In a new weekly feature, recent Her.ie recruit Mary is sharing her journey through the very grown-up world of juggling a career with further education.

Looking back over her first semester and forward to a thesis, Mary is learning some lessons along the way about time management, the trials of being a born crammer, the importance of sharing the stressful moments... and the reason why "mature student" is probably an oxymoron.

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Thesis what now? This time last week I admit, I was a big ball of stress. Well, things haven’t changed that much to be honest! It’s well into Semester 2, we’re now in reading week and in a couple of weeks it’ll be Easter holidays and before we know it, we’ll be into exams again. Unfortunately, as much as I’d love to wish the time away, the harsh reality is that once the exams are over an even bigger challenge looms – a thesis. It would be fine to live in a little bubble between now and June and pretend that this monstrosity doesn’t actually exist, but unfortunately for us, we are actually due to hand in a thesis proposal this week. Erm… That’s going extremely well. Now I just need an idea. Oh and some academic research to back up that idea. And about 1,500 words of a proposal. And all before Saturday. A likely story (cough). So yes, I’m feeling a bit lost you might say, and have been procrastinating with a capital ‘P’ for the last few days as I’m hoping it will magically go away and I can just focus on panicking about the essay which is due next Tuesday… which of course I haven’t started either. That type of panic I can deal with. A proposal that will determine the rest of my summer? Not so much. If you have any ideas, pop them on the back of a postcard for me please. The sad thing is, I’m not even joking. I’m putting it off and putting it off on the basis that I feel I will be hit with divine inspiration on Friday night and I will get up in front of that room of my classmates and lecturers and dazzle the pants off the lot of them. In fact, that’s exactly what’s going to happen – half the battle is confidence right…? Hmm, I’m not sure how an un-researched piece of well-presented waffle is going to go down, but maybe if I give them a fried egg to go along with it, it mightn’t be too bad?