I am pleased to announce I graduated yesterday from Middlesex University with a 2:1 degree in BA Fashion Communication & Styling! I was so pleased with myself because I really worked hard designing a vintage magazine for final project and focusing in on branding and PR elements of it as well as the graphic design elements and pulling in contributions from submissions!

I'll be completely honest; university was a weird one for me. It wasn't really what I had expected: fun, friends and wild nights out for three years. I had a really good first year, a rocky second year socially with friendships taking a turn for the worst, and third year was a chance to rebuild myself as a person.

I won't go into the fine details, but to give you a jist of why university wasn't all fun and games for me I'm going to open up about this for the first time on the internet.

In second year I was bullied in a house I paid a lot of rent for, and to top it off all my so called "friends" at the time took the bully's side and I was pushed out of the social circle I had been in for the past two years, blanked and bitched about. I guess they found it easier to cut out and gang up on someone rather than see they are having a really hard time and give them a shoulder to cry on.

I never wanted to lose a particular friend in this group.
Infact, we joked about still being friends when old and wrinkly all the time. This friend watched me sob for hours over what was happening at home and watched me pack my bags and leave - but in the end, this 'friend' decided to turn her back on me completely.
Ignorance is bliss, right? I felt then, and still feel, she took the easy way out of the situation.
I'm facing this now and I'm telling you this was NOT the right decision.

During third year, life around the campus felt like a scene from Mean Girls, (of course they wouldn't see it that way - although it's different when you are in the circle and when you are clearly out, and I'm sure somewhere in the back of their heads somewhere they must know that ignoring me at point blank range was wrong).

On reflection, if it hadn't been for the things that went so catastrophically wrong in my personal life around this time, I wouldn't have become this mature and I would still see things with rose coloured spectacles. I believe I was an easier target back then for this bully who clearly had something of a narcissistic personality, and I'm sure of it, still does today.

I have toughened up, that is for sure, and even though it was absolutely horrible to deal with at the time, anyone who has been bullied will know what I'm talking about by feeling mentally stronger once you face it and get on with your own life. I made a decision to finish what I started at Uni and turned the negativity into working hard and achieving my goals in the final year.

I know that if anyone ever tried to treat me like that again I'd tell them exactly where to stick it, that's for sure!

I am coming through the other side now and entering the real world, and I'm happy to leave those negative, mean people behind.

So I'm holding this degree up and I feel like I've been in and out of a war zone emotionally, but I did it. As Janis-Ian quotes, "Suck on that!"

Graduation day, 17/07/2014 I am wearing a 1960's pale pink prom dress (which was tiny.. I lost 4lbs to do this dress up at the back! I shall post how I lost weight!) and I teamed it with a vintage bangle and shoes from Rocket Originals, which I post about ALL THE TIME. But I love them, so why not? I was robed by Ede and Ravenscroft in our Middlesex colours red, white and black.