The basic information! My name is Emily, I am 20, a third year at Oxford studying German and Linguistics, and about to head off on my year abroad! Moving from Scotland to Oxford was quite a lot, but I feel like it has prepared me a little for moving to Germany! I have always had an interest in Linguistics long before I knew what it actually was, and started German when I was 12 and knew this logical language was the one for me. I have always been creative and enjoy art to this day as a way to deal with stresses, look after my mental health and just do something creative and fun! I have gone from making little dresses for my barbie dolls and Sylvanian Families to cropping or altering my own clothes to making entire pieces from scratch. I have always struggled with organisation and keeping track of the million things that come and go from my brain at once, so notion is probably one of the reasons I was able to keep thriving at University. I keep track of everything from my Uni work to creative projects to my to-do lists on notion, all my packing lists and documents I need to prepare are in a page on my notion and keeping me sane!
Some more fun facts about me include that I absolutely love cats and always have. My favourite colour is probably orange, I colour-code my days since I found going from a school uniform and work uniform to zero uniform at Uni quite hard, I live my life by scheduling everything (massive thanks to my friend who helped me start scheduling myself!) and have a podcast on at almost all times! I speak/understand English, Scots, German, a bit of French, and a bit of Polish. I have been doing Duolingo since around January of my last year at school (swapped from Russian as I was doing SQA Advanced Higher Russian history to Polish as I have friends who speak Polish) so a pretty impressive Duolingo streak. I might not seem it but I am quite an anxious person, a lot of self-work, learning and more recently seeing a counsellor have all helped me gain more confidence and look forward to the good, not only worry about the stresses of the coming year!
Over the next year I will be doing a number of things, from more professional aspects like my internship, Lidl Project, and being a Notion Campus Leader, to improving my German, hopefully learning to drive, engaging in new hobbies and more.
Something I have been so excited about since December last year is my upcoming internship at the Städtische Galerie Bremen (their official website)! When I originally emailed them about an internship my intention was to spend half the year with them and the other half at an art university studying integrated design, but unfortunately I did not get a place on the course. Of course I cried and was upset, but now I am so excited to get to spend 11 months really developing my skills and learning so much at the gallery! I have always been a creative person and this opportunity is so exciting for me. I can barely wait to start and am so grateful to them for their patience and understanding in getting everything sorted for work approval and getting a visa. Everyone there seems amazing and they have all been so kind and helpful, they put up with my (slightly out of practice!) German and give me new phrases to use!
My project is to design, make and donate clothing for various women’s shelters in Bremen, Germany. A link to the shelters listed on my website can be found here. By adjustable, I mean clothing that can be adjusted to fit the wearer as best it can, have multiple ways it can be worn, and generally be functional! There are a couple reasons I have chosen to work in this way. The first is I have an extreme amount of respect and admiration for the women in these shelters and want to give them something to show they are not alone, they are worthy, and give them a boost in confidence that many of us get from wearing clothing that fits and we feel we look good in. The second is I am very environmentally conscious, and making clothing that can be adjusted to fit as someone might change clothing size or shape gives the clothing longevity. This means it won’t contribute to the waste created by the fashion industry, which is key.
My goal is to donate the majority of the clothing to the women and girls themselves, so it is their clothing and not shared, and donate some specific pieces to the shelters themselves, such as business attire and sleepwear sets. The reason for this is all about how the women and girls feel, and having their own belongings rather than a shared resource gives them an entirely different sense of self worth. It is also important that the shelters have clothing for future women and girls who arrive without any belongings, and it gives them clothing they can wear to job interviews or legal proceedings.
I have used notion for about 4 years now and have the privilege of being a Notion Campus Leader (CL)! This means I will be representing notion within Oxford along with my fellow CLs and generally talking about how great it is. I use notion for all aspects of my life and plan to share templates I use to keep track of things like deadlines (check out my template here: Deadline Tracker ), my work for my Lidl project, my mental health, hobbies like crochet, art and gaming and more. I started with organising my notes for universities I was applying to, then my notes for my final exams, then my mental health and just kept going. I upgraded to the student account recently (it is free if you have an email associated with an educational institution!) and now can do a bit more in terms of files uploaded, but the free account worked for me for years so absolutely encourage anyone to start! If anyone is unsure where to start or feels a bit overwhelmed with everything that can be done, I will be uploading guides and templates to help give a starting point, because just getting started can sometimes be the hardest part for me.
If you hadn’t noticed, I have made this website through notion and am loving it. This is a learning process for me as I am learning more about how to get the most out of notion, including learning to code so I can make use of the formula function in databases!
My year abroad is going to be so exciting, scary and a whole load of emotions, and I want a record of that for me to look back on in the future. I also want resources to be out there for other people like me, who got overwhelmed by the whole concept of the year abroad and struggled to find accurate resources for their situations. I also need to be held accountable! I have ADHD and doing this keeps me motivated and reminds me that I can do this, it will be hard and scary but so worth it in the end!
I am still working out roughly what I will put online, but so far I want to record my actual design process, trial and error stage of making clothes, how I use notion to help keep track of everything and how I get on living abroad. I have some other ideas of what I might include, but please feel free to message me and suggest ideas! I might record videos to show the realities of the year abroad, the ups and downs, or record the actual cutting, pinning and sewing of clothing, but please let me know what sounds interesting, what doesn’t or what I am forgetting to include.