November 21, 2018, by Sunita Tailor

Study abroad, but not as you know it

This blog post was written by second year English student, Megan Bowie.

This summer I studied abroad for two weeks with our intercampus Overseas Summer School programme at the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus! I chose the Creative Writing course because as a joint honours student last year (I am now single honours), I didn’t get to pick this module and wanted to try something new. The first day we were welcomed by an amazing showcase of traditional Malaysian dances and a delicious welcome meal to get us settled in.

Starting our courses (which varied from business or politics to creative writing), we sat in lectures on the basics of creative writing, what was involved and what we could expect from the course and got straight into writing poetry. This was the first poem I’d ever written (disregarding my primary school fireworks masterpiece) and I found it really exciting and different to the content I was writing at university. Throughout the two weeks we wrote more poems, flash fiction and short stories, including going to visit an English author who had moved to Malaysia. She told us about the industry and how she was inspired from her life in England and in Malaysia and I could see why.

During the Summer School, not only were we writing and learning in the classroom but we were learning about the culture and lifestyle of the beautiful country in Southeast Asia. The time was filled with trying new food and visiting many places of interest like Kuala Lumpur and the Batu Caves. We visited temples and climbed hills and above all, made friends for life with people from Nottingham and all over the world. It was the most exciting and eye opening fortnight of my life that gave me a short but sweet taster of studying abroad. It immersed me into the stunning Asian surroundings that I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to do so without studying at the University of Nottingham.

 

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