A Seasonal Skills Session and Christmas Party

The Experiencing Sociology Programme held its second first-year event on Tuesday of Week 8, and bringing the festive feeling in nice and early; we followed the session up with a winter social and Christmas holiday quiz!

This time our first years focussed on study skills, reflecting on changes to their study practices since starting at Lancaster just eight short weeks ago.

The title of the session was ‘Reading Fast, Reading Slow, and Making Better Notes’. One of our recent graduates, Mike Greenhough, now doing a Masters in Sociological Research in the department, kicked off the conversation by talking to us about how his study practices had changed throughout his undergraduate degree. He told us about how he had continually developed how he took notes, and he introduced students to the programme that he had been using to do this online, Microsoft OneNote.

Following this discussion, Stan made a case for learning to read fast! He described some of the times it can be useful to be able to read a lot of material very quickly. Then Jonny Beacham responded, arguing that it is also important to know when to read slow, taking your time, especially with certain kinds of texts, reading over material more than once, and giving yourself time to let the authors’ ideas ‘settle’.

We finished this session with a Festive Winter Party and a Sociologically inspired holiday quiz! We had mulled wine, mince pies, hot chocolate, cakes, and we found out what Marx’ favourite Christmas story was!

The next ESP session for first years is in Week 13, and the title is: ‘What Can I Do with a Degree in Sociology Anyway?’. In this session, we will look at the profiles of recent Sociology graduates who have gone into a range of different kinds of work and take a look at some of the activities they got involved in while at Lancaster to build up their experience and CVs. The session will be led by Kat Price-Edwards from the careers service and followed by a pizza social where there will be a chance to talk to Kat, to Bron (the department’s employability tutor), and to some of our student ambassadors about opportunities and activities to get involved in as well as developing your plans for the future!