Calling All Current And Former University Students!

[taimatsu]

If you have done or are doing a degree, how did you choose your subject? How did you work out it was the right one for you? Were you sure before you started that it would be something you would really enjoy studying and at which you would do well?

Please talk to me about subject choice.

(Context: I am looking at the Reading English department's page outlining the course, and I'm nervous; I haven't studied English for four years, since A-level, and I don't know how to tell if I'll enjoy the modules on offer.)

Comments

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

I did computer science, I should have done software engineering.

I just chose my course based on what I'd done previously without reading what other courses were available or deciding what I wanted to do.
I'd say...

* Decide what you want to do, not a course, what topics
* Read what other similar courses are available and what they contain
* Decide which one you want

Strange...

[mattmachell.livejournal.com]

...I could have sworn they were the same course when I did it. But then different universities do mad things with course names/content. After having worked at one, it seems to be quite arbitary what they call things.

Many people I knew chose their courses as a good idea at 18, and after 3 years ended up hating them. Less so for arts degrees, so I suspect they may have had all the fun.

Re: Strange...

[diffrentcolours]

Generally IME Software Engineering is more practical, generally involving project management etc., and Computer Science is heavily maths-based.

I think the CS vs SE approach is summed up by a conversation I had with a housemate once - I listed the languages I'd had practical experience with and he said "well, theoretically I can program in any language, or write you a new one, but I'm not particularly good with any of them."

[crocodilewings.livejournal.com]

Well, Astrophysics was chosen, if I'm honest, because it was the most difficult course I could get my hands on. It also allowed me, when people said "oooh...astrophysics...that must be difficult", to respond "well, you know, it's not exactly rocket science".

These are stupid reasons to choose a degree.

All subsequent decisions on what to study at degree level have been generally scuppered by wanting to do everything.

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

That looks like a course I'd enjoy - it has a few similarities to the Brookes one I did. I particularly like the freedom to study something else (from a list, admittedly) in the first year, that was really good fun from my POV. I see Japanese is listed. :)

I think as an English grad I'd recommend that course on the basis of what I'm reading. And I know a recent Reading grad and she says it's not a bad SU and so on, which might count for something.

[diffrentcolours]

I had a choice between computing and classics. Figured that my Greek wasn't strong enough (not that my Latin was great) and that I'd get more money out of computing.

Read some syllabuses, liked the feel of Software Engineering over Computer Science. And I went to UMIST because it was a big city university, and I couldn't face the collegiate structure of Oxbridge after five years at public school.

[phlebas.livejournal.com]

I liked maths, and wanted to do maths. So I did a maths degree. Sorry if that's not very helpful :)

[juliet]

You could see whether there's any reading lists available for the modules that look interesting (ask the department?) & see if you can have a look at a few of the books in a library (textbooks as well as fiction-books, I mean)?

I chose Maths & Philosophy because I got on well with Maths, & because I'd read some basic philosophy & found it *really interesting*. I then discovered that Maths had been a bad call :-) And changed to PPE because I knew I liked Philosophy (having done 1 1/2 yrs of it by then) & figured I'd probably like Politics because I'd done political history at A level & liked it; and because I'd read some of my PPEist friend's notes & found them interesting.

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

Yeah, as above but replace Maths with Law. Anyway, you know roughly my views on the best route for your future studying, but t'aint any of my business so.

[taimatsu]

Give me your views again, I have a brain like a sieve. Your thoughts are as welcome as anyone else's, silly!

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

You should pursue work and qualifications in child care, as well as keeping up your sign language, and doing a part-time arts course of some kind, probably with a long term view of work in play therapy / work with deaf and hard of hearing children.

[taimatsu]

Reading offers a BA Theatre Arts, Education and Deaf Studies. :) Now, I'm not cut out for the theatre bit of it, but it does mean that there are Deaf Studies modules available. Hmm. I will think further. It's an interesting idea, but I would hesitate to plan on this basis without having some childcare experience. I'm nervous about that because I don't deal well with unpleasant bodily excretions, and I am not confident about controlling children who'd be past that stage.

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

The key is small groups, but there we are.

I don't deal well with unpleasant bodily excretions

So you are planning to have a nanny, or what?

[taimatsu]

Good point, small groups of children, yes.

Either a nanny, or no babies. Well, no, if I had babies I'd have set myself up for it, wouldn't I? It'd be a bit different with my own.

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

You, no babies? You've changed...

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

I was totally indecisive, and Psychology looked interesting.

Answering questions with questions

[j4.livejournal.com]

- How did you choose your degree subject before?
- What do you think you learned from the Theology course about what you do/don't enjoy doing?
- What did you enjoy about English when you studied it last?
- What do you hope to get out of a degree?

Re: Answering questions with questions

[taimatsu]

I was good at Religious Studies A-level (but then I had an excellent teacher with whom I got on exceedingly well). I was also good at English, but my teachers were less inspiring. It was one or the other as I knew I didn't want to do French (my third A-level subject). I picked Thelogy because I thought it encompassed more of my interests than English (not just the literature but also history, languages, sociology-sorts-of-things, philosophy, etc.) That was not a bad basis on which to pick, and it probably would have been okay had I gone to Leeds. But I picked Oxford, the Theology course at which does not really go for the broad-brush approach, being rather narrowly Biblical and dry. (I think I really wanted to do what's called Applied Theology, where you get to think about what effects religion has on people. Leeds is, if I remember rightly, excellent at this.)

From my time at Oxford I learnt: that I need more than one compulsory contact hour per week; I need other students of my discipline around me to talk to; I am crap at ancient languages without a spoken component; I am quite interested in some portions of Church history; the sea-monsters in the book of Daniel bore me rigid, but the book of Ruth is really very interesting to study; I find it hard to do textual analysis when the original is not in my native tongue, which makes it hard to use my theological analytical experience as a basis for estimating whether I'll want to do that in an English degree.

When I last studied English I: had a better vocabulary than one of my two teachers; enjoyed working with other people to tease out ideas abut a text; liked reading lots of books; liked thinking about use of language and achieving literary effects. (I keep worrying, though, because when I was little I used to hate writing book reviews. It always spoilt the book for me.)

A degree for me is in large part CV POINTS. I had it dinned into me for years that I won't get an *interesting* job without a degree. (And my mother was probably right, in that most jobs that would really interest and challenge me would want a degree of some sort.) But I would also like to study something and actually have a positive university experience instead of a crap one. I know I have the ability to study at degree level and succeed, and I want to prove that to myself. And I hope to expand my knowledge of the subject area in question and acquire useful skills and perhaps some new friends.

[nannyo.livejournal.com]

I made the wrong decision to study something I was interested in, but not passionate about, so I did Genetics instead of Life Sciences, or zoology or something. One of the reasons I did it was that I thought it was an up and coming subject, and that there would be loads of jobs, I also chose it because I knew it would be hard, and I wanted to be challenged, and I thought I could teach myself the other stuff I wanted to know later on, whereas I needed to be taught the hard stuff. I think if someone from the University of Nottingham had bothered talking to me about what the course focus was, then I might have chosen another subject which was related but not that biochemical. So, um talk to them in the department? Do you like reading and commenting on reading?
GO and visit the department and see if you can talk to some of the students in the coffee bar.
Good luck
N.

[karen2205]

If you have done or are doing a degree, how did you choose your subject? How did you work out it was the right one for you?

Since I was about 15 I thought I wanted to become a lawyer. Law made sense as a degree course, because I thought I'd enjoy it, thought I'd be good at it, knew it would help with becoming a lawyer and be a solid academic subject to fall back on if I decided not to go into law. The other subject I was interested in was economics and I decided that I didn't want to do that at uni since I didn't have an 'A' level in maths (which lots of unis wanted).

Were you sure before you started that it would be something you would really enjoy studying and at which you would do well?

Yeah, I was convinced I'd enjoy it and be good at it. Unfortunately, the reality wasn't quite as good as I'd expected. The course wasn't what I was expecting and it was much more difficult that I thought it would be. By the time I realised that it was far too late to change my mind, I just had to stick with it - and saying that, I did get a 2.1 in the end.

[colours.livejournal.com]

I didn't have a clue what to do. Actually, that's a lie - I didn't have a clue what not to do! Almost every subject I read about in the prospectuses sounded fascinating. So, I ended up taking a Combined Honours degree, which enabled me to study lots of different subjects and I absolutely loved it.

But in your case, I'd recommend taking a short course (most universities run termly courses for adults) just to see? I'm doing one in event management at the moment, just to see if the career's for me.

I also, um, work in a university careers centre so am ideally placed if you want any more info :o)

[emperor]

I did veterinary medicine because I thought I wanted to be a vet. Also, I wanted to study something challenging, and that elements of theory and practice involved in it.

More recently, I decided I wanted to PhD instead of going into general practice. I'd become interested in computing during my undergrad years, so decided to try and do something that could combine my veterinary interests and my computing interests. Of the several places I considered, Cambridge seemed keen to have me, and I did at least partly want to stay here.

[evilbun.livejournal.com]

I'm doing geography-
best grade at school
into saving the environment
seem to understand it beter than other things

chose the uni through a lot of factors- not many of them very good ones
chose the course- well it's SO hard to tell how good a course is!

goodluck and come to reading
xx

[odheirre.livejournal.com]

Bachelor's degree: started in Biology, went to English, and ended up getting a minor in Computer Science. Didn't know what I was doing, and didn't really know anything about...well, anything. I've found it didn't really matter. At least in the US. I knew I'd do OK (did well in it in high school), but I didn't know what I was going to do with my life.

Master's degree: English, Technical Writing. Very specific, and I loved it. I was doing technical writing at my work, and really enjoyed it. Of course, as soon as I got my degree, I quit the field and went to software development. But the tech-writing degree helped in that, too.

[imc.livejournal.com]

how did you choose your subject?

Well, I liked maths and I liked computers. It was almost inevitable that I'd end up with something that had maths or computers in it (though I did put down electrical engineering as one of my choices).

How did you work out it was the right one for you?

It kind of jumped off the page as I was reading down the list of courses at Oxford. "Mathematics and Computation." Given the previous paragraph, this seemed pretty ideal.

Were you sure before you started that it would be something you would really enjoy studying and at which you would do well?

Oh yes.

[syeniess.livejournal.com]

I chose my degree for the worst possible reasons. I saw a film. (yep, Indiana Jones, at 8 years old) Thing is, the idea stuck with me all through school, I went on practice digs during GSCEs, and finally convinced the parents that _yes_ I did really want to be doing this degree. It isn't exactly the thing that leads to a good job, but I loved my degree nonetheless. It was interesting, and it meant I got to learn a whole era of history which I'd never really got to study before.

[taimatsu]

Sounds like you saw a film which inspired you with a great interest in a subject, which you then pursued and found that yes, you really did like it. That's not a bad reason at all :)

[ashfae.livejournal.com]

Welp, when I was a kid, the Big Question was always whether I'd study English or music. When it came time to go to university, I deliberately picked one that wouldn't force mt to choose a major, so I could waffle a bit more. I woke up late in my junior year to realize that while I loved music I was sick of studying it. Unfortunately, by that time Creative Writing (poetry) had entered the equation, so when I later applied to postgrad programs I went through the dilemna of whether to study English or Creative Writing!

In the end I decided 1) an English degree could be more generally applied and was probably more useful, and 2) one of the best ways to study creative writing is by reading the best writers, and therefore off to an English program I went.

My only statement is: beware of literary critical theory! Beware!!!

[martling.livejournal.com]

I'm studying computer science and electronics. I get a joint honours BEng at the end of it, next June.

I applied a year late, because I wasn't happy with making a decision about university when I was still half way through my A-levels. By the time I was choosing courses, I'd spent most of a year working in the IT industry, travelling, and working on my own tech projects.

I already knew I liked playing with technology. But I got enough time and experience to realise that I really was interested in the principles behind it and embedded in it. There were a distressingly large number of people signing up for CS courses at that time who weren't. I realised I loved doing things with hardware. I also realised there were limits to how much formalism and theoretical work was interesting to me, and that I loved designing things. In short, I found out I was not a scientist but an engineer.

I picked right, and now I'm studying things I really enjoy learning about - to be able to do things I really enjoy doing.

I don't think I'd have been able to figure out if I'd enjoy the material from looking down a syllabus, but I would have by listening in to some lectures, or having someone enthusiastic try to explain it to me.

[winterthing.livejournal.com]

For me the choice has always been simple. What am I actively interested in. What makes me want to read books about it. What makes me get excited and enthused.

I think without that, without some kind of pre-emptive excitement it is likely to go downhill and you are liable to lose your way.

[liv]

I read biochemistry, and I'm now doing a biochem-related PhD so you could say it was absolutely the right choice for me. I chose the right subject for sort of the wrong reasons, I think.

At school I really liked some parts of the biology course and really hated others, and I was kind of torn between biology and chemistry. I started out trying to find a pick-and-mix sort of science degree where I could design a course to do only the stuff I enjoyed. I got some very good careers advice to the effect that the last thing I wanted was a degree in a random assortment of stuff that I enjoyed at school, and I should apply for general biology or biochemistry. Given the choice I went for biochemistry because of my interest in chemistry and enzymology.

At the time I wasn't planning to go into research; I wanted to teach and had been advised that the best way into teaching was to do a degree in a random subject you find interesting and then a one-year PGCE. What I discovered at university was that I love biology a lot more than I thought I did, and the parts I thought I would enjoy, the directly chemistry bits, were the least interesting.

I think what's most generalizable from this to your situation is that you may not have enough information to decide exactly what modules you'll like best. There's nothing wrong with modular courses, but if you do have a choice in the matter, try to cover as broad ground as possible. An degree in English is likely to be more useful and may well even be more enjoyable than a degree in "writers that taimatsu likes and a bunch of random things that sound vaguely like stuff that was fun at A Level". At least for the first half of the course; nothing wrong with specializing in your final year when you actually have a better idea what's fun at university level.

[stronae.livejournal.com]

I don't think I'd be of much help here. I knew what I wanted to do when I was ten, so the only details left to work out where 'where' and 'cost'. If it helps any, any particular subject has aspects which are going to be appealing, and aspects which are going to be unappealing. For example, I love math, but I hate any sub-subject beginning with the word 'differential'. (Differential equations, differential topology, etc.) The trick is to find those aspects which you know will be appealing early on, once you wade yourself into the spacious pool of English.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

I don't think there was much doubt that I was going to do maths or computing, given my interest and aptitude at the time. I chose the former. By my third year I wasn't doing very well at it but I think it was still the right choice - my computing skills have served me well even without much in the way of formal training, and the maths has remained and interest and proved useful in direct and indirect ways over the years.

[omentide.livejournal.com]

Well, first I got kicked out of Teacher Training College (where I was doing Drama) on account of being an 'unsuitable personality to teach'.

At that stage I had one A level (English), which I liked and was considered to be good at. I did History and Sociology A levels by correspondence (because I didn't have O levels in either subject) and got interested in Psychology.

I started out in Reading where, at the time, you had to do three subjects for two terms. I took Politics (which I was bad at), Sociology and Psychology with the intention of doing joint Psychology/Sociology Honours.

That's when I discovered I really was very seriously interested in Psychology. And not the 'softer' bits like 'Social Psychology'. I ended up doing a lot of mathematical cognitive stuff. Even though I never finished my PhD.

One of my few 'nearly regrets' is that I didn't try to get to MIT to study Artificial Intelligence. That was where it was all happening at the time.

[jo-english-bint.livejournal.com]

I did Physics, mainly because I knew I would always walk into ANY (Physics related) job with a physics degree (touch wood I've never been turned down yet!!). Physicists are a dieing breed!
Also good for negotiation of pay!

The other main thing I would look at are the modules within the degree. I started doing join Chemistry, but droped most of the chem stuff, as it was no where like what I was expecting. Mainly because I hadn't looked at the modules on offer!

[doseybat.livejournal.com]

I did a degree in Plant Sciences, and the choice was based on just being attracted to the subject of study really. It was going to be either botany or sculpture, and I did spend quite a long time agonising about it, and thinking about doing maths; my father hepled quite a bit by talking me through it. Some of his advice was quite biased, like "dont do maths of physics, bacuse i have been studying it for x years and now realise the real future lies in biology", but it did lead me to a positive decision i was happy with.

[kizzie.livejournal.com]

liked computing, didn't want to do it all thetime. watched a lot of the history chanel and decided i liked ancient history...

*grins*

not the best way to pick a course...

[sea-cucumber.livejournal.com]

My A-levels were chosen purely because I couldn't have the ones I wanted due to timetabling difficulties at school for that combination. I wanted to do archaeology, so i originally chose physics, history, maths and chemistry, thnking I would approach it from a more scientific angle. In the end History clashed with Physics so I had to do French instead of History.
I chose Astrophysics at university as I was into space science and astronomy. I should have perhaps gone for something with less maths as it hurt my brian too much but I blagged a degree in the end, and people are impressed by it.
Now if I was back at school knowing the stuff I do now I would not even do sciences I don't think, although they are really interesting, I should have perhaps done something that I have more of a general interest in, something I read books about anyway.
I'm going to see if Open University will let me make a weird philosophy/theology degree of oddness, from their website it looks as if you can...

[white_hart]

My mother did a degree in English and History of Art at Reading about fifteen years ago, and spoke highly of it. Of course, it may have all changed since then.

I did English at university because it was my favourite subject at school and I'd always enjoyed reading; in some ways I wish now I hadn't because having to read the volume of books required from the course really damaged my ability to read for pleasure. I don't know what I would have done instead, though; I may enjoy accountancy as a profession, but I would have hated it as a degree. History, maybe, but that was my least favourite A-Level as I liked the stories and not the evaluation of source material.

[damerell.livejournal.com]

Maths for one year; both parents are mathematicians, and it always interested me. But I got a Third after spending the first year fiddling with computers, which was a hint towards Compsci, so I did that.