I chose to study a geography degree because I've always been interested in connections
and and networks and the way people interact, so a human geography degree was really was really a
good idea for me and has allowed me to learn more about kind of the world both in terms of
the way people interact with it but also the way people interact with each other
as well. When I was about 15 I went on a trip to India with school for religious studies and
that was the furthest I'd been away from home, and it really just opened up my mind as to how
different people live across the world. I think it's just a subject that's quite broad like you
can kind of go into physical geography or human geography and it covers so many so many different
topics. I chose to come to Newcastle firstly because I was really interested by the course and
the amount of options that it offered but then once I'd come to Newcastle for the open days I
spoke to some of the lecturers and was really amazed with how enthusiastic and
passionate they were about their subject. So I found the transition from school to
the university geography degree quite kind of easy to cope with, and in first year in geography you
have to do a geography skills module which you cover kind of how to reference which is something
that you haven't done before, and also more detail on like how to write essays and also you have a
support network in the form of your like tutorial group and you've got your personal tutor as well.
The highlight moment for me is being being able to do my own research,
so through second year and into third year for my dissertation we were encouraged to choose our own
areas to answer questions on and really focus on stuff that we are interested in.
So I worked on a really exciting research project for my undergraduate dissertation,
it was about bank branch closures in Edinburgh and the impact this has
on small businesses and I was able to design up this project and then arrange interviews
and go out there and do my own research and just basically get speaking to people about something
I was really interested in and passionate about. So the highlight moment certainly was completing
the dissertation and the overall process. I was allowed to research a specific area
that I was interested in and I was given an enormous amount of support from different
different members of staff be them tutors or lecturers and the overall process was
really really rewarding. My undergraduate my dissertation, so I looked at glaciers and how
in the tropics and how they respond to the el nino using satellite imagery to kind of track how these
glaciers have changed over time and then using some sort of statistics to kind of link that to
changes in the el nino and changes in climate. Another highlight of my degree was the second
year field trip to New York City so that was just incredible, it was a political geography
trip and we were looking at geographies of migration and geopolitics and belonging
and we chose to research the political economy of street vendors in New York City.
I took part in a field trip in my second year, I went to Ireland and I really
enjoyed this and it was definitely one of the highlights of the geography degree as well.
So in my year, the choices were Iceland and Ireland, I went to Ireland and we kind of did so
a few days doing like coastal research we looked at kind of deglaciation of Ireland during the last
glacial maximum. I think the highlight of that was sort of spending two weeks away with your friends,
kind of have the opportunity to do some field research that you haven't had the opportunity
to do and kind of seeing about how all these things you learn about through your degree
actually being able to put them into practice. The lecturers at Newcastle are absolutely
fantastic, they're some of the most excited and inspirational people that I've been taught by so
it's been a really really good couple of years. I would definitely recommend a geography degree
because it's really broad and you can kind of choose different areas to specialize in.
I'd say geography is one of the best subjects you can do for a career because it gives you lots of
facilitating transferable skills as well. No doors are closed by choosing geography
and the range of different skills you will obtain will increase your employability and
make you more rounded as a student and as a person.
It was definitely the right decision to study geography at Newcastle,
I feel like the range of modules on offer and the expertise of the lecturers is something that
I felt I wasn't really going to get elsewhere and as well as the university academic side of things,
I think the city is just great so yeah I definitely think it was the right choice because
I've studied really crazy interesting things that I don't think I would have got to study elsewhere.