A Guide to Going to University in London

As my fiancée is currently looking at coming over to London to study as an overseas student, I wanted to write a little something about what to expect from London as a student, and things new students can do to maximise their time here.

Bear in mind that rent will be high. While you might be staying in halls for the first year of your course, it's unlikely that you will have that for the entire course, and renting in the area can often be a similar or lower price than university run halls. The ideal situation is to find a few friends to rent with and split a larger house/apartment between you, saving money over a one bedroom flat and giving you some support and friendship at home.

Travel is also expensive. For most people, public transport will be the best way to get around, and a prepaid Oyster card will be the cheapest way of using the city's buses, trains and underground network. Depending on how far away from campus you are, consider investing in a pass for your Oyster card - not only will you know you can travel to class every day without wondering if it is topped up or not, but if you want to explore the city or pick up a job, it's a good option to save some money.

Check out all the free things! By which, I mean that there is a vibrant museum culture in the city, and all the larger museums (and some of the smaller ones) are free to enter. If you are studying the arts or history, they're invaluable sources of research, too. They can be lovely places to enjoy the culture, out of the loud and crowded streets. Midweek is a great time to go to avoid lots of tourists (unless you're unlucky enough to encounter a school trip.

Do socialise and check out the nightlife! This one might need no prompting for a lot of people, but you should definitely seek to find friends within your course and the wider university. Not only will it make university more fun and a good support network to have when things get hectic, but this might be the last time in your life that you have to socialise outside of a 'professional' setting. It's so much harder to meet new people after university, so take the opportunity. Don't feel pressured to drink, either - any pub or club will be happy to serve you a soft drink or juice instead of alcohol. There are many valid reasons for not drinking - religion, mental and physical health, not wanting to get drunk outside of a safe area or simply not liking the way alcohol makes you feel. Do what you want to do, and if anyone gives you a hard time over it, they probably aren't the friends you wanted to make.

Consider picking up a part time job. This depends on whether you can handle the workload of your course and still spare the time to work, but if you can, it's a good extra stream of income, gives you experience working and you have a set of colleagues outside of university to socialise with. If you aren't particularly hurting for money, I would suggest finding an internship or work placement scheme in your field of study - in most fields, just being a graduate is not enough to get you a job right away, but experience and knowing people in the industry will help you a lot to get a foot in the door.

Explore London. There is so much to the city beyond the famous sights and tourism-fuelled areas. Try looking up Time Out's suggestions on things to do and places to go. Try tiny little cafés for a drink sometime. Visit the markets. Wander around in one of the many parks.  Remember that the only one accountable for your time is you. You can definitely go out to the 24-hour supermarket for icecream at 3am. Or watch the sunrise from Tower Bridge. Feed the ducks in Regent's Park. You could even catch a train out to the countryside or the sea for a change of pace.

Try taking your essays and studying outside. Chances are, you have a pretty nice setup at your place - Internet on tap, films and games and books galore...pretty much any distraction you want, you can have. Which is why you might want to consider writing essays and studying for exams outside of your place. If it's nice weather, try a park. If not, a cafe or library. The change of pace and the limited access to distractions can be a massive help for actually getting work done. If nothing else, using the promise of a good drink or a treat to motivate you might help!

If you have any advice, comments or questions about going to university (within London or within the UK in general), please leave them below!

Criticism about Literature Studies

I’ve been thinking about the way in which we tend to study literature in the UK (and from what I’ve seen, the US, too). Our cultures tend to mark out certain types of historical literature that are ‘worthy’ of study and overanalyse them. The result is a very narrow definition of what counts as ‘real literature’, and generations of people who think that reading isn’t for them, all because they’ve only been exposed to a comparatively narrow range of texts.

If you had only ever heard classical music, or seen independent films, you might be forgiven for thinking that music or film wasn’t something you were interested in, either. Being exposed to just one small section of any artform doesn’t do the art as a whole justice. You may like that particular niche, but many more won’t, and will see the small amount being represented as an indication of the entire art.

I've worked with intelligent people who proclaim that they 'don't do books' in the same way that I don't do live television; other people do and they don't judge them for that, they just don't see the benefits for them. On talking to them (because I certainly wasn't going to let that topic die out there!), I learnt that they'd never really read books as a child, and their main exposure to literature was through formal study. Given that, I cold hardly blame them - if I thought every book would demand a level of concentration akin to Shakespeare, I wouldn't be an avid reader, either.

The problem is that most literature teachers (and courses) in schools are deeply analytical of classical texts themselves, but not the culture of the time that produced that text. Things that would have seemed obvious to an Edwardian audience will not be obvious to a modern audience, whether it's a reference to food, politics or even slang. Over hundreds of years, these references become easily dated and often bewildering to a student.

For example, do you know the difference in how to pronounce "covered" and "cover'd" in a 19th century poem? It's critically important to the rhyme and meter of poetry that you are reading the poem in the way the poet intended, but all too often, small details like this are omitted by teachers - if they even know of them themselves! (Answer: if the full '-ed' suffix is used, it adds an extra syllable, so "covered" is pronounced "cover-ed", whereas "cover'd" would be the modern pronunciation of "covered")

How about the fact that many of the characters suffering various torments in Dante's Inferno were contemporary politicians and religious leaders. No casual student can be expected to understand the nuances of 14th Century Italian politics and so, much of the satire Dante's original audience would have perceived is lost without careful study of the history and culture surrounding him at the time. Inferno also suffers from being a translation - no matter how faithfully it has been translated, the rhyme and rhythm is lost in translation.

Shakespeare's plays were always intended to be seen and experienced as entertainment and spectacle, not read falteringly from a book in small chunks. While often deeply profound, they can be whimsical and very funny; students deserve to see that side of the Bard, too. Some of his comedies have just as much to say about the breadth and depth of human nature as his tragedies, and yet all too often, it's Romeo and Juliet, or Hamlet, or Macbeth that is studied, simply from the book, or if very lucky, a filmed adaptation.

The narrow range of literature choices often intimidates students, too. As an introduction to the world of literature, it's woefully restrictive. Some students only read fiction through school, for various reasons (parents not placing an emphasis on reading for leisure, the expense of books, lack of a reading culture in their family and/or peer group), and to be met with dry material that isn't relevant to them often puts students off the idea of reading as an enjoyable thing to do. Reading becomes seen as a chore, not the joy it should be.

For me, the greatest tragedy is that, as a writer, I hope that people enjoy my work, not analyse and debate why I've used one particular word or phrase ad infinitum. In light of this, I'd like to leave you with the wise words of Mark Twain:

“Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot." - Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn