My Semester Abroad

Once upon a time, in dreary, dismal Jesmond....

Semester 2, 2007. Ahhh, it really seems to long ago and in truth, four years is certainly no insignificant blip on any one's timeline, yet for me the four years from August 2007 to July of 2011 were about as far away from Blip-Land as possible. Just two full semesters from completing my degree and beginning the next phase of my plan for world domination, type 1 diabetes came-a-knockin' and had me scrambling for my cheat sheet on next steps. Those next steps were really hard to find. It was like walking blind into a really loud room, filled with strangers bumping you every step you took. You just didn't know front from back, or even how to get fresh air.

Sounds bad huh? It wasn't awesome to be fair.

"Life changing" is not a term I used previously, probably because the first 28 years of my life went pretty much to plan. For better or worse I had control of the direction I was taking and there's a definite comfort in knowing that. August of '07 came and threw my life into chaos for the longest time, forcing changes on me that I wasn't prepared for nor really ready to commit to, yet they just HAD to be done. 

My tools. "HAD to be done". Ya dig?

I know you're facing a situation similar to that today and that's why I've decided to use my production project for my class as a means to give you some help. I'm going to give you some options that will change how you approach, organise and access the information bombardment that you're going to be facing when you get out of hospital.

How're you gonna do this!?! she asks....

....well, like any 16 year old, I know you can navigate your way around Facebook and Youtube without any trouble, but I'm going to show you a few other sites and tools that can help you with this. Delicious and Slideshare probably mean next to nothing to you right now, but hopefully in a few days time you'll have gotten the hang of them enough to make good use of them.

Andy from The Lonely Island is excited about this

Your Handy Digital Diabetes Guide

The first thing I've put together for you, is a pretty helpful creation designed just for you, with the intention of teaching you some of the kinds of things that I feel are most important to you, right now.

I've used an online tool called "Slideshare", which is basically an online slide hosting site. You can read and review presentations submitted by users and basically, it's a great way to access and deliver presentations anywhere at any time. You simply click a link, load up a presentation and just click your way through it.

Take a gander as this quick tutorial and you should be good to go:

It's perfectly suited for what I wanted to do for you, so here it is for you. I hope you can take half as much out of it as I put into it.

Click here to view the guide 

Bookmarks for your follow up

The last thing I have got for you, is some bookmarks that I have selected that will be great for you to read once you have gotten settled in. They will provide you with local contacts, information about the many organisations that are around to help us and just some mroe general knowledge about day to day management.

I've created and stored them using "Delicious," a social bookmarking site. Whats social bookmarking you ask? Well, I'm sure your notebook at home is littered with many, many, many brower based bookmarks and probably not very well organised either. It's ok. Most of us are the same. 

The beauty of Delicious is that it's a tool that allows us to create bookmarks and share them. This means we can capture a link, tag it (you know all about this) relevantly and store them to a profile. Not only will your bookmarks now help others search for documents and links of their own, it also means that we can now find our own bookmarks when we use a different computer. This will be really helpful for you at school, trust me.

Here is a really neat little video explaining the notion of social bookmarking and how you can utlise it to help you.

Pretty useful, isn't it? 

Now, I'll give you the link to the bookmarks I have put together for you and you can go from there. Remember, I'm always just a phone call away if need be. Delicious Bookmarks

Hope I've been able to help you!