It’s official, I am now in my third and final year at Southampton Solent University. Scared is not the word. Nor excited. To be honest, I don’t really know what to think at all. What am I going to do next year? Where am I going to be? A chapter in my life is drawing to a close and there is something very daunting about that.
This is only my third week in and it seems that each day I’ve had a very grueling few hours of being told that this is it, this is the start of the rest of my life. What?! It feels like yesterday that I was moving to a strange city with a bunch of people I didn’t know, not knowing what to expect over the next few years. I think there are so many different experiences to be had at uni and you don’t really know what it’ll be like until you live it. That’s the main reason I pushed myself to go. Initially I wasn’t too sure, I was very much in the mind set that I’d have to do something like English, or perhaps History. These two subjects interest me, but to the point where I want to spend three or so years getting a degree in them? Not so much. Journalism was my next port of call but even then, I felt like I’d only be going to uni in order to make my parents happy.
It wasn’t until my Mum suggested focusing on Music Journalism that I really started to look into it. I had always been interested in music, and homing in on that through journalism was the perfect thing for me (plus the opportunity to interview famous musicians excited me a great deal). This paired with some of my older friends telling me how university is such a good experience pretty much made my decision for me. Not only am I glad that I took this on, I’m certainly glad I chose Solent. Even though it gets a lot of stick for not being the better uni in the city I wouldn’t shy away from telling people I study there. As it turns out my course at Solent is top of the league compared to similar courses at other universities. Now I’m all for leaving competition between universities out of it but I am very proud to be a part of this. No I might not be at a Russel group university, but it seems I am at the best place for my chosen degree, and that’s all that matters.
However, I am still scared, not quite excited and at a bit at loss of how to feel right now. Let’s hope some cracking down to business will get my head sorted and more importantly help me figure out exactly what it is I want to do when it’s all over.
SAMANTHA MAE 