Hi, so I'm Lenny, I'm from Durham, and I'm studying medicine here at the Uni of Leicester
and my favourite thing about it is probably that everyone is just so lovely. Everyone's
so nice and welcoming so it's really easy to make new friends and meet new people, value learning
and have fun too. Hi everyone, my name is Zoe, I am a second year modern languages student at the
University of Leicester and I study French, Spanish and Italian. I'm from a little town
called Halifax, in West Yorkshire. My favourite thing about university is
my degree, I love my degree, I love studying it, I love learning all about different
cultures and different interesting things - my favourite thing is definitely my degree.
So I chose my subject, medicine, because I wanted to go into a job where I could really help people;
nice and beneficial and rewarding and I want to be a doctor when I'm older. I haven't always
wanted to be a doctor but it's always something I've thought of and I just decided by looking at
open days and getting work experience that was really something for me, so yeah, that's why I
chose medicine. I love talking to people and there's so many benefits of talking languages
and when I was in year 9 I had a French exchange and that was my first chance to really told
somebody in their language - I loved it, I had the most amazing time. So then I decided to do it for
GCSE and then after my GCSEs I went to France for six weeks and I was working on farms, so I got to
drive a combine harvester, so that was awesome. And then for A-level I was like, what should I
do? I knew I wanted to do French and I was like, should I just do Spanish? So I was like, yeah, I'm
gonna do some Spanish, I'm gonna see what I think, see if i like it - I love it. So I worked in
Madrid for a little bit, five weeks as an au pair, which was good, like amazing experience as well,
and another example of me being able to be so immersed. I love being immersed in
cultures, I find it so fascinating, talking to different people. Then for my degree I was like,
well, this is what I want to do, I want to talk to many people as I can in their language and
I feel like I'm communicating across linguistic barriers. A bonus point for the languages
department at the University of Leicester is their employability rate is 96%, which is such
a lovely figure because obviously job prospects are a massive issue. I just decided that I wanted
to speak to as many people as possible, so I decided to study languages for my degree.
Okay, so the average working day. I'd say I spend around four to six hours working on my degree
every day. Sometimes I have days where I've got two hours of class, I have days
when I have six hours of class. The daily like day-to-day changes, but you need to do, I'd say,
like all day until say 5pm, is very like degree based for me because I find it
nice having the evenings off, so I try to do my work in the day. So my typical day at uni is in
phase one, which is the first and second year of studying it, so I'm in my second year now,
and a typical day is from two o'clock till six o'clock in the afternoon, so for the first two
hours we'll have two lectures and at the minute they're delivered online, but normally, obviously,
you'd be in a lecture theatre, and then after that you go and do group work for two hours.
You have a little group and basically there's loads of questions to answer and there's a
tutor there to help you with the answers, prompt you along, so it's really nice because it helps
you consolidate the learning that you've just done in the lectures, so you never feel like,
oh I don't understand anything, and there's always that opportunity to go and ask questions after.
So for independent study I normally do quite a lot because it's quite a demanding course,
but I still always have time to go out and have fun, I play netball, I take part in socials,
but I would probably do about four hours of independent study a day, so since my normal
timetable is two till six, then I would normally also be working, say from nine till one, then have
my lunch and then two till six, so really it's like a nine till six day and then you'll have all
the evenings just to chill out and have fun and do whatever because that's what you need to do
after a long day of work. So like onto independent study, I would say you have to do like an hour per
hour that you're taught, so for every double like two hour language class, I'll do two extra hours
sometimes a little bit longer, sometimes a little bit less, it depends on how complex the topic is,
it depends what language it is, there's so many different things, but I would never say that
I've felt that too much was given to me in the two hours. The department's really helpful with
exactly what you need to do independently, the sites are amazing, they give you loads
of resources so it's very manageable independent study, but it's definitely like doubles your time.
It is a bit different from A-levels and GCSEs because I feel like for your A-levels and
GCSEs you get more in-class information and then a little bit homework, whereas
I feel like the in-class and the out of class are equally
vital to your understanding of the topic in uni, but it's very similar in terms of like this and
then homework, so it's very self-explanatory you get loads of help from your teachers.
So obviously uni is a bit different from A-levels, but in a lot of ways it is similar so
obviously it's still education you have different lecturers and tutors, similar to your teachers,
you might just have more for different subjects or units that you do as part of your course,
but you still get face-to-face time, still get to interact with other people, it's just maybe
lectures that are the most different to get used to because normally obviously it's always
small classes but lectures are big theatre halls basically where you all sit in and listen to a
lecturer delivering the lesson so it's slightly different, but you get used to it really quickly.
The most important academic skill for me is time management and organisation.
My favourite way to do this is to do lists, I have a list every single day. I have them for days,
weeks and months and you can add to them and take stuff away, it doesn't really matter, but as long
as you have an idea of what you want to get done in the day you're way more likely to get it done.
Time management is so key. Don't get stressed because you've blessed it to
the last minute - try to do an hour every now and again and it'll be so much easier.