Leah's Stoke-on-Trent Adventure (The Second University Open Day)

This time, the university of Staffordshire's Stoke Campus.
We were soon aware that this was a better day than Falmouth's, although whether that was because of the better organisation or simply not having my dad grumping around remains to be seen.
We had come up on the train, a relaxing hour and a half direct journey - in stark contrast to the four and a half hour drive down to Cornwall last week - so we weren't already tired when we got there.
Our first views of the city were positive. A lovely Victorian station and, outside more Victorian buildings and (of course) a statue of Josiah Wedgwood. The campus was within walking distance and we were there in five minutes. I was pleased to note as we walked toward it, that I could see hills (something I have been used to my whole life here in Cheltenham).

Registration was fast. We were given leaflets about accommodation, writing the personal statement, safety procedures (in case of fire and so on) tickets for a campus tour and an 'Open day visitor' sticker, which entitled us to free hot drinks for the whole day (they didn't run out of beans). We had half an hour before we had to be over on the other half of the campus to hear about the journalism course, so we took advantage of the free drinks and got some coffee.

We headed from the Leek road site around to College road, where the journalism talk and tour was situated in the university's film theatre. We were early, so we wandered around the campus then waited in the foyer with everybody else, peering through into the newsroom and looking at the design students' 'Design loves and hates' which were posted on the wall. The London Underground map and Moulton bicycle got the thumbs up, while foil-lidded yoghurt pots and Phillipe Starck's 'Juicy Salif' lemon juicer were less well liked.

Again, there were differences from last week. Falmouth's representative for journalism was a single lecturer who had only been there for a few months and didn't have all the information we wanted. At Stoke, a third of the faculty (eleven of them) were there to talk to us (apparently the rest were working in the field). They sold it well. Suffice to say, by the time we set off for the tour (having been split up into groups who were thinking of sport, broadcast, print or just plain journalism) I was convinced, and I wanted to do the course there.

We saw the newsroom, its computers, the news desk and the sofa, bought from Pebble Mill, and covered in Midlands news presenters' hot chocolate stains. There were televisions in there, continually showing the BBC news and Sky news, and an open gallery. Students get to have a go at every job on newsdays, from presenting to producing and everything in between (and I think I know which I'll be happiest doing).
Their radio studio has all professional equipment and, we were told, gets phone calls from all sorts of interesting people - since it's common for someone to phone an agent and ask if their client would call back.
It seems from all that was said that this blogging lark is a good plan , and that the years of extracurricular drama have provided some of the confidence, the relaxation techniques and the speech skills which will be important for the course and the profession.
We headed back to Leek Road for our campus tour, and waited with everyone else for our guides to appear at 1:30. We had a chat with someone else who had been there on the journalism tour with us, who we'd discovered to be from Gloucester, just down the road from us.
Again, a contrast with Falmouth. There, we had one student ambassador, who we couldn't hear, and who barely gave us any actual information. At Stoke, we had three Student ambassadors who all knew what they were talking about, showed enthusiasm for the place and the facilities and spoke loudly enough that they were audible, despite the large size of our tour group and the unfavourable acoustics. My favourite part was that one of them was called Leah (my name) and she was a journalism student. She discovered this when mum was asking her about accommodation and was making a comment about me: 'Leah, my Leah...'. I think she was quite pleased since she told the drama student (clearly a friend) who then said; 'She's probably nicer than you'. I'm pretty sure she was joking.

We had more hot drinks and listened to some information about student finance and.. that was the end of the day. We'd seen all we had to see, and so we headed back to the train station.

The pictures don't really fit in to the narrative, so here they are separately:

The Station: nicer than Birmingham New Street (this is not hard)

Lovely and green, rather like home
Student lets with faaabulous period features

'Ember lounge' College road's student union bar (where I will likely be spending lots of time)

The Library (and two of our student ambassadors, who did a good job)

Leah's Big Cornish Adventure

Yesterday was the day that me, my mum and my dad made our way southwest to have a good look at University College Falmouth and its journalism course. We set off about eight o-clock in the car, armed with our information pack (a map and a timetable) and a bagful of water bottles, hoping to make the journey in about four and a half hours.
My first impression of the place was in sunshine, probably a good thing as far as they're concerned for selling the place. The buildings are quite new, as the campus was set up between 1999 and 2001, and therefore very much of their time, with the interesting rendering techniques and timber cladding that are also present on the buildings at my old school which were put up in the same time. We registered and were given vouchers for a coffee machine which, in its own words, was; 'Out of Beans!'.
We set off with one of the campus tours, led by student ambassadors in big yellow hoodies. We were showed around the design studios - mostly irrelevant to me, but interesting to see that actually their workshop equipment is not a million miles away from what we had for GCSE Product Design (we were a technology college so we had all industry standard equipment). Unfortunately, our guide was practically inaudible, and might not have even been visible a lot of the time, had it not been for the big yellow hoodie. We had to cut short our tour - not getting to see either the accommodation or the media building where I would be working - so that we could go to a welcome lecture where a one of the senior management team told us that, essentially, Falmouth is different. In some ways that might be a bad thing, but it was clear that in his opinion it worked better than what he'd seen at other universities where he'd worked.
We were then shown to the journalism seminar by a far more enthusiastic guide, and heard about the course.
It looks pretty good from where I'm sitting. The tutors all have experience of working in the field and have brought their connections with them. there are a variety of guest lecturers throughout the year, from the editors of the local newspapers to people who work at the Independent and the Guardian who make their way from London to talk to the students. The course itself includes modules on the history of journalism, media law, photojournalism, television journalism and so on and so forth - all interesting and useful for what I'd like to do in the future.

So yeah. Falmouth was nice. I'm not totally convinced, but it's Staffordshire University's Open Day next Saturday, so there will be a report on that and maybe I will have made some sort of decision (or maybe it will come down to who'll have me)

Halloween!

I love Halloween. Aside from the fact that it tends to be one of those great Autumn days where it's windy and fresh and the foliage has all gone a glorious colour, it gives me a brilliant excuse for dressing up. I really enjoy dressing up.

It's probably part of that 'you can take the student out of the theatre but you can't take the theatre out of the student' thing. I'm like the metaphorical stick of rock with 'luvvie' written all the way through it - pretending to be someone else for a while is damn good fun.
This year, Halloween will be without all those friends who are off at university, but, since there is still a party (one of the remaining friends has the house to herself that weekend) I still get to dress up.

Looking at the 'pictures of me' thing on facebook, it seems I'll don a costume at the slightest provocation, and I do like to think I make the effort with it. Previous halloweens have seen me as bat, witch, werewolf, devil and so on and so on, while other opportunities have produced one of the original Charlie's Angels (raided my mum's old clothes bag), Prince Charming, schoolgirls, princesses...

This year, I was considering going as roadkill - using the furry bits from last years wolf costume, makeup bruises and cuts and a tyretrack across my chest, but I think I'll save that one (because it is a great idea). Instead I'm thinking bad fairy - all fishnet, thorns and wilted petals, like a flower fairy gone wrong. I'll have to make it of course, but I'm pretty sure I can do that.
It should be good fun. I will post pictures as we go along I think.

p.s. a friend has just started a blog for his uni course, go say hi: http://martin-baxter.blogspot.com/

hello?

Pretty sure anyone who was reading has forgotten about me now, but what the heck, maybe we'll get some new ones.
What have I been up to since I last wrote?
Working (hooray for being paid!)

Blowing bubbles:

Picnicking:

Camping:


And generally making the most of my friends before they left for Uni. Now most of them have left - only two haven't gone who are going and then there's just four left (or five, depending who you count)

It's got quite lonely back here, though the people left are good ones. As it happens, they are among my very best friends, but so are all the ones who are going away. I can't choose a single best friend.