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)
No comments:
Post a Comment