Moots, mum and mutts.

  I’ve always been someone who keeps busy. I can still remember powering through colds while running a house with three little ones, a husband, a job, and an ever-growing list of after-school activities—coping just fine, or so it seemed. But somewhere along the way, that ship has sailed. These days, I find myself struggling to bounce back from things that would’ve barely made a dent before. This year alone, I’ve had the flu twice—once in December, and again in February. Both times I was completely wiped out. Still, I pushed through. I told myself it was the exams, the toddler’s sniffles, the teenagers' dramas. Surely not my body asking for rest—just life being life. Then, the warning signs came again. A little wheeze. A bit of breathlessness after walking the sausage dog. Nothing serious, I thought… until I heard strange rattling sounds in my chest, followed by coughing and dizziness. In typical dramatic fashion, I wondered if I was having a seizure. Once I calmed down, I reali...

  Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I present to you Exhibit A: my study area, which until yesterday resembled the aftermath of a legal textbook explosion at a coffee factory. After six weeks, a criminal Law exam, a presentation on Juries, a SWOT analysis on my future law career and SMART objectives, endless posters on criminal cases and Law and the State functions and approximately 97 mental breakdowns, I have officially completed my law exams for the year! Criminal Law, Law and the State, Legal Skills, and Legal System – all conquered (I hope) despite my part-time student juggling act. As tradition dictates, I've now entered that peculiar purgatory known to students everywhere – the post-exam limbo where you're simultaneously relieved it's over, terrified of what's to come, and confronted with the archaeological dig that was once your study space. The Great Note Migration This morning, I finally mustered the courage to tackle "The Pile." You know the one – t...

As I order a box file on eBay—to finally collect all my notes, revision posters, exam preparations, and essay plans—I realise that I have nothing left to do this academic year. Unless, of course, a resit appears on the horizon… but let’s stay positive. I chose the part-time route to study Law, knowing full well it would be a squeeze. My family life is busy, and I also work. And yet, even now, with no immediate deadlines, I find it hard to just be . I often wonder where this restlessness comes from—this guilt at the idea of doing nothing. I think it started when I was a teenager. My dad would call me lazy, relentlessly. I don’t believe I was any lazier than most teenagers, but he seemed to think I took far too much pleasure in simply having time to myself. My first coping mechanism was to look busy. I’d find activities that appeared productive—like studying. I’d copy notes, read lessons, and keep piles of paper around me, so if I was caught sitting, I could justify it. But that w...

  Time Constraint Assignment It’s funny how confident I felt about choosing my topic for the Criminal Law exam—and yet, when it comes to Law and the State , I feel completely unsure. With just one week left to decide, I find myself hesitating—not between two topics, but all of them. Unlike some of my fellow students (from what I’ve heard), Law and the State hasn’t been a favourite. But I wonder if it’s because of my age, or perhaps my background in government-sponsored media education, that I developed such a particular interest in this module. Maybe it’s because the lectures felt so grown up —proper, old-style sessions filled with rich content, delivered by lecturers who knew their topics inside out. They always seemed to have the right answer. Or maybe it’s my weird fascination with how systems function and how we all fit together in them. Perhaps it was even the quiet rebellion I felt as others grumbled through lectures I found so well prepared and genuinely engaging. Whatever ...

  Today marked a milestone: my first ever law exam, sat in a hall packed with hundreds of students. Here in South Wales, beautiful sunny days are rare enough to be reported to the authorities — and today was one of them. So, it was with great reluctance that I pried myself away from the sunshine and drove to the University to tackle my Criminal Law paper. I had spent weeks preparing: posters, tests, quizzes, mocks, and a mountain of reading material. And yet, that gut-wrenching anxiety still hit — the kind that only strikes when you're facing a blank sheet of paper in a room thick with collective panic. The night before, I had planned everything like a well-oiled machine. Sadly, the oil turned out to be water, and my perfectly crafted night turned into a patchwork quilt of broken sleep: five rounds of 40 minutes stitched together with sheer desperation. First came the child-who-never-sleeps, refusing to surrender to bedtime — and, just to spice things up, treating us to both ...

  As I’ve previously mentioned (probably more than once), I’m very busy. Like, laugh-while-sobbing-into-your-coffee kind of busy. I’ve got so much on at any one time that finding a moment to revise feels like just another chore—right between feeding the cats and maintaining my family’s emotional stability. Yet somehow, I still find myself wanting to sit and read through my notes, to relive those magical days of lectures—where I got to absorb wisdom from inspirational lecturers, brilliant students, and my equally overloaded learner friends. Even though it was only a few months ago, it now feels like a lifetime—and everything I thought I remembered has dissolved into the foggy mist of my perimenopausal brain. The first week of the Easter holidays was so jam-packed with activities that it effectively deleted all memory of my noble (if occasionally feeble) attempts at a law degree. But today, I decided to silence the fear, squash the imposter syndrome, and declare: THIS is the d...

  “A MOOT Point: Mentorship, Mayhem and Mild Existential Crises” "You said you were busy?" During MOOT prep, I met a fellow student who, refreshingly, didn’t seem remotely scared by my “elderly” status (his words, not mine—but probably his thoughts). On the contrary, he looked quite eager to sponge up some of my life-earned wisdom, like a legal apprentice in the making. This bright-eyed young man introduced himself with the kind of glowing ambition usually reserved for movie protagonists or people running for president. He declared, with a grin wider than my student loan debt, that he intended to be a future world leader. I admired his confidence—it practically needed its own lanyard. Full of charm, smiles, and zero fear of wrinkles, he asked about my MOOT strategy and what my “intervention” might look like (making me briefly wonder if I’d accidentally joined a UN peace mission rather than a mock court). Flattered—and mildly stunned—I thought, “Wow. One of those boys actuall...