Monday 8 January 2018

After My First Semester At University

Hey everyone! 

Welcome to a brand new blog post. I thought that today, I would talk about the first semesster at university. I know that this may/may not interest some of you but I thought that I would talk it about anyway.

A white marble slab with the word university engraved into it on a grand building with rectangular glass windows above and below it. 


The course that I'm studying at Leeds Beckett University is Media, Culture and Communications. I know that sounds like a moutful to say, and honestly it is but I love the course. To sum it up, Media, Culture and Communications is all about the media of today and what surrounds it. It's about how nedia has been intertwined with the cutlure of the past and present and much more. For example, how blogging has become a platform for an audience that can span over different countries and how sponsored posts can influence the said audience to check out and buy via their trust and loyalty or the blogger, but also by the brand that is sponsoring the post.

The first semester consisted of three different modules, which were Cultural Studies, Media Interactions and Interpreting New Media.

Cultural Studies talked about culture itself, including breaking down the definition/definitions of culture itself and the expectation of categorising culture into either low-brow or high-brow and the representation of different subcultures such as the chav and the hipster and different minorities such as LGBT+ and people of colour within media.

Media Interactions talked about, well, interacting with media via platforms such as vlogging, social media platforms such as Twitter and Instagram and much more. Media Interactions also talks about how we interact with the platforms such as getting hooked on social media via the constant pings on your phone which keep you glued to your phone or the fact that you get likes on just the aesthetics of something that you post on Instagram which can be yourself or something else which boosts your self worth and sometimes your self image which makes you come back again and again just to get another shot of it to feel 'beautiful' in the eyes of society via a digital screen.

Interpreting New Media talked about how different people interpreting new media which includes things like the internet, YouTube, Social Media, On Demand services and much more. This includes the background of new media and what happens within these forms o new media such as discrimination within football thats shown online and why an audience might decide to stick to say a streaming service instead of watching via YouTube.

At first, it took me a while to get used to things such as going from different campus buildings, knowing what was in each building, and getting into a completely new schedule, but after a while I knew where I was and I knew what was what but that happens everywhere really. I did get ,lost a lotn but at the end of the day, an adventure is an adventure.

I instantly thought that I might have a few problems with having a physical disability and an invisible disability in the form of mental health problems but my lecturers were fine with it all when I told them and ensured that if I had any problems with anything to do with it then I could email them confidentially which I thought was great. The waiting list for student wellbeing can be a bit of a weird one but I think that's the same for anywhere really.

I actually got my essays done the week before the deadline instead of the stereotypical every student does it the night before the deadline and I actually had quite a bit of help when it came to sorting out essays including going through and asking questions about bits I wasn't sure of. I also got to rehearse presentations which calmed my anxiety down a bit compared to not knowing what I wanted to say on the day of the presentation.

All in all, I had a better first semester than I thought I was going to have and hopefully I'll keep trucking along and get through Semester Two and my first year at University.

Let me know what your first semester at university was like. 

I hope that you enjoyed this blog post and that you come back for the next one!

Thanks for reading! 
Jamie x

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