A day in the life of a third year Psychology student

Poppy Colbourne gives us a glimpse of her typical daily routine.

An energetic start

Waking up at 5.30am will never be easy but nonetheless, every Tuesday before the sun is up, I roll out of bed and head straight to my coffee machine, leaving my boyfriend to get an extra 15 minutes' sleep.

Luckily, my past self was looking out for me when she laid my workout clothes neatly on my desk and made my packed lunch. All I need to do is get my prepared smoothie ingredients out of the fridge and blend them together, being careful not to wake my flatmate.

We arrive at Avon Boat Club for 6.30am, greeted by a room of sleepy students ready to row. Our training schedule depends on the sunrise. If it’s still dark, we have a land session consisting of a hardcore workout (led by the exercise enthusiast that is my aforementioned boyfriend), accompanied by blood-pumping tunes from someone’s Spotify playlist. If the sun is up, we grab our oars and get out onto the River Avon in time to see the beautiful fire sky reflect off the water. Then it’s back to the boat club for a stretch, an egg sandwich and, of course, another cup of coffee.

Study, research and tutoring...

After a quick change out of my sweaty gym kit I get to university bright and early, ready for a dissertation meeting at 10am – third coffee in hand!

I’m conducting research into how stress affects people’s smoking and vaping behaviour, which is far more interesting than it may sound! Every spare moment of my day is spent finding relevant research and reading articles in order to make my literature review standout.

After this meeting, I head straight to my first class of the week – Advanced Biological and Cognitive Psychology. I usually have the lecture slides prepared beforehand, so all I need to do is open my laptop and press record, noting down any questions I have as I go.

A perk of my timetable is that I have seminars straight after lectures, so I can go and clarify any queries have. In these seminars we put what we have just learnt into a more practical setting so, for example, after a lecture on nutrition we’ll have a seminar on eating behaviour.

No rest for the wicked as I take my packed lunch on the go and tutor an A-Level Psychology student in the centre of Bath, just a few minutes away. This only lasts an hour, so then it’s straight back to university to do some work on my assignments – and consider that fourth coffee of course!

...and relax!

By 5pm, I’m ready to go. Once I’m home, I wash up my lunchbox and prepare my meal for the next day, popping it into my already overflowing fridge to stay fresh. I then put on some comfier clothes, start on dinner, and finish up some emails left over from the day.

After I’ve eaten, it’s self-care time. This consists of a nice hot shower accompanied by my faithful skin routine, followed by curling up in bed with a hot chocolate and Netflix. I try and read a chapter of my book before finally calling it a night around 10pm – if you know me, you’ll know this is more like 9pm...but I try!