Recently, I got the itch to go back to uni.
No, that’s a bit of a fib. I always knew I wanted to go back to uni at some point. I just decided that this was the right time for me.
That’s because I realised I miss so much about my uni experience. It was amazing to be able to go to lectures and seminars. I loved the reading lists, libraries and access to world-class research. Plus, it’s great to be able to make friends with like-minded individuals studying the same subjects as you.
To be honest, I’ve always been the kind of person who loves learning new things. I find it so energising! For me, there’s nothing better than sitting in a lecture, furiously typing notes, making connections and taking in the knowledge of some of the greatest minds. So, you can bet that it didn’t surprise anyone in my life when I turned around and said I wanted to do a Master’s Degree at uni.
After doing a lot of research into MAs in English, I settled on Nottingham University. So, I spent a week in June digging up old certificates, asking tutors for references and writing the same sentence of my personal statement over and over again. It was stressful, but as of Monday 8th July 2024, I officially have an unconditional offer. I couldn’t be happier!
Now, as well as being a blogger, I’m also a tutor and teacher of English. So, I thought I could combine my different hats by taking you on this journey with me! Who knows? Maybe it will help you to make some decisions of your own. Or, maybe you’ll get a good laugh at me overloading myself with work. Either way, I’d love to share my experiences with you.
I don’t feel like I got the most out of uni the last time
The biggest reason why I want to go back to uni is that I feel like I wasted a lot of opportunities last time.
Uni is a bit like a gym membership. You can sign up and be a member all you want. But if you want to see progress, you’ve got to put in the work all by yourself. No one’s going to force you to get out of bed on time or push yourself that little bit harder.
I’m not going to pretend I did badly. I got a 2:1! That’s the second-highest grade you can get. Without it, I wouldn’t have been able to do this Master’s Degree at this uni in the first place! I’m not trying to downplay my success.
But I’d be lying to you if I said that I’d tried my hardest.
In reality, I found it super hard to keep up with my studies. Uni isn’t like school. There was no one there to tell me I was late, or to drop me to uni. No one would check if I’d done the reading or not. They didn’t even take attendance! So on those days where I felt just a little bit lazy, I just wouldn’t show up. And don’t even get me started on revising for my exams! That was an absolute flop!
Back then, I saw uni as just another thing to check off my ‘things that everyone does’ list. So, as you can imagine, the motivation wasn’t there. I had no clue that I was neurodivergent, either! When I couldn’t bring myself to study, I just thought I was being lazy!
Now, armed with ADHD medication and a new appreciation for the value of studying, I’m ready to go back and do this the right way.
Going back to uni will help me to be a better teacher
The last time I went to uni, I did a degree in history. Now, I’m an English teacher.
Now, that doesn’t mean I’m unqualified for my job. In fact, I don’t like to boast, but I’d say I know a lot more about my subject than the average English teacher. Hear me out!
I studied at the University of Glasgow, which allows you to take courses in other subjects for the first two years of your degree. Over the course of my time at uni, I studied 4 years of history, 2 years of English literature, 1 year of English language, 1 year of politics, and some extra courses in French and Japanese. Even then, I preferred English to everything else. So, I studied harder for language and literature than I did for anything else (why I didn’t change courses to English in my second year is beyond me).
Then, when I decided I wanted to do this English thing full-time, I upskilled in all areas of language and literature. I read over 60 books to help me! Between my university courses and my self-study, I’m perfectly qualified to teach English.
But that doesn’t mean there still isn’t loads to learn!
There’s so much in the subject that I don’t know too much about. I want to learn more about Cognitive Poetics, Narratology, Deixis and Systemic Functional Linguistics. The more I know, the better I’ll be able to explain these concepts to students. I’ll be able to embed my own knowledge into the classroom better.
It’s my dream to be considered an excellent English teacher. That’s what my students deserve! So, I’m going to learn as much as I can at uni to get one step closer to my goal.
I never want to forget what it feels like to be a learner
As a teacher, it’s so easy to forget what it feels like to be on the other side of education.
If I’m not careful, I can find myself complaining about students, clutching my pearls about them doing things I absolutely would do if I was in their shoes. I can cry all I want about students leaving deadlines to the last minute – or feeling too embarrassed to share their work with the rest of the class. It’s easy to give crappy, bog-standard advice on how to do better next time.
But if I can’t put my money where my mouth is and follow my own advice, I’m a fraud.
Being a teacher inflates your ego way too much. It’s too easy to become complacent when you’re the most knowledgeable person in the room. You teach students a subject you’ve studied for years, and you even get to tailor your lesson plans to your own strengths and skills! It’s almost impossible not to feel super smart!
Apart from learning the most recent teaching theories, no one asks you to learn something new right in front of other people. Learning is supposed to feel uncomfortable, but you’re not really getting to that vulnerable position on a regular basis. So, it can become easy to forget just how hard it is.
I don’t want to be one of those ‘do what I say, not what I do’ teachers. I want to live the philosophy that I expect students to follow.
And what better way to do that than to surround myself with people who are way smarter than I am? Hopefully, I’ll learn some tips on studying and time management to share along the way.
Going back to uni will help to boost my CV
In the long run, I might have to leave the UK.
Getting my French husband a visa to live here was too expensive and stressful. The thought of doing that again makes me shudder! Plus, there are current issues with racist riots that make me feel unsafe to be here as a person of colour. It might eventually be time for me to use my position as the wife of a French national to find a job in the EU.
Or, maybe I could join the NET Scheme and make a very decent salary teaching English in Hong Kong.
Even if I decide to stay in the UK, I won’t be able to buy a house on my current salary. If I want to be able to settle down and even think about starting a family of my own, I’m going to need to boost my income. That means I have three options:
- Get a big promotion at my current job.
- Find another job that will give me more responsibilities and a higher salary.
- Actually publish my online courses here on Shani’s Tutoring and have at least 100 students sign up.
No matter which I choose, I need to boost my CV. Going back to uni to get my Master’s Degree is a great way to do that.
People want to hire those with lots of education, motivation and experience. Going back to uni while working looks great on my CV because it increases my education level and proves that I’m hard-working. You have to be to have a full-time job at the same time as a part-time degree programme!
Plus, the NET scheme pays people more for higher levels of education. It’s really a win-win.
Nottingham Uni’s course makes it easier to work and study at the same time
Speaking of full-time work and part-time study, I’ve chosen a great programme to allow that to happen.
I’m going to be delving into my uni’s course structure on another post, but the most important thing for you to take away is that it’s really flexible.
You get to choose so much about this course. As long as you complete it between 2-6 years, you get to pick and choose how long you take. There are no strict deadlines for submitting work. Instead they have 3 assessment points per year that you can choose to work towards. You don’t even need to ‘sign up’ for an assessment point, either! You just submit the work, if it’s done.
Plus, you get to choose what your course looks like, too. There are dozens of ‘pods’ (which are similar to modules) to choose from. You can specialise in at least 12 different areas of English (I chose Literary Linguistics). In fact, you don’t even need to decide what you want to specialise in at the beginning of your course. As long as two thirds of your uni course is made up of pods that qualify for your chosen specialism, you’re fine. If you can’t choose, you’ll get an MA in Applied English.
Then there’s the assessments. You get to choose what kinds of material you’d like to be assessed on: creative writing, blog posts, lesson plans, essays, video essays, presentations and much more!
When you combine all of this with the fact that most of the reading material is online for you, and the library can send you any extra books you need to borrow, it’s just so easy!
It works really well with being a full-time teacher. I can pay as I go, and do my work around my school schedule.
Short online courses are great, but I wanted more
I love doing online courses so much. They challenge me to learn new knowledge, think in different ways and check that I can remember all my new information. So, as you can imagine, I’ve spent a lot of time on FutureLearn lately.
In fact, I have subscriptions to Coursera and FutureLearn. I’ve also bought specific courses on Udemy! My interests are quite broad, but most of them help me to become better at English language and literature. I’ve done courses on stylistics, teaching grammar, mythology and fairy tales, teaching pronunciation, and much more.
I love studying online. It’s really helpful to be able to slow down or pause videos to take better notes. It’s great to join a community of learners, and discuss thoughts with other people as the course goes on. I think that the online structure can be so valuable, because it tests you on your knowledge in small, manageable chunks as you go along. It works so well for me!
But let’s be honest: the number of online courses about English linguistics and literature are quite limited. These platforms are dominated by courses on law, business, healthy eating, English as a foreign language, coding and people skills. I do everything I can find on my subject, but there’s not nearly as much.
And the stuff that is out there is for beginners. Apart from the UCL premium courses on grammar and the one on stylistics from Huddersfield Uni, I’m not learning too much that I hadn’t already picked up in A-level English class, or in my first year of uni.
I needed to scratch my learning itch more. So, when you combine this desire to learn more with the financial and career benefits an MA would bring me, I just felt like it was a no-brainer.
To add more value (and income) to Shani’s Tutoring
Doing an MA will help here on Shani’s Tutoring, too!
I can use the knowledge I gain at uni to help young people on their own English journeys. I’ve always been good at explaining complex ideas in easy, user-friendly ways. So I’ll do that with the cutting-edge knowledge I learn at uni.
This will be useful for my big 3000+ word glossary project. I’ve recently included ads so that I can make it free for all! Hopefully, confused English students will search for a less-known term like ‘Grice’s Maxims’ and stumble upon the definition right here on the website.
But I don’t just tell you what those terms mean. I give examples of why they matter, how to use them, and how they can help you in your course. Studying English at uni will help me to come up with more useful terms, understand them fully, and come up with useful examples of how they’re used.
The same is true of my tutoring lessons and courses, too. This time around, I’m going to be going to uni with my teacher and tutor brain on. So, I can use my time doing my MA to figure out what skills are crucial to doing well at higher-level English, and how I can use that info to help you ace your exams.
The more I can help people on this website, the more I can help myself. As I said before, I need to find ways to boost my income so that I can settle down and start a family. So, if I can add lots of value to students’ lives, they might stick around. That will give me ad revenue that will help me. It’s a win-win, really!
To pick up some tips for creating online courses
Speaking of courses, it’s not just the content of my uni degree that I want to teach you all. I want to know what I can do to make your experience on my courses better!
Nottingham Uni’s English department has spent a lot of time, energy and money making a state-of-the-art course platform. They’re using lots of bite-size content that is easy to slot into your busy week. They teach some complex ideas through quite simple methods. So, I want to know what I can learn from them!
The interesting thing for me is that they’ve moved away from the 1-hour lecture format. They don’t want you to sit there, zone out and write some half-formed notes. Of course, as I said before, I’m a huge fan of being in lectures, so I can’t wait to be convinced of a better way.
I want to know if there are some blatant online teaching methods that I’m missing. Plus, I want to know how it feels to be on the other side of the online course experience. While FutureLearn is great, it’s mostly just a series of videos. From what I’ve seen already, the Nottingham Uni course is much more interactive, social and chunked.
In all of the online courses I’ve taken, I’ve never experienced something like that before. So, it will be useful to see first-hand what works and what doesn’t. Are there places where I think there’s too much information? Not enough? Do they use audio and video enough for me? Any reflection like that is useful. It helps me to make choices about how I want to lay out my courses here on Shani’s Tutoring.
So, basically, I’m going to be my own guinea pig. If I find something that works, I’ll add it.
It’s an ego thing – I want to be ‘Dr Shani’
It’s always been a dream of mine to do a PhD. There’s something quite cool about being able to call myself ‘Dr Shani’. It would be such an ego boost! It would feel like I had to grind to unlock a hard achievement in a game.
I get a bit of impostor syndrome whenever I think about it, though. I mean, I find it so hard to finish any big project right to the end. That’s why I write blog posts instead of books! So that I can publish them before I run out of steam. How can I even think about writing a 100,000-word thesis on anything? Will I even be able to finish writing?
But that was before I went to the doctors about my ADHD. Now, I know that I just need some support to get me through.
When I spoke to the people who run the course at Nottingham Uni, they told me that every student gets a personal advisor to help them through the course. Lots of other students have used this course to help them get onto a PhD course, and advisors are more than happy to help!
I already have an idea. It’s something that I’ve been passionate about for years, and so I’d love to write about it. I’ve had a look around, and I don’t think anyone has written about this topic from this angle before. So, it would be nice to add my own perspective to academia.
In the long run, it would be fun to teach at the uni level. I’d love to be able to put ‘Dr’ on my LinkedIn profile. Even if I decide to keep teaching secondary school, I can negotiate some great promotions with such a high level of education.
If I don’t start my PhD journey now, I don’t know if I ever will.
So I can share my journey with you
As well as my usual posts, I want to turn this blog into a space where I share my uni journey with you. The advice posts won’t stop! I’ll still share thoughts and tips on how to ace your studies. But this content will add an extra human element to the website.
I know lots of students will be off to study English at uni, just like me. They might be doing it at an undergrad stage rather than MA, but that doesn’t mean we won’t share lots of joys, woes and questions. We can relate to each other and grow side by side.
I’ll be able to provide tips and tricks on how to make the most out of your time at uni. Plus, I’ll be in a place to tell you that it’s valid to feel stressed or anxious. When I work through a tough experience at uni, I can share how it felt and what I did to overcome it.
Who knows? If some of you are choosing your UCAS options, my posts might even help you to make up your mind.
I also hope that you’ll share your thoughts with me. Comment on the posts with your own thoughts. Tell me if you’ve experienced the same things as I have. Ask me for help and advice. Or, just tell me off for procrastinating too much! I want to engage with other people who are just as interested in uni as I am.
Hopefully, I can find my community and help you with your journey at the same time.
Wish me luck!
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