This blog post discusses my experience choosing a university and picking a course to study. In this post, I will discuss the ways I narrowed down my choices. It is hard choosing a university, three or four years of your life is at stake. So, if you are like me, you might feel overwhelmed by the whole… uni thing.
I hope what is discussed in this post helps you make a right choice but don’t feel rushed into choosing, it is a difficult and life-changing task, so make sure you know it is the right university for you.
Choosing the right University Course?
Everyone will have answers because a university course is not an easy task. You have to think about the content you will be taught, the modules, the weighing of those modules. Then there is the campus itself, the helpfulness of the staff, accommodation. So it is no surprise this can feel so imitating.
When I applied in October 2014, I originally applied for a joint honours scheme at Derby University in the following courses:
- Creative Writing
- Film and TV Studies
At the time, I felt these two degrees would help me to achieve my ambition—to become a screenwriter but did I make the right decision?
Initially, no.
I changed my mind seconds before I was due to enrol. What changed my mind? To answer that I would need to answer what appealed to me about Derby in the first place.
Open days
Choosing a University is hard. Whichever Univercity you pick can determine the next three years It is not an easy task. That is why going to open days is important. I went to five of them.
- Derby
- Bangor
- York St. Johns
- University of Creative Arts, Farnham
- And Portsmouth
University of the Creative Arts, Farnham (UCA)
This is the first open day I attended, and so, for me, it set the standards of the rest of the universities. I actually liked the open day at UCA. The staff were friendly and the information was clear. The classes in Creative Writing and in Media both, not only sounded useful, but fun.
What lets UCA down was the campus and the residential area. There was a room up a narrow, twisted staircase. Stairs are not usually my friend, but twisted staircases are harder… and I don’t mean the stairs that have a floor in the middle, but ones that actually twist. There was no lift to this room. Although I was assured the room could be moved if needed, I didn’t like the idea that there was a room I couldn’t access that I should be able to access.
I learned most residential halls have small, box rooms that really only gives you enough room to get in and out. However, Farnham’s had another feature… bars on the window. Harry’s room anyone?
It wasn’t pleasant and made it feel more like a prison than a university. But I still liked the course so I kept it on my list.
York St. Johns
York St John wasn’t a bad university but the 200+ students in any given class/module, and the lecture rooms with narrow spaces put me off. I am probably a little claustrophobic. I also found the city difficult to walk around. But again, I kept it on the list. I knew I’d find ways to adapt if I needed to
Portsmouth
Portsmouth was the only one I kicked from the list. As this was the third open pay I attended, I was really worried I wouldn’t have the 5 choices for UCAS, but I need not have worried at all.
The Creative Writing side of Portsmouth sounded great. Amazing. But the media lecturer giving the talk sounded big-headed, cocky and unapproachable. By now, I had seen two other universities, each with joint honours, that I knew cocky lecturers was not what I was looking for. But this lecturer wasn’t solely responsible.
When we went, it was 27°c. I am terrible in heat. We followed the postcode given to us. Double, triple and quadruple-checked the map and it took us a good 30-45 minutes to find the car-park. From there, we struggled to find the university. We attempted to ask strangers who ran away from us.
Finally we found it and was then lectured for being 10 minutes late to register. Bare in mind, if we found the car-park sooner rather than drive around, use what appeared to be a broken postcode, and terribly drawn map, we would have been on time. This put us in a bad mood to begin with.
After we saw the lovely Creative Writing lecturer, and the snobby media lecturer, we went to look at the halls. The rooms were small just like the others but this one, this one STUNK. The smell of the sea and the fish leaked into the halls and it smelled rotten in the heat.
Dad and I decided to call it a day and we went home.
Bangor
Back in 2015, I was one of the biggest Harry Potter Nerds you could find. Bangor University reminded me a lot of Hogwarts. Doesn’t it give you Harry Potter vibes?
I also liked that you had two modules in every year where you had the option to take them from another school at the university. So you could take something for technology or learn a new language.
The staff were friendly and extremely helpful that I felt this was the university I would attend.
University of Derby Open Day
I honestly didn’t expect to choose Derby. I narrowed it down to the five but—judging a book by its cover—expected it to be the fifth chose. This is why you should never judge something by how it appears or sounds.
From the get-go, I liked it. It’s funny how first impressions work. When I walked into the University of Derby, I noticed a colourful and bright layout with a weirdly designed but highly accessible campus.
The open day matched Bangor. The staff were supportive. The Halls of Residents were relatively cheap compared to other universities. The information was made clear and the people giving the open day for both Creative Writing and Film Studies engaged me all the way.
It made me feel respected and apart of a community in one day and I hadn’t even decided to go yet. But I did, and I became part of an amazing community.
Bangor was close, but Derby just had that little bit extra that said: This is the one. All I needed to do was get the grades and put Derby as my first choice.
On UCAS, I ordered them as the following:
- Derby Creative Writing & Film Studies
- Bangor Creative Writing & Media Studies
- Bangor Creative Writing & Film Studies
- York St Johns Creative Writing and Film studies
- UCA Creative Writing & Media Studies
University Course Content
Both Derby courses offer two screenwriting modules—to be exact, the same screenwriting module. It’s a joint class between those who do Creative Writing and those who do Film and TV studes. This sounds perfect for someone whose ambition is to be a screenwriter.
In fact, all the universities I looked at on UCAS were immediatly rejected by me if they did not offer a module on the university course that specialised in screenwriting in any form. Universities from London or whose site was confusing in presentation and navigation was the next two aspects to narrow my choice.
I’m very creative but seem to have a talent for scripts and media production—something I realised while studying my A Levels: Film Studies, Media Studies and English Literature and Language. This is what originially made me want to do a joint honours degree, albeit more in media than in film, only this wasn’t compatable at my chosen university, Derby, so I opted for Creative Writing and Film & TV studies.
But I changed my mind and went to single honours.
This is because I learned moments before I completed enrolment that the key module I wanted to do, Writing for Screen was not available for joints. This is true despite being enrolled on two courses that have that module and the reason for this is understandable. It is so popular on both those courses that they cannot offer it to joint honour students.
When asked at the open day, both subjects said I could do the Screen Writing module as a joint honours and they both said yes. During enrolment day, this answer changed to a no.
Asking about the course
I spoke to the lecturers on both courses, asking them for more information of each module. But in reality, I had already made my choice just by the module names. Silly, I know—the talk was to see if the other course could persuade me the other way. They couldn’t. And my gut told me I was making the right decision
I looked at the Film and TV modules and one of them was the Moving Image. A subject drummed into me in A-level by both the film studies A-level and Media Studies A-level. So much so that I hated the topic. I couldn’t sit through another 12 weeks of that.
All the modules in the first year of Film and TV studies looked boring aside from european cinema. Mostly theory and not so much practical that I knew it wasn’t for me.
But then I looked at the Creative Writing Modules it was a completely different story. All of which were very practical.The only downside… or so I thought… was Representation, Another topic we covered in all three of my A-levels to the death! But I could cope with that for the other modules.
Practical issues
I couldn’t opperate a camera, have no desire to direct but all the desire to write. What else was I going to do but switch to Creative and Professional Writing as a single honours. So while Creative Writing wasn’t my initial choice, it is not one I regret.
After a discussion with the Creative Writing Team, I switched from joint honours to single honours minutes before I officially enrolled and I can say I do not regret it for a single second. I chose right. So, I went to the library to enrol and started my course.
I was wrong about the Representation module though. It was not boring. The Creative Writing team made the topic seem new and allowed us to look into representation our own way.
I don’t think there is a single module I have taken that I can say I hated in my first year but I can definitely name my two favourites. Audience and Research: Storytelling and Representation.
Gone from a module I dreaded to one of my favourites!
Results
The best thing is that the Creative Writing course does leak into both film studies and media studies.
In the second year, you are taught to interview, to make magazines, have the option to write screenplays and/or radio plays along with researching a topic of your own choosing in your own genre.
My chosen topic was pirates for a novel I want to write, we visited Matlock, Derbyshire’s Record office and there was an old letter addressing piracy which was helpful. You can also choose your own group topic for the magazine, our group’s topic was Disability and I believe it went well.
Focus on Genre and Focus on Writing and Responsibility were my favourite module in my final year.
My advice
Go to the open days, get a feel for the course. That will give you a sense of where you will feel comfortable. If, like me, you have to switch course, ask for advice. You may not get a gut feeling like I did, but if you do, listen to it!
If you have a disability, ask what challenges you might face. The university should accommodate you if that is what you really want to do, but if it is just a bonus of the course that you really don’t care about, make sure you’re aware of it.
Good luck choosing a university, I hope this helps and you are happy wherever you end up.
If you cannot attend an open day, there are alternative ways to help you narrow down your choices when you are choosing a university. Have a look at this post: A guide to Choosing a University.
I hope you enjoyed this post. If you have, here are some other posts you may enjoy. And please do follow me on here, Facebook or Twitter.
~Shannon~