{"id":12225,"date":"2020-08-04T10:36:10","date_gmt":"2020-08-04T10:36:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/2020\/08\/04\/my-experience-studying-journalism-and-communications-at-cardiff-university\/"},"modified":"2021-09-15T15:02:31","modified_gmt":"2021-09-15T15:02:31","slug":"my-experience-studying-journalism-and-communications-at-cardiff-university-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/cy\/my-experience-studying-journalism-and-communications-at-cardiff-university-2\/","title":{"rendered":"My Experience Studying Journalism and Communications at Cardiff University"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Being a fresh BA Journalism and Communications graduate and\nofficial alumni of Cardiff University, I am now able to fully reflect on the\nthree best years of my life right here in the Welsh capital. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What I can firstly say is that I am so glad I chose to study\njournalism at Cardiff; it is the best decision I have ever made. I found\nchoosing a university all those years ago massively stressful due to not quite\nknowing what type of course I wanted to do, what offered the best job prospects,\nand ultimately, where I would be happiest. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I chose Cardiff because it felt right. It was the first open\nday I attended and even on that first visit I just really liked the feel of the\ncity, with it already feeling like home. The journalism courses offered here\nare academic and research-led, meaning you are not taught practical\njournalistic skills such as editing, news writing and shorthand etc. However,\nwhat I did learn was the very basic principles and context of the media\nindustry which has provided me with invaluable knowledge on a sector I am\nhoping to enter. It certainly opened my eyes to issues, inequalities and\nstructures that I was never previously aware of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of my favourite aspects of the course has to be the\nfreedom and capacity to choose the topics we are most interested in exploring\nfurther. On most of my assessments, I was able to pick what I wanted to\nresearch \u2013 whether that be feminism, racism, LGBTQIA+ rights, the refugee\ncrisis, police PR, masculinity in crisis, and even Beyonc\u00e9 (yes, even I wrote\nthree essays on Beyonc\u00e9 during my degree, and no I am not ashamed to say it).\nThis was hugely beneficial to me as it meant I got a greater in-depth\nunderstanding of areas I am passionate about. In your final year, dissertations\nare also optional, giving you even more freedom to play to your strengths and\nget the most out of your degree. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The course is typically composed of 2 assessments per\nmodule. You do three modules per semester, so approximately 6 assessments every\nsemester, and 12 across a uni year. In terms of in-person learning, there were\nusually 9 contact hours a week consisting on 3 lectures (2 hours each), and 3\nseminars (50 minutes).  This may slightly\nvary each term but this is the average for all of the above. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Social area of the Journalism building<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

What I can\u2019t stress enough is that in first year, your\ngrades do not go towards your final degree mark so essentially, it is the year\nto make mistakes and to perfect your academic skills. I did try very hard in\nfirst year (maybe a bit too hard seeing as it didn\u2019t count) however, I am\ngrateful for it as it meant I hit the ground running in second year when the\nassessments were for real. On top of this, the lecturers in JOMEC are enormously\nsupportive and will be there to help you whenever you need it. A great service\nthat I made the most of was the literary fellow \u2013 an in-house grammar and language\nspecialist who will dissect your essays and tell you how to improve. I\ndefinitely put going from a low 2:1 to a high 1st<\/sup> in first year down\nto her!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, my absolute highlight of the course has to be my\nsemester abroad in the Spring term of second year. Counting towards my degree,\nI got to spend 6 months studying at the University of South Australia in\nAdelaide where I gained a vast array of practical journalism skills that are\nnot offered at Cardiff. I did modules in design, news writing, copy-editing,\nand PR content generation which I now look back on as being intrinsically beneficial.\nI got to create my very own travel magazine from scratch, wrote a number of\nfeature articles \u2013 one of them following a brief from a real-life magazine (SA\nLife) with the chance of being published \u2013 plus interviewing a number of people\nfor my own news stories. Overall, it was an incredible experience, and one that\nI cannot recommend enough! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Chilling with the Locals<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Leaving uni as a graduate of the Journalism and\nCommunications degree, I am equipped with a sophisticated level of critical\nthinking, better writing and researching ability, and expansive knowledge of\nthe media industry that I would not have had without studying at Cardiff\nUniversity.   <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Being a fresh BA Journalism and Communications graduate and official alumni of Cardiff University, I am now able to fully reflect on the three best years of my life right […]","protected":false},"author":1499,"featured_media":11671,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[717,242,713,241,251,743,741,705],"tags":[329,436,1181,939,1182,895,284,716,1183],"class_list":["post-12225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-advice-for-students-cy","category-studying-cy","category-cardiff-university-experiences-cy","category-lectures-cy","category-only-in-cardiff-cy","category-global-opportunities-cy","category-opportunities-cy","category-why-university-cy","tag-cardiff-cy","tag-experience-cy","tag-jomec-cy","tag-journalism-cy","tag-reflection-cy","tag-study-cy","tag-studying-2-cy","tag-studying-journalism-cy","tag-unviersity-cy"],"meta_box":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1499"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12225"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12225\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12227,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12225\/revisions\/12227"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/insiders\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}