Eleanor - English

Name: Eleanor Cragg
Subject: English
Year: 1st

What does your working week entail?

The average week of a Christ’s English student has (so far) meant completing one or two essays per week, which are set by your supervisors. Generally in a week, you have one supervision either as an individual or in a pair, and two supervisions in a group, lasting between one and two hours. In regards to lectures, it’s very much up to the individual to decide how many (or little) they want to attend. The advice given to us at the beginning of the year was that we should select three mornings of lectures to attend, and set the others aside for reading. Last term the workload seemed to be spread fairly evenly throughout the week, but I think the concentration is dependent on when your supervisions are situated in the week.

How hard did you find the transition from A-level to the first year of your degree?

Initially, I did find it difficult to transfer from A-Level English to Degree, particularly adjusting to the amount of independence you receive, however it did get better with time.

How easily can you fit social activities into your working week?

This independence you gain within studying English, means that you have a certain scope to organise your work around any particular social events or activities that catch your eye. For instance if I fancied going out on a ‘swap’ one night, I could just do my reading earlier in the day.

What sort of things did you talk about in your interview?

I think one of the most daunting things about English at Christ’s was actually the interview, purely because I had no idea what to expect! Yet when my interview actually came, the atmosphere was much more relaxed than I’d anticipated, and my interviewers were actually really nice. In the two subject interviews, we discussed two essays I had submitted, and also the texts that I had talked about in my personal statement. I then had to read a poem I had never read before for a few minutes, and put forward my initial impressions of it. I know that the comments I gave were probably not what the poem was actually about, however I think that it’s important just to attempt it, no matter how ‘wrong’ you think it sounds.