What Sophie Said

All over Twitter at the moment I’m seeing people moan and fret over writing their dissertations. Some are proud of themselves for powering on through and some are in that period of despair where you think you’ll never possibly be able to write enough words, or make them make sense. I feel your pain. I handed in my dissertation almost three years ago now, in May 2013, and thought I would share five of the lessons that writing process taught me. I was studying English Literature, and my topic was a prize for short stories by African writers. I was proud of the final piece, but my goodness it took hours upon hours of work, and I know if I tackled it now I would approach some elements differently. ONE. Planning is everything. I know this may not help for those of you approaching your deadline, but for people with it coming up over the next year or so, please prepare. You have a long time to write it because you need a long time to write it. The process of coming up with a...

Hopefully, if you’re heading back to university this January to begin your second term, you’re excited. However, I know from personal experience that the return after your first Christmas home can be a tricky one. If you’re having any kind of doubts or nerves at all, that’s ok. I’m writing this because that’s what I needed to hear. For some, thoughts of returning to uni are unappealing because of exams, or because Christmas has reminded them how much they love being at home. For some people, that apprehension runs a lot deeper, and it can be something people struggle to talk about. Personally, I think one of the very worst things about university is everyone telling you it will be ‘the best years of your life’. There are many amazing things about the university experience. But that’s all anyone speaks about, so if you don’t feel that way, it can be a confusing time. Why am I the ‘only one’ not loving it? Why am I having these doubts? Why do I not feel l...

In the first half of this month I passed two huge milestones: I turned 21, and I graduated from university. I expected both of these things to leave me with a sense of pride, of having achieved something, and to provide me with a chance to reflect back on all the experiences I have had thus far.  Of course, the pride has come, but it has been mixed in with a lot of very strange emotions that nobody warns you about.   Happy birthday to me My sister, dad, me and mum at my birthday party My birthday was significant in that, as with any birthday but especially with the ‘big ones’, it gave me a chance to reflect. It has obviously come at a point in my life where everything is changing, having finished formal education for good, so some of the reflections have been even more poignant. The main thing my birthday provided was a chance to think about my friendships. At my party were the friends I currently hold close, and whom I feel sum up the past 21 years. There’s Ali...

So here it is, part 5 of my uni life series: the top ten things I’ve learnt over the last 3 years. The previous posts covered living in halls , friendship , holidays and the academic side . This post pulls together the whole experience as I look back over my time studying for my degree. Some are directly course-related, and some are larger life lessons that I’ll be taking away with me. Read widely This has always been a bit of a motto for me, English geek that I am, but my degree has taught me even more the value of reading. I have learnt so much from the pages of the novels we’ve studied, be they about different countries, experiences or time periods. Reading widely challenges you to ask questions, and that’s something we all need to do more of. Take the support on offer I remember sitting in the talks at the beginning of university and wondering why I’d ever need ‘welfare support’ or help from a supervisor for any more reason than filling in forms. But then your degree ...

Part 4 of my uni life series is focused on the academic side of university. In the series, I’m also looking at living in halls , friendship , holidays and the top tenthings I’ve learnt . Whoever said English Literature is a ‘doss’ subject at university clearly hasn’t studied our course. I obviously expected a degree to be difficult, but there have certainly been weeks throughout my degree where I’ve thrown my pen or book across the room and declared that I know nothing and will never accomplish anything in my life. It’s pretty intense. Who would have thought that preparing for 4-7 contact hours a week would be so stressful? For the York degree course, the entry requirement is 3 As… In working so hard to get those grades, I didn’t think about the implications of this when I actually begun the course. Chances are, the majority of people doing our course are doing it because they like the subject, and because they have always been good at the subject. When we then arrived at un...

This is part 3 of my uni life series – 5 blog posts in which I reflect back on my three years at university. I’m looking at halls , friendship , holidays, the academicside and the top ten things I’ve learnt . By far one of the oddest things about being at university is that strange limbo between being independent yet still being in education, reliant on your parents and/or loan, and returning home for university holidays. Realistically, the minimum student maintenance loan is rarely enough to cover all rent, utilities and living expenses and most students have to get jobs (term time or in holidays) or rely on extra support from their parents. In this post I’m focussing on those ‘in-between’ times, the holidays in between terms. Most of us, when it gets to Christmas, Easter and summer, pack up and return home for at least a portion of those breaks. The packing itself is hard enough; 5 weeks at home is a large amount of things to fit in a suitcase. In addition to that, there ar...

So here it is: part 2 of my uni life series. Having just completed my three-year English degree, I’m looking back at the experience and thinking about what it’s taught me. I’m looking at living in halls , friendships, holidays , the academic side , and the top ten things I’ve learnt about myself . In this post I’m thinking about friendships, both making new ones and maintaining your ones from home. I love my friends, but I also like knowing exactly where I stand with people, so the thought of being thrown into a sea of new people and new experiences, not yet knowing who I would click with and who I could trust was more than a little daunting. As I discussed in Part One , my friends were definitely not the people I ended up in halls with, so I had to open myself up to trying more new things on my own until I met more like-minded people. The first thing that I pass on now to people who are nervous about starting university is simple, but often forgotten: everyone is in the sam...

Last week, I handed in my dissertation and completed my 3-year English Literature degree, so I’m doing a mini-series of 5 blog posts attempting to sum up some of my thoughts about university: halls, friendship , uni holidays , the academic side , and the top ten things I’ve learnt during this 3 years. Snowy Goodricke  First up, and a vital part of anybody’s first year, was living in halls. York is a collegiate university, and I went for Goodricke College, which was on the new campus. It was possibly a little early to be on the new campus (we were the 2 nd year to live there), as there was really nothing there. Now it has a bar, another college, and much more of a buzz to it. Anyway, the campus was pretty and it wasn’t far from main campus, so I thought it would be fine. My room My room was amazing – on the third floor, it was a corner room, and because of its bizarre shape it was far bigger than anyone else’s. I had a huge floor area between the door and bed...

Last week, whilst ill, I was watching This Morning , and an old issue was reignited. The debate was titled ‘Is it wrong to pay for your child’s education?’ Immediately, that title blurs what is, in fact, a logical argument: what are the differences/benefits of private vs state schools? Instead, it turns the act of sending your child to private school into something malicious, and a calculated way to ensure your child tricks society into letting it achieve greatness in life. There are, of course, huge gaps between certain private and certain state schools, in terms of employment figures, grades achieved, and class sizes. Let’s not forget, though, that there are also huge differences between the schools within each category. Some state schools sit happily at the top of league tables, and plenty of people whose parents pay for their education slip through the net, drop out at 16, and spend their lives working in dead end jobs, or not working at all. The state/private debate is certainly...

At university, I am student manager for the English department, which involves organisation of the visit days for prospective students who have received offers to come here. Again and again, even more so now as I’m coming towards the end of my degree, parents ask me what I feel I have gained from studying English Literature at university. So here goes, I’m going to try and write a blog post about it! Me at the beginning of second year, ready to work at an open day Organisation – Many may say my obsessive organisational skills didn’t really need working on, but studying English can test even the most diligent to-do-list-writers. As the contact hours are few, the spare time can seem daunting, even though, realistically, we need all of that time to actually do the work in. Without a timetable telling you that you must be present in a certain room from 9am until 5pm, it can be hard at first knowing how to schedule your time. Speed-reading – We read. A LOT. I have always b...

I’m 20 years old and I don’t drink alcohol. Not a drop. Ever. And I never have. I find it so interesting to see how people react to that. Usually, they laugh as if I’m joking, or look at me as though I’m an alien. Being a non-drinker just doesn’t seem to be socially acceptable, especially when you’re a student. I feel like admitting I don’t drink causes people to instantly jump to conclusions, like I never go out, I’m unsociable and I can’t have fun. At times, I’ve found myself avoiding a drink altogether in certain bars or clubs, so as to avoid the awkward questions. In the last three years, since leaving home and going to university, I’ve had to think a lot more about the fact I don’t drink. Whatever people say, there is a drinking culture based around universities today. I saw a friend at Christmas who admitted he had never tried out for university sports teams because he didn’t like the thought of being forced to drink so much at socials. Those who do go out and do drink will ins...