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So you've passed your exams, bagged some conditional offers from university, nailed your driving test, what's next? Of course you should spend the summer celebrating but don't be caught out last minute when you only have a couple of weeks to prepare for university! If you prefer the more independent option of whizzing around on your own four wheels (let's face it, who doesn't?) then you'll want to best kind of car to take with you when you start studying. Here's a top class pick of the best cars that students can drive while on the sweet road to freedom...

1. Fiat 500

One of the most popular city cars in the last few years, the Fiat 500 has become an iconic car that has retained its awesome appeal. As long as you're not planning to haul all of your junk into the tiny boot and small back seats, then the 500 is ideal for whizzing to lectures, karting around friends or making that long-awaited trip home.

2. Toyota Yaris

Listed in the top 10 most reliable cars in Warranty Direct's Reliability Index, the second-generation Toyota Yaris is fantastically practical, great fun to drive and affordable to maintain. It's a newly designed, refined car which means better handling and an efficient engine. Plus, because it's so safe, it marks very low on insurance rates, even if you're a young driver.

Today (Monday 6th January) has been dubbed Blue Monday after research has placed it as the most depressing day of 2014. We think we know why...

1. Christmas tree graveyards

You leave the house and the first thing you see is stacks of sad looking Christmas trees thrown out on the street. A brutal way to realise the Festive season is well and truly over.

We've gathered together some of the very oddest, funniest and most interesting stories of the week from around the web. And it has been a pretty strange week. Enjoy.

1)World's First Burger Grown in a Lab

We really are living in the future. Scientists have taken cells from cows in Holland, grown them into muscle and then combined that to make the world's first man-made beef burger-which was then cooked and eaten live on TV.

However the question everyone was asking, is does it actually taste like a burger? Opinions on the matter ranged from, "It's a very good start", to "there is quite some intense taste; it's close to meat, but it's not that juicy".

To make the story that bit more odd, it turns out that the mystery backer who has invested £215,000 into the project is actually the co-founder of Google. Whether you think it is the solution to world hunger, or a horrible experiment that shouldn't be repeated, it has certainly got people talking.

On April 1st each year everyone from newspapers, to online media outlets, to huge companies create their own fake stories for April Fools' Day. This year was no different and we've gathered together nine of the funniest and most inventive stories to appear yesterday.

1. The Shard turned into Fairground Ride (Huffington Post)