After three strange, challenging but rewarding years as an English student at the University of Bristol, I have just completed my degree.
I describe them as challenging because for every joyous celebration of submitting a piece of coursework, I spent minutes, hours and sometimes even a whole day staring at an empty Word document, willing incoherent thoughts to assemble on the page as sentences and paragraphs. Sometimes, writing an essay seemed nigh on impossible.
Studying English
Yet ultimately, studying an English degree at university has been incredibly rewarding. Despite every moment of doubt, I eventually shaped those unruly thoughts into coherent sentences, paragraphs and complete essays.
The click of my mouse as I submitted a piece of work signalled a small victory over whichever book, poem or topic I had covered. That click signified that I had finally understood topics and texts that were once unfamiliar and often difficult to grasp. I defiantly added my own thoughts, feelings and opinions to the abundance of thoughts, feelings and opinions expressed by hundreds of thousands of others before me.
Thanks to the past three years, I can now proudly say that I’ve read works of literature spanning hundreds of years, often by writers I would never have discovered if it wasn’t for my degree. Just as importantly, I’ve also gained critical thinking skills that I can apply to a variety of situations.
In my personal life, these skills help me gain a richer and more nuanced understanding of something as simple as a film I’ve seen at the cinema with my friends. In my professional life, these skills help me work productively with other people and push myself to improve my work.
Let me walk you through some of the features that shaped a typical day for me during the past three years, so you can see for yourself what further education might have in store for you.
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Reading, Reading and More Reading
I quickly realised when I started my degree that I had to do a lot of reading. Perhaps that seems a little obvious given English is the study of literary texts, but it definitely shocked me at first.
In any given week, I might have been expected to read a two-or-three-hundred page novel, a handful of poems and a couple of journal articles. If, like me, you’re quite adept at getting through a novel in only a couple of days, journal articles will take a little while longer to get used to as they’re far more dense and challenging reads. Despite how challenging they are, they’re also some of the most rewarding texts to read.
Inevitably, all of this reading meant putting aside at least an hour a day to get through it, sometimes more. Despite dedicating the last three years of my life to reading, I’m actually quite a slow reader – and that’s fine! I expected my reading pace to quicken as I spent more time reading difficult and disparate texts at university, but every time I tried to speedily skim-read, nothing seemed to go in at all. If you’ve found that you also tend to read slowly, don’t for a second let that put you off studying an English degree.
You might think that darting your eyes across hundreds of different books is the key to thriving in an English degree, but I’ve found that the most valuable skill is the ability to slow down over a particular poem, paragraph or passage, soaking in every word. This is something which slow readers like myself are more than capable of doing.
Going Solo
Lots of reading also meant that the majority of the time I spent working was by myself, in the library or in my room, with my head in a book, meaning that self-motivation was essential.
Self-motivation is very much a skill that can be honed, a habit that can be formed. If you’re used to being guided on when to work and what to work on by parents or teachers, planning your own working and reading schedules can feel a little difficult at first. Don’t worry though, it will come naturally in no time.
Talking it Through
An English degree isn’t as lonely as it might sound. Most days I had a lecture in the morning and a seminar in the afternoon, or vice versa.
Lectures are a great opportunity to hear experts in topics ranging from medieval literature to the alcohol consumption habits of Victorians (really, that was the speciality of a lecturer in my department and it was surprisingly fascinating).
Seminars were easily my favourite part of the day. Sometimes, when you’ve spent a whole day reading through a novel, your thoughts can become a little muddled by the end. What do I actually think of the book I’ve just spent my entire day reading? Do I have any thoughts about it? Seminars are useful at generating discussion amongst you and your classmates, and these discussions always helped me develop my own thoughts on a text, even when I didn’t think I had any. Nothing will help you understand your own reaction to a text better than somebody assertively stating what they took the author to mean and you quickly realising that you completely disagree with everything they’re saying!
Of course, contributing in a room full of people can feel a little intimidating at first, but this is another skill that comes with practice. I found it helpful to come to class with a list of thoughts, no matter how vague, no matter how simple, and to add new thoughts as they cropped up during the seminar. For those of us who are writers first and orators second, writing out your thoughts first can help you verbalise them more confidently.
When the Work is Done
Once you’ve mastered self-motivation and the ability to work to your own set schedules, you’ll become an expert at leaving yourself plenty of time to switch off from all the reading, lectures and seminars which, no matter how enriching, can bring on a bit of a headache after a while.
My favourite pastime outside of university was seeing live music. Thankfully, Bristol has plenty of choices on offer when it comes to seeking out a good gig and plenty of them were free, which suited a student budget perfectly.
Being from a small, and somewhat uneventful, town in the South West of England, one of the most exciting things about going to university for me was the chance to live in a far bigger place, with so much more on my doorstep. Live music venues, art galleries, cafes, cinemas and restaurants were all hiding round each and every cobbled street corner. I was never for a second stuck for something to do in Bristol.
Without a doubt, the last three years have been the most rewarding of my life, socially, culturally and academically. Further education is an experience I would recommend to anyone wanting to enrich themselves, challenge themselves and prove themselves.
That is what the click of my mouse as I submitted my final piece of work represented.
Read Sam’s curated list of the 100 Best Books of All Time for an in-depth look into some of the texts he studied on his English degree.
By Sam Cox
Sam is a recent English graduate from the University of Bristol whose interests include twentieth-century fiction, film and cultural criticism.
