student posts

10 Signs You Know You’re Procrastinating in the Library

March 7, 2014

Just to kick start this post, there’s is a definite chance that I may actually be in the midst of procrastinating in said library as we speak. There’s a chance that the entire fundamental basis of this post is summed up in the crime that I’m currently committing. Sue me. We’re all feeling it – studentitis, that terrifying onslaught of bizarre compulsions which seem only to be triggered when we wander wayward into our university’s hallowed library walls. Currently, I’m flailing in the throes of the dreaded godfather of studentitis: thirdyearitis. Muffle your screams. So, on the vibe of  ‘there’s no time like the present’ (to waste some more valuable library-dwelling minutes) – I think it’d be a brilliant opportunity to simply give in to my nagging longing to write and compile this utterly pointless, but hopefully entertaining amalgamation of library-procrastination-thought-processes: (somebody come find me and stop this madness)

  1. Listlessly attempt to avert gaze from people watching. Whilst in the feral terrains of campus, eye contact with these strange creatures is strictly forbidden – but in the craptastic atmosphere of the library, anything’s a first-class drama: an unfortunately amusing sneeze would hit the spot right now. Hell, would rather have a conversation than write this essay. A conversation with Paris Hilton, even.
  2. Torture self over whether that abandoned Evian bottle is full of piss, or just orange juice. Please, please god be orange juice.
  3. Fight sudden urge to take up sock darning/gardening/thimble-collecting. Be beaten by stronger urge to mindlessly Google ‘World’s Biggest Thimble Collection’ (it’s 8,003 – you don’t have to thank me).
  4. Briefly wonder what would happen if you stripped off and ran screaming through the aisles, throwing books off the balcony. On plus side, if you got thrown out – you’d no longer have to write a dissertation, right?
  5. Organise life into a myriad of lists. To-do, to-don’t, wishlists, favourite breeds of cat… Debate list-making for toilet visits and even consider venturing into writing a list for when you ought to write more lists.
  6. Ironically indulge in animalistic bout of longing for indulgence. Fantasise about wild masturbation, followed by a GIRLS marathon, teamed with a bottomless bag of Doritos. Fantasise about bathing in pink champagne and drinking way out. Fantasise about life post-degree. Inspire Step 7:
  7. Battle inherent fear of leaving university and having to live at home again. Fret incessantly over the possibility of no longer living off favourite cereal and rosé, the prospect of having a screechy parent as an alarm clock once more, and the cessation of life as an occasional nudist.
  8. Consider the physiological aspects of twerking. Do extensive research, watch countless YouTube videos, until you almost forget surroundings and go for it Miley-style at the desk.
  9. Watch every single music video by Rihanna that ever was. Rinse and repeat for every single Vevo-residing popstar on the planet. Realise it’s nearly midnight and the word count’s at 3. And that was just from when you accidentally leant on the keyboard.
  10. Wonder what sick bastard decided to put so few Milky Stars in the packet. Consider wasting time with an angry letter to Mars Consumer Care. Fuck it off and go buy another bag of Milky Stars. Accidentally fuck the library off and go home…

OOTD: Dissertation Dash.

January 13, 2014

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Today marked the first Doomsday of my calendar: the dreaded return to university, rounded up to terror stages by the addition of a 5,000 word essay deadline and a dissertation meeting with my tutor who ever so slightly scares the living shit out of me (she’s coo’, though). I had to dash from Wigan back home to Lancaster, which included having to write up the referencing for my essay on a bus – surprised I still have a MacBook left (if you know Wigan, you’ll understand) and stupidly telling a chav to ‘eff off’ after he jumped in my path to scare me enroute to the bus stop. Surprised I still have a MacBook and a pulse. Anyway, drama was averted eventually and the day, whilst tiring, has been made exponentially better by this absolute bargain outfit.

Everything I’m wearing (necklace aside) comes from the Primark sales – the entire outfit came to TWELVE POUNDS. Yes. Twelve measly pounds. The jacket is proving an excellent purchase but there are many bloopers of me realising that you can fully see my bra through this dress with the flash on. Not sure whether that’s just the quality or something to do with the fact I’m wearing a bright white bra under a dark green dress – urrr.

I’ve got absolutely tonnes to be blogging about this week, so keep your eyes peeled.

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Make Up

Face: Illamasqua Skin Base Foundation in SB 02 | MAC Prep + Prime Transparent Finishing Powder | Revlon PhotoReady Concealer in Light | Benefit Hervana Blush

Eyes: L’oreal Brow Pencil in Dark Brunette | Ted Baker Liquid Liner Pen | MAC Kohl Liner in Smolder | Benefit They’re Real Mascara | Smashbox Smokebox

Lips: Estée Lauder Pure Colour Lipstick in Black Cassis

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Outfit

Primark Pleather Sleeve Bodycon Dress – £5 was £10 | Primark Floral Jacket – £7 was £17

Empty Casket Amethyst Pentagram Cord Necklace – £15
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Apologies for the utterly pants image quality on these: I didn’t have any time to take pictures before the sun went down, so these will have to do! Definitely need to get someone to start taking my pictures for me – I am fundamentally useless.

How To Survive Summer.

June 25, 2013

College/university’s out, the sun’s making an attempt at showing its face – albeit a piss poor one, and the prospect of having sweet sod all to do for months seems damn appealing. This is, until you realise that you’re no longer fourteen, your lease ends in two weeks and you’re flirting with becoming the two dread words: “homeless” and “bum”. Then Summer becomes a snarky little bitch of dread – gone are the days of wasting your mid-teens holidays getting messed up on the local park with a tactfully scavved bottle of Lambrini. Instead, my summer has thus far consisted of: countless hours spent crying in bed staring at yet another data-entry-at-minimum-wage job that I still bizarrely won’t get; trawling miles (oh, just approximately ten) through business parks in ridiculous creeper boots just because I’m going for a fashion-related interview; receiving all too many ‘sorry, can’t today – got work’ texts from my friend circle; spending almost a week in bed because – for some reason – factor 50 still isn’t enough for my glacier-white skin and I started flaking off like something off a horror film. At the moment, I’m seething in a little pit of financial and motivational despair, throwing out emails like sporadic paper aeroplanes, in the seemingly vain hope that someone will notice my potential. At present, the only person to do such was some woman from a stripper club – where I had applied for bar work in a desperate attempt at income – who, upon seeing my CV picture (FYI: don’t put a picture from a party where you’re a mass of cheekbone and red lipstick on your CV), claimed there were no bar jobs left and wanted me to come in for an “exotic dancer” interview. And such is the colour of my summer, as it stands.

The only upside to this entire sorry affair is that, after the sunburn fiasco, I have emerged facially reinvigorated from my bed of tears and dairy free mint chocolate – and 99% spot free after a short, but franticly needy relationship with a tube of aqueous cream. Perhaps Simple or Garnier will pick me up off the street for their next ad, or I’ll enter BINTM and be the founding face behind their “Joke Applications” section. I’m narked off. It’s one of those weeks: I’m looking at my blog through sceptical eyes, sneering at the poxy pageviews since I started being a perpetual sulk – I even got to the disgraceful stage of lying in bed this morning, scanning the Twitter profiles of successful bloggers/writers that I know, eyeing up tweets about their latest achievements, and having to stop scrolling as I eventually couldn’t read through the pesky tears that’d emerged. I’ll be grand in a couple of days, something will pick up and I’ll have a new lease of life – a new project to get my sorry ass set on. But I thought I’d write this post for those of you who have been, or are still in this position too. I get a little pissed off with how blindly positive the beauty/fashion blogging world can be – given we spend about 75% of our posting time yannering on about how ‘AMAZE’ the latest BB/CC/DD/ZZ cream or ZARA piece is – yeah sure, we want our posts to be as beautiful as the things we’re writing about, but sometimes it’s good to just get out the virtual face-wipes and just see a blogger behind all the ‘lol – #lookatallmyfollowers’.

So this is for us, sulky bloggers – for anyone who’s felt a bit shite recently and needs a little pick-me-up. I’m writing this for all of us, myself included, as this is going to be a little brainstorm of things that we can get working on to stop ourselves from being stuck in that aforementioned pit of despair:

  • On the Job Hunt: Explore all avenues. Apply for every little bastarding thing on Gumtree/Indeed/Reed/Job Centre – I don’t care if it takes two days (yes, it took me that long – and you wonder why unemployment is making me bitter) – you’re only going to get something if you get out there. Join a temp/recruitment agency: I’m signed onto one in Lancaster that helped me out a decent amount with admin jobs last summer, so I’ll be joining one in Manchester this time for when I move. Get eagle-eyed with Twitter – there are lots of internships/jobs that get mentioned everyday, my favourite is @UKfashionintern. Finally, get old fashioned and trawl your local shopping centre/food district: I’m going to be marching around Manchester, especially the Arndale, laden with CVs. 
  • On Beating the ‘Average’ Fear: This is one of my biggest issues. Sometimes I get myself in a state of – ‘well, they’re doing so much better than me, look how average I am right now: what’s the bastarding point’? Arguably juvenile, I think it happens to us all sometimes and it’s just something to work through. My worst habit in these situations, is lying in bed all day – mining through the work and accolades of others, often in a cruel bout of masochism, but occasionally in a bid to seek inspiration and motivation. Just don’t sleep all day – that shit is bad. Nobody wants to hire the person who goes to sleep at 5am and wakes up at 3pm. 
  • On Post-Summer: For the two preceding summers I’ve had that have led up to a university year so far, I’ve had a slacker tendency to just not bother doing any reading and then tackle the beast head on when it comes to the beginning of term. This year, my final year, is going to be different – it’s time I grew up, had a good sniff of the coffee and got down to some serious business with Hemingway… 

 

ZARA Sale Crisis – Help!

June 21, 2013

If you didn’t know that the ZARA sale started at midnight last night, you might want to just ban yourself from the Twittersphere and be done already. Anyway, there are some really lovely pieces that otherwise, I would rarely be able to afford and these three little temptresses have caught my eye. Out of the two dresses, which one should I buy? 

 

Printed Dress | £39.99, was £49.99

Dress with shoulder pads | £29.99, was £45.99

Shopper with braided handles | £29.99, was £39.99

Which dress? Help me out guys, need to buy – neeeed to buy. Drop me a comment or tweet me @Ebzo!

Ditch The Slap For Summer.

June 17, 2013

Summer’s here, sun cream’s flying off the shelves and we’re all out in the garden having BBQs. Well, perhaps one weekend each month we have the luxury of such weather, being begrudging citizens of the United Kingdom. The first thing we see after the teensiest hint of sunshine is an absolute fake-tan army, patrolling the streets, our shitty beaches, or even just loitering around the local Spar with a couple Calippo lollies – a complete onslaught of orange. I hate it. It’s probably one of my most anti-beauty blogger opinions, and may even get me banished from the blogosphere but, I bloody hate fake tan. It’s nigh impossible to get done properly, unless you’re in the know and of a well-padded bank account, which we all know accounts only for the tiniest minority of Britain’s population. Instead, we get faced with young girls and ladies committing one of many ‘sun’-kissed sins: streaks/OTT orange pigmentation/different coloured foundations to fake tan – it goes on and on. Not to mention the grim side effects. You’re either going to smell funny, drip brown liquid over all your belongings/bedsheets/boyfriends, or take the other option and get cancer, or just botch up your facial skin quality by whapping on the slap and causing breakouts.

Now, how much of Britain’s fake tan obsession do you think spurns from the media, or peer pressure? I’d say a damn good amount. When I was in high school, I was relentlessly bitched at by the chavvy girls due to my ghostly white complexion, usually in a guise of being utterly perplexed that I didn’t bother slapping colour on me that was a good 10 shades darker than the Snow White pigment I was born with. As long as you take care of your skin properly, it doesn’t matter what damn colour it is. If you consistently shave, exfoliate and moisturise, your skin will look radiant and healthy in the sun regardless! You don’t have to add further stressors to your life by thinking you can’t leave the house without a 2cm layer of paste all over you. It’s just bizarre to me.

But I’m not the only one who feels like embracing my natural tone and working with it. Here are some pale celebrity goddesses:

Rooney Mara

 

Taylor Swift

Nicola Roberts

Amanda Seyfried

Charlotte Free

My main change to my beauty regime that, unless I’m going on a night out, I have completely and utterly cut out foundation – sticking instead to using just moisturiser, concealer when necessary, and the odd bit of powder on my t-zones. This has been going on for nearly a month now and I cannot begin to explain how much of a difference it has made my complexion. My skin is clearer than its ever been, my freckles are proudly mooching around my cheeks and the overall finish is much cleaner and natural. Being so pale, I find it difficult to find any foundation that actually suits me for more than a season anyway, so I thought I’d brave being naked for a while and get to the root of the problem, that foundation was only covering up and worsening anyway!

I say: give it a try. And if it doesn’t work, you can send me nasty emails. But I’m pretty damn sure you’ll see great results and you’ll learn to feel comfortable with the quality and shade of your own skin tone within no time – no more wasting time and money on bottles of orange gunk – let the warmth of summer bring out your natural glow. If you’ve tried to cut out any beauty product recently – let me know how it went! Here’s a blatant piss-take photo from my holiday in March, where I braved Morocco without bothering with fake tan:

Tweet me @Ebzo

Discovering a Goldmine: New Look Generation 915.

June 15, 2013

You’ve got to be ‘kid’din’, right? Yes, I am talking about the child/teen section of New Look and yes, I am raving about it – at the disgraced un-teen age of twenty. A couple of weeks back, I was eyeing up the influx of denim trend in the regular section, particularly the denim dungaree dresses, and randomly got the brainwave to have a quick gander at the kids’ stuff – on the premise that, if – with my pathetic size 3 feet, I fit in the shoes – surely I’ll fit in the clothes? And I do. And the range is pretty damn good. There are nigh-identical teen-size alternatives to almost every staple piece from the adults’ section, without VAT, so at a fraction of the price. And here’s another bonus: you can still use student discount on top! Here’s an example of some of the things you can buy:

g915 sports luxe crop t-shirt £9.99 | g915 high-waister denim dungaree shorts £15.99

Par examplé, the average price for a dungaree style piece in the adults section, be it shorts or a dress style, gravitated around the £30 mark, whereas, the kids’ versions were only around £22.99. I’d recommend the line to anyone under a size 10 on the whole – I’m a size 6 and have bought an age 9 crop t-shirt, age 13 high-waisted dungaree shorts, age 14 skater skirt and an age 14 baggy sports luxe crop. And I think all of those combined came to approximately £35 – wowzers. One thing I was a tad disappointed with, however, was the thinness of both shirts that I bought: totally see-through for ultimate bra exposure. Great. Annoyingly, for the first time in my history of New Look perusing, the website is down, so I can’t show you any examples of the g915 offerings, but I’ll be sure to update the post with pictures once it’s back in business.

Now I’m going to be scouring the high street to see if anyone else offers the same versatile sizes!

Tweet me at @Ebzo

NEWS: Primark Comes To ASOS.

June 12, 2013

And after finally checking out the hype – YES, I’m bloody happy about it. I saw the endless tweets last week, which caused a stir about the bizarre news that Primark was to finally be available online through everyone’s favourite online shopping portal: ASOS – but I was not convinced. The first thing I posted went along the lines of ‘OH shit, let me guess: the prices are horribly inflamed and have rendered Primark/ASOS into something completely alien to Primark, which is marketed heavily on its affordability’, so I didn’t bother having a look. And then I got tonsillitis. Probably karma for being a presumptuous cynic, but there you go – until recently, I hadn’t checked the line out. But hot damn, hats off to you guys: it’s impressive, and most importantly, quintessentially Primark-priced.

The main trends that I’ve noticed are sport/varsity, denim and florals (oh, and an odd array of random onesies – bit weird for summer), which all seem to be aimed at a younger buyer: I could quite easily see the entire range on the post-sixteen-year olds wreaking havoc on Leeds/Reading Festival, which’d be a nice change from the bum-revealing shorts that we ended up dubbing ‘womb-lining shorts’ by the end of the weekend last year, due to their lack of leaving much to the imagination. Anyway, the line is definitely young, flirty and really quite damn cool. Here are some pieces that I’ll be hoping to snap up:

1.Polka Dot Cut Out Denim Shirt Dress – £15 | 2. High Neck Cold Shoulder Crop Top – £6 | 3. Floral Print Prom Dress – £17

What do you think of the new collection?

Follow me on Twitter @Ebzo

Ebony’s Trip To Cambridge/London: Day 1.

November 9, 2012

Hello! It’s finally time to get posting again, I think! I’m currently sat on the Virgin ‘Super’ Voyager enroute to Cambridge – though, arguably, it’s the slowest one I’ve ever travelled on. If you’re not a regular reader of my blog, I’m off on a little journey this week: firstly, I’m going to Cambridge Uni for the weekend to stay with my ‘bezzie mate’ Heather, before going on to London on Sunday in preparation for my week of work experience at Elle magazine starting Monday. I somehow managed to get the train this morning (granted, an hour later than originally planned), despite not having packed until about 9:30 – oops. Packed all the essentials: Kindle, MacBook, phone, nail varnish remover pads… Lush facemasks, y’know. Although, I have stupidly packed practically an entire week’s worth of clothes in a paper Selfridges bag – and it’s intermittently raining. Hopefully all my new get-up won’t end up all over Cambridge train station.

Today’s plan is to change trains at Birmingham then straight off to Cambridge – hopefully with time to do a little shopping when I get there, as we’re supposed to be going to an 80s-themed night out tonight (they call nights out ‘bops’, how strange?). I’m very much looking forward to checking out Cambridge, it looks absolutely divine from pictures – though I’m not sure my hodgepodge Northern/Welsh/Irishy accent is going to go down a storm with the posh and mighty. I’m sure I’ll update with some hilarious miscommunication stories before Sunday.

Here’s me, awkwardly taking an awkward picture on the train, feeling awkward:

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Urban Outfitters Sale Haul.

October 18, 2012

I’ve been on an absolute retail therapy spree recently, but at least I’ll be meh and dressed decently. Before this Urban Outfitters haul, there’s another one that I need to post about – where I took major advantage of their 20% off for students offer – which I do believe is still on! However, there is currently a pretty damn good mid-season sale on with many pieces up to 50% off. Here are my picks:

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Beating The Blogger Blues.

October 18, 2012

We’ve all been there. Something messes up in your personal life, or it’s just one of those days – and everything seems pointless. All those countless hours you’ve spent writing posts, collaborating images and data and you’re thinking – why am I bothering? You feel like noone’s reading it, you’re doing it for nothing and can even go as far to think you’re just wasting your time. This happens to pretty much all of us.

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Ebony. 25. Manchester.
Marketing Manager who likes to mouth off on here about stuff she cares about. Expect mental health, Borderline Personality Disorder, and reviews - from restaurants, to books, to fashion. Talks to cats more than people, but seemingly has a lot to say.
ebonylaurenn@gmail.com