first day at school all over again. I had organised to meet a couple of the others in the cafe, so I wasn't worried about walking in on my own. I was really interested to see who else would be Midwifery students though and wondered what sort of age mix there would be. At 32 I expected to be one of the oldest but in reality I was somewhere in the middle.

The first three days we spent most of our time in the one lecture hall. We had talks from people from various different departments e.g. student support, library, student union; and an introduction to some of our subject tutors. It was hard going in that there was lots of sitting and listening and not a lot of doing. Some parts were also a bit repetitive too - they'd each explain how to get onto the computer system and for those of us that were perhaps comfortable with negotiating our way round a computer, found this a little tedious. But on the whole, it was informative.

On the Thursday and Friday we were lucky enough to have a lie in.....well those of us without children did anyway...as we didn't start till 11. We had the theory of moving and handling, theory of resuscitation and our first Biology session. The Biology was the first time I felt I was in a proper lecture and learning something.

One thing I hadn't been prepared for was how tired I was. We really didn't do very much that first week but I was coming home starving and exhausted. I could literally fall asleep at the drop of a hat and for someone who usually takes a good hour to get to sleep at night, this was a bit of a shock. I was very reassured when I spoke to the others about this, as they were all feeling the same. It didn't take too long to settle down luckily.

So that's the applying, preparation and first week covered. I hope you are enjoying reading my journey so far and I hope it's useful if you are thinking about applying to Midwifery too. If you do have any questions, then do feel free to ask :)