One year on from finishing university, this felt like a good time for a life update as I am generally adulting way more than I was when I had just finished uni.

When I was a student I called that the "free trial" of adult life because you are technically an adult but for me, uni felt like a transition stage before the real thing. Then once I'd finished uni, I would refer to myself as a recent graduate, or say I'd "just finished uni" but it's a year on now.

Graduating uni - one year on

So in the last year since leaving university, I moved back home and started a job pretty much instantly after finishing my last assignments and dissertation. It was good to finally be earning some £££ after the student life I have to say.

My original plan after uni wasn't to move home, probably like a lot of students but I have been enjoying it and everyone is at different stages at this point in their life.

After working in my graduate job for a year, I was promoted into a more senior role which I will be starting over the next couple of months! This is something I'm so proud of because I really didn't expect this one year on from leaving university. 

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When I left university I had no clue really what I wanted to do or what I was good at, I just wanted a job but now that I have been working in marketing as a social media coordinator for a year, it's reassuring that I am good enough at my to be put forward for more responsibility at this stage.

I am going from a Social Media and Communications Coordinator to a Digital Communications Officer, basically a fancy way of saying I will be doing more technical digital marketing stuff than I have been doing up until this point.

New car who dis?

I am writing this on my new car day, which is another life update I need to share! So I had my fiesta since I was 17 and just passed my driving test, I did a blog about passing my driving test too haha that's how long I've been blogging.

Today, I said goodbye to Frankie the Fiesta and got my second car, a 2018 plate Volkswagen Polo. I had wanted a polo to be my second car but I always said I would wait until after uni when I had a job so that's what I did.

I loved my old car but she was getting on a bit and it was definitely time to get a new one, I'm so proud of my new car, and I will be showing it off until further notice.

Mo' money mo' travel

I have always been interested in World War 2 and the Holocaust, even more so since I visited Auschwitz in 2017 and saw some of the horrors that went on there for myself. 

Ever since then I have watched a lot of documentaries and films about the Holocaust and have started reading a lot more about it too.

I am also an avid TikTok user, and when Lily Ebert and her great-grandson, Dov, came up on my 'For You' page, I couldn't stop watching their videos. If you have TikTok, I'd definitely recommend watching Lily Ebert's videos here.

In these videos, Lily talks about her experience as a survivor of Auschwitz (along with other camps) and answers a lot of questions that she gets. 

Lily is a 98-year-old Holocaust survivor, she was sent to Auschwitz when she was 20 along with her family who were all from Hungary.

The book

In the book, Lily describes her experiences all the way from prior to being taken to Auschwitz, to her life after the war up until 2020.

As aforementioned, I have consumed a lot of narratives around Auschwitz and the Holocaust so I am very aware of some of the brutality and awful things that happened to people. But reading this from a real-life Holocaust survivor, I could feel the emotion that Lily was putting into the book, having experienced it herself.

Related: 5 reasons why books still matter

The book was structured in years, each chapter was a different year of Lily's life and she went into a lot of the details about the atrocities she experienced - which can't have been easy to do.

Due to the topics discussed in the book, sometimes reading it can be quite difficult and upsetting. But when I was feeling this, I had to remind myself that I was reading it from a place of privilege. It is so shocking to me, all the awful things that happened in the Holocaust, but none of that has happened to me and I, along with everyone, need to be educated about it.

In terms of the structure of the book, I really liked the way it was in chronological order over the different years of Lily's life and I liked that Dov (Lily's great-grandson) had written a few parts in it too. Most of the book is from Lily's perspective but Dov explains how they created TikTok and wrote the book. He also explains a bit about how he thought Lily was feeling writing the book.

Should you read this book?

Yes! I would recommend this book to anyone. I believe that we all need to know about the Holocaust and do as much learning about it as we possibly can. Reading Lily's promise, along with watching her TikTok videos is a great way to do this.

A lot of the documentaries out there are really helpful, and they have been constructed by historical experts, but oftentimes, they weren't actually there to experience it. Lily was there, she saw it, she felt it.

Related: My experience at Auschwitz-Birkenau

Have you read this book? I'd love to hear your thoughts. If not, add it to your list ASAP.

Divorced, beheaded, died. Divorced, beheaded, survived!

Recently, I went with my mum and grandma to watch Six the musical at the Mayflower in Southampton. This was a Christmas present from my mum and we had a great time.

If you're not familiar with Six, it is a musical about Henry the 8th's six wives where they kind of take back the narrative as their own.

It started at 4pm, so we went for lunch in Red Dog Saloon, and did some shopping beforehand.

The musical

The musical itself was not as long as others I'd seen, and there was no interval which was quite good if you don't like to sit for too long.

Our seats were near the back of the stalls in row YY, but we still had a clear view of the stage.

One of my favourite things about the musical was the outfits! The costume department score a 10/10 on that one.

The singing and dancing of each of the queens was so impressive too, all 6 of them were amazing. Incidentally, the 6 queens were the only characters in the musical, the only other people that were on stage with them were the musicians.

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The storyline went chronologically about each queen, they would all tell their story and have a solo. This way, they were all the leading lady and they were reclaiming the narrative. This is because when most people think of the 6 wives, they think of them because they were Henry the 8th's wives. 

Now, after watching the musical, I feel like they are way more important figures in history than just being wives of a king. Especially a king that beheaded them, divorced them, and all sorts of other evil things.

Should you watch Six in a theatre near you?

Yes! I would definitely recommend booking Six in a theatre near you when you can. It was educational because now I know which queen was beheaded, divorced, etc - great pub quiz knowledge! It was also funny, and very VERY entertaining with great vocals and dancing.

There were lots of families there with young children, although there were a lot of innuendos, I feel like these would probably go over the children's heads making it funny for adults and suitable for children.

If anyone needs me, I will be listening to the soundtrack until further notice. Warning: the songs WILL get stuck in your head.

Related: 9 to 5 the musical at the Mayflower

What's the best musical you've seen?

So as you may know from my recent Comfort TV Shows blog post, one of my favourite TV shows to watch over and over is Pretty Little Liars. This is pretty much because I started watching it as a teen and grew up watching it.

Related: My top 10 comfort TV shows

I have only recently started getting into reading, I had to read at uni so I didn't really want to read for fun in my free time too. So after watching all the PLL series over and over, I thought why not try reading the books?

At first, I was only going to read the first one just to see what it was like in comparison to the TV show, and here I am a whole series later.

Pretty Little Liars Book Series

The PLL book series was written by Sara Shepard and there are a total of 16 books in the main series. Yes, I read them all pretty recently.

I don't want to give too many spoilers in case any of you would like to read them after this but what I will say is that it is so different from the series.

The first couple of books are a little similar to the first episodes in season 1 but after that, the stories get so different with all kinds of different characters that weren't in the series. For example, Caleb is such a huge character in the series but he's not even in the books at all.

The massive difference is what made me enjoy the books so much because there were so many twists and turns that I didn't expect so it was great to be able to experience those again because I can't with the series now really as I've watched it so many times.

Related: 5 reasons why books still matter

In terms of more differences, I feel like, in the book Aria, Hanna, Spencer, and Emily are heightened versions of themselves. Like their personalities are way more dramatic in the book than what we see in the series.

As the books came out first, and then it was made into a TV show it felt like I had kind of done it back to front by watching the series first. But it was interesting to see the original bits in the book that I could tell the producers had based scenes off of.

It was also interesting to see how they changed storylines in the series. Throughout the books, each chapter is from the different perspectives of each liar. For example, one chapter will be based on Emily, and the next will be about Aria, etc. Therefore, the story kind of went a bit slower because everything was so in detail, but it's not like that with TV so they had to add so much more into the storylines.

Should you read the Pretty Little Liars books?

If you are like me and you loved the series, I would definitely recommend reading the books. I know they are primarily aimed at teens but it doesn't make it unenjoyable for young adults. And, the books are quite short so you can get through them quite quickly. I think I read the last one in 3 days because I wanted to see how it ended so badly.

Also, it is the same but different. It's still the Pretty Little Liars we know and love but so different and it's so interesting to see how their lives differ from the book to the series. Also the whole A storyline is quite different and A is a completely different person. I'm not going to tell you who it is though!

There are 16 books so it is quite a lot to get through but it's good as like a background series that you keep coming back to when you don't know what else to read. I think they took me about 6 months to read and I read some others along the way too.

Related: Books I read in 2021

Have you watched Pretty Little Liars or read the books?