February 2, 2015, by Sunita Tailor

New Year, New Reading List…

This blog post was written by MA English Literature student, Nicole Jones from the School of English.

Hi, everyone – I’m Nicole, a postgraduate student on the English Literature MA. I was an undergraduate at Nottingham as well, which hopefully indicates how much I love being here- three years just wasn’t enough for me! In theory this means I know my stuff about life as an English student and the city itself – although my sense of direction is not as developed as my knowledge, so I might be able to tell you about some great places to go, but not exactly how to get there… But I digress!

 

 

If there’s something I have definitely learnt, it’s that university life has a definite ebb and flow. Case in point, the month of January: the best of times, the worst of times! When Christmas is over and deadlines loom, it can definitely be stressful. Fortunately, the bad bits of the month (coursework, the distress of packing away the Christmas tree) are behind us. My Masters is assessed completely by coursework, so I didn’t have exams- but the coursework definitely kept me very busy over the festive period! Fortunately, after hand in I was rewarded with twelve days of relative freedom before the new term started. I’d like to say I celebrated by doing something adventurous, but in reality all I feel like doing in winter is drinking tea and napping. I always find the winter term a more stressful one, what with the miserably short days- but on the plus side, I love the summer term, so my positivity levels are currently boundless!

 

 

And that’s why January is one of my favourite months, too. I love the freshness of a new term- new reading, plans, and of course the obligatory stationary replenishment trip. My first order of business for a new term was naturally to order all of my reading lists, and (as I do every year) plan to plough through as many as possible. For the first time in four years of student life, so far this plan of getting ahead of my reading is actually going well- I may potentially be maturing! Luckily, I’m enjoying everything I’m reading so far, particularly for the Speculative Fiction module: I’m currently on The Island of Doctor Moreau which I would definitely recommend- just maybe not before bedtime.

I’ve spent some of the time at home but have also been popping back to Notts for placement meetings. Over the last term I’ve been working on an internal placement with the School of English to set up the first ever English Showcase. I’m extremely excited about running this event- basically, we sent out a message to students asking them to give ten minute presentations about a piece of work we’ve been doing, so that students with a wide range of interests can get together and share their ideas. I was also fortunate to be part of a group of students who met with the Chancellor of the University to talk about placements that English students are undertaking. It was nice to have an opportunity to give feedback about this sort of work to somebody from outside the School (and being a sentimental type, made me quite proud, too!)

I’m aware this could be my last term at Nottingham (unless I manage to secure PhD funding- but that’s another story!) so I’m really keen to make the most of it. There’s a lot of pressure making the leap from student to graduate, but for the time being I’m trying to focus on the now and squeeze every last drop out of life as an English student. Watch this space!

[Featured images taken by Nicole Jones]

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