Starting Second Year

Hi :) My name is Fiona (see my face to the left) and as of writing this post, I am a 20-year-old student just entering my second year of studies. If I'm being honest I'm not that confident about this move up in education due to the new 'environment' in which I'll be learning. I sadly missed a chunk of my first year at university because of COVID-19 and now my learning this year will be pretty much all online. New environments mean new challenges and new methods to adapt - I envision a big struggle for me this year will be keeping up with online lectures as they are all pre-recorded and there is no set time to watch them (eek)! Other things I have to 'tackle' are my work/social life balance AND trying to find opportunities to really experience what student life has to offer in the way of experiences as I feel I missed out on this last year. Long story short, my second year is something I believe will be more challenging than usual and I'd like to try and keep a blog going as a track of my progression throughout the year and something that I can reflect upon as time goes by.

If you're interested in sociology like me (yay) I'll tell you what modules I'm taking this year:

• Gender and Media
• Television, Culture & Society
• Sociological Thought for Our Times
• Skills for Researching Social & Cultural Life
• Consumer Culture & Advertising 
• Racisms & Racial Formation

I am a little intimidated by the course structure this year (there's a lot of coursework) but I am looking forward to getting into working again and learning about interesting contemporary topics. For this introductory post, I'm going to write about my future goals (or at least what I've thought of so far because thinking about this stuff is kind of scary). After finishing my undergrad next year, I'd like to undertake an MA in social research at Lancaster and from there perhaps go into the social research sector via a civil service fast track - but if I'm being super honest I'm not 100% about anything, especially with COVID being a thing right now. In terms of short term goals for what I'd like to achieve this year I'd say I'd like to get more into volunteering and to gain some experience for my CV, but also working on my work/life balance as in the past I've often prioritised education above everything else.

That's all for now I think, I'll write more when uni actually starts 

-Fiona :)