Monday 12 October 2015

My First Few Weeks as a Postgrad (in England)

Oooh the irony. Where my last post was all about my anticipation about coming here, this one is a long overdue one about ACTUALLY. BEING. HERE.

I want to say that I have been busy doing other things, and to be fair, that's partly true. So tiny, tiny recap: I have been here for three weeks and it has been nothing short of amazing. Canterbury is an absolutely lovely little town and everytime I walk from campus to the city centre- which is, yes, about 45 minutes - I discover something new and amazing. The campus is very cool. As it is built on a hill the views are absolutely stunning, and sorry Exeter University, nothing can top the view you have when standing in front of the library, seeing that grand cathedral in the distance. The cathedral is the highlight of the view, as Canterbury is just a little town, but flooded with students from all over the world.

As an international student, I have thus been feeling very welcome here. The university is certainly doing its best trying to make us feel at home. They organised a dinner for all the internationals (Erasmus, undergrad, and postgrad students), which was a great opportunity to get to meet some new people, and they even organised a trip to Leeds Castle, which was very beautiful.

That all seems ages ago now though. I am already in my second week of classes, and although I feel slightly overwhelmed, I have been thoroughly enjoying them. It is a bit hard, coming from a background in literary studies, to just dive into a postgrad in a different topic, but it is a challenge I am so glad I accepted. I have been dying to study film for so long now, and here we are :)

So far, this experience has been a lot of fun, a bit challenging, but completely gratifying. I have the best flatmates I could wish for (seriously, they are so great), and the University of Kent is just a very positive environment to be in. Everyday my inbox gets flooded with event invites, and notices about postgrad talks and other opportunities for students to broaden their horizon. I've also signed up for archery again, which I am looking forward to, and just had to sign up for the film society as well. Something that I was very pleased with is that the university offered free language courses for postgraduate students in the faculty of arts, so I have decided to take some French classes. Those will start this week and I am already looking forward to receiving brutal reminders of how bad my comprehension of the language has become.

As I am writing this post right now, I should actually be doing my reading, or working on my first essay (due next week) - yes this is solely me trying to convince you that I actually do stuff here. That's the greatest thing about going abroad for your postgraduate degree: those little bits of free time you have can be spent doing a whole array of things that at home might not be available to you. I am planning to pick up reviewing films again, since now I feel like I am actually being handed some tools that give my opinions a bit more weight. However, as someone kindly reminded me yesterday, I should pick it up again anyway, so I guess there's no reason for me to be slacking anymore.