Personal Blog

I’m now halfway through my time in York as an English student, and I have actually been taking pleasure in every minute of it. Here’s some things I want I ‘d learnt about the course prior to starting uni:

You discover that there is a whole wide world of literatures (Yes, with the plural’s’!).

One brilliant feature of the York English Lit structure is that it exposes trainees to English Literature throughout period and across continents, and permits you to discover authors you’ve never ever become aware of in the past. In your very first year, you’ll start off with a module that consists of texts from the 15th century all the way to the contemporary. In readings, lectures and workshops, conversation of these texts likewise necessarily includes conversations of the significant historic occasions of that period, how life was like in that age, and obviously, essential philosophical and cultural readings of the text (something which I’ve grown to really delight in reading).

In another module, York’s English programme exposes us to global literatures, centred around themes such as post-colonialism (the Literature of countries who were ex-British colonies, for example). Personally, I found that to be an exceptionally enriching experience that widened my worldview and prompted me to think of the relationship in between Literature and Politics, and to question the function of a literary text.

This may sound a little challenging, however it really isn’t so! You certainly can anticipate to discover studying English at uni to be significantly different from the way we did it at A Levels, and while I did feel quite stressed out in the very first couple of weeks of term, I ultimately found my footing and grew to enjoy the volume and pace of work we have at uni. It gives you a big sense of achievement when you look back at the end of the term at all the poems, plays and books you’ve gone through in just 10 weeks!

The broad exposure to various periods of literature makes you discover interests in topics you never ever engaged with previously. For me, post-colonialism was my newfound love.

Flexibility, flexibility, flexibility!

One thing I didn’t anticipate was what does it cost? versatility the English department gives us. Studying English at York is awesome due to the fact that the course offers you a lot of self-reliance to direct your research studies. The English course has reasonably couple of contact hours (a.k.a. time spent in lectures and workshops) as compared with other topics. This means that a great deal of time invested at university is dedicated to independent studying and taking the effort to find tutors in their workplace hours to engage them in discussions about a text/idea that you’re actually passionate about. The coolest aspect of the English course would be that you get to decide exactly what you wish to compose you essay on– there are no set questions (save for the written exams in summertime term)! This implies that from each module, you get to pick the texts that you were most interested in to write your essay on, and you get to choose what crucial readings you wish to read for your essay, and how you want to structure your essay.

Having more flexibility with your timetable also indicates that you can utilise the time to join more societies or perhaps use up a term-time internship, which was precisely what I did! Through the York Careers Portal, I applied for a term-time internship lasting for 12 weeks in Communications, and invested roughly 12 hours a week at the internship, which corresponds to about 3 days a week. This helped me gain work experience and employability abilities, and also some additional earnings on the side.

We have movie screenings.

We view film adjustments of some of the texts in our reading lists (side note: I like how these sessions show up on our timetable as legit mandatory lectures to go to)! Who ‘d have thought that studying English at uni likewise includes being in a dark lecture theatre and enjoying a motion picture predicted on to the substantial screen? Think of it as a Netflix movie date … but with a whole bunch of individuals.

In my first year, I keep in mind enjoying A Midsummer’s Night Dream and caring how the movie represented the characters of the play so much that I wrote among my essays on the play! And simply last term, watching Samuel Beckett’s Endgame throughout a film screening made me see the play in a whole various light, triggering me to obtain three various books from the library about Beckett and his works.

They’re not going to let you be confused and stressed all on your own.

We’re appointed an individual manager at the start of university, and this manager will be a scholastic from your department– in our case, English– and you ‘d fulfil him/her frequently throughout your three years of study to simply talk about how you’re discovering the course and how you’re feeling, if you’re coping well or if you’re having an issue about module choices, etc.