I’m now halfway through my time in York as an English student, and I have actually been enjoying every minute of it. Here’s some things I want I ‘d understood about the course prior to beginning uni:
You learn that there is a whole wide world of literatures (Yes, with the plural’s’!).
One dazzling feature of the York English Lit structure is that it exposes trainees to English Literature across period and across continents, and allows you to discover authors you have actually never ever become aware of in the past. In your first year, you’ll start off with a module that includes texts from the 15th century all the way to the modern day. In readings, lectures and workshops, discussion of these texts also always involves conversations of the significant historic occasions of that duration, how life resembled because period, and of course, essential philosophical and cultural readings of the text (something which I have actually grown to actually take pleasure in reading).
In another module, York’s English programme exposes us to global literatures, centred around styles such as post-colonialism (the Literature of nations who were ex-British colonies, for instance). Personally, I found that to be an exceptionally enhancing experience that expanded my worldview and prompted me to think of the relationship between Literature and Politics, and to question the function of a literary text.
This may sound a little complicated, however it really isn’t so! You certainly can expect to find studying English at uni to be vastly different from the method we did it at A Levels, and while I did feel quite stressed in the first couple of weeks of term, I eventually discovered my footing and grew to love the volume and pace of work we have at uni. It gives you a substantial sense of achievement when you look back at the end of the term at all the poems, plays and novels you have actually gone through in just 10 weeks!
The wide direct exposure to many different periods of literature makes you discover interests in subjects you never engaged with in the past. For me, post-colonialism was my newly found love.
Flexibility, flexibility, flexibility!
Studying English at York is awesome because the course gives you a lot of independence to direct your studies. The English course has fairly few contact hours (a.k.a. time invested in lectures and workshops) as compared to other subjects. The coolest thing about the English course would be that you get to decide what you desire to compose you essay on– there are no set concerns (conserve for the composed exams in summer term)!
Having more versatility with your timetable also means that you can utilise the time to join more societies or even use up a term-time internship, which was precisely what I did! Through the York Careers Website, I requested a term-time internship lasting for 12 weeks in Communications, and spent roughly 12 hours a week at the internship, which corresponds to about three days a week. This helped me gain work experience and employability abilities, as well as some extra income on the side.
We have film screenings.
We watch film adjustments of a few of the texts in our reading lists (side note: I enjoy how these sessions appear on our timetable as legitimate mandatory lectures to participate in)! Who ‘d have thought that studying English at uni likewise includes sitting in a dark lecture theatre and seeing a movie forecasted on to the big screen? Consider it as a Netflix motion picture date … however with an entire bunch of people.
In my very first year, I keep in mind seeing A Midsummer’s Night Dream and caring how the film represented the characters of the play so much that I wrote among my essays on the play! And just last term, seeing Samuel Beckett’s Endgame throughout a film screening made me see the play in a whole various light, triggering me to obtain 3 different books from the library about Beckett and his works.
They’re not going to let you be confused and worried all by yourself.
We’re assigned 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 routinely throughout your 3 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 options, etc.