Travel

Baby, It’s Cold Outside…

/ Ellie Gordon

… But this is a warm hello!

Hi, my name is Ellie, a third year Philosophy major at Lancaster University, who you will (if you so wish), be able to follow as I journey through my final year here at Lancaster in the following weeks to come. To introduce – who am I? well, I am a 21 year old student from Jersey, Channel Islands. I chose to come to Lancaster because it allowed me to pursue an eclectic education following my achievement of the International Baccalaureate Diploma. My current modules include Philosophy of Work, Politics of Cultural Diversity, Seminar in Contemporary Moral Philosophy, and my Dissertation, which focuses on the ideal of authenticity and social media. You won’t find me on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or the like, but if you are curious about what I am studying or what I get up to in my daily life at Lancaster, count yourself lucky – you can follow me here!

Since studying at Lancaster I’ve been able to pursue a broad range of subjects throughout the PPR department, including Politics in my second and third years, and religion in my first, (and of course Philosophy is my major, so I have pursued different Philosophy modules throughout). The vast number of combinations of modules you can take is something quite unique to Lancaster and something which really ought to be taken advantage of; if you have even a remote interest in something your major doesn’t offer directly, (in my case, this was an Economics For The Real World module in second year) or maybe you are entirely clueless about a particular study, these are equally good reasons to pursue something new and broaden your horizons exponentially. Another example is first year in which I was also able to take an English module, which I found to be an excellent opportunity, not only to prove that I could do it, but because it linked many aspects from other unsuspecting modules and enhanced my writing skills.

  • Well, what have I been up to in the past two weeks?

We are currently in week three of Michaelmas term, and I must say the settling back in after a long summer holiday and trips away was a struggle. (Summertime I was lucky enough to receive some funding from my college (mighty Furness) which subsidised part of my trip to Los Angeles and Las Vegas, in return for a report on my venture.)

Yes… a struggle… particularly as it’s now dark upon waking up, dark when returning from university, and significantly colder than Los Angeles…

But it’s certainly not all bad. This week I was given the opportunity to write to you on behalf of my department once a fortnight (or maybe even once a week if your particularly lucky), and for this I must say I feel immensely proud.

Other than that, this week I’ve managed to get up at a reasonable 7am, hit the gym, and study for a few hours prior to my midday lectures. In my Seminar On Contemporary Moral Philosophy, I’ve presented on Chapters 2-5 of Parfit’s Reasons and Persons which was intensely laborious, but incredibly rewarding to get my head round and present my results to my seminar group. I’ve also officially started writing my dissertation on the way in which authenticity is a genuine ideal we ought to take seriously and the way in which social media has detrimental effects on our pursing of this ideal.

Oh, and I’ve booked tickets for SugarHouse’s “House of Horrors” event for Halloween: I’m going as a “Blessed Babe,” probably because the outfit only set me back £11.

If you made it this far, well done, and thank you for reading. I will catch up with you again soon.

Ellie

Planning India: Becky and Katie

/ Katie Work

Hello!

We thought that this week we would talk about the start of our trip to India last summer, and how we planned the whole thing. Our trip to India was part of a third year module in which you go to India during the summer, and then write a dissertation about themes you encounter while out there.

We initially heard about the trip on an open day as prospective students, and so even before we were in Lancaster, or even knew each other, we both knew it was something we wanted to do. We first started planning the trip about 6 months before we left, with a lot of help from members of the department, and students who had been on the trip the year before.

The whole purpose of the trip was to go to Visthar- an NGO for Social Justice and Peace Studies in Bangalore (South India). We would spend 3 weeks here having informal lectures learning about a range of social issues in the context of India. We thought, however, that since we would be in India for 3 weeks anyway, we might as well spend a few more weeks seeing as much of India as we could.

The first thing we did was write a long list of all the places we wanted to see in India. These ranged from the south to the north and where we finally ended up going was pretty close to our original list. Our plan was to travel from Bangalore up to the Himalayas in 5 weeks, stopping at various places on the way. We bought several travel guides and maps to help plan our route and receive inspiration for places to go to. From the start, we knew we wanted to see the more popular places associated with India, such as Mumbai, Goa and Delhi. We also really like the look of Kerala, a southern state, as well as many places we hadn’t even heard of. Even just planning our trip meant that we were learning so much about India already.

Because we knew that this was something we wanted to do, we picked second year modules in sync with our plans, such a Indian Politics and Hinduism modules. Not only did we find these modules very interesting, we found that, once we were in India, we could relate to a lot of what we saw and understand them on a deeper level.

After planning our route, we booked the flights and the countdown officially began. The next few months mostly consisted of excitement and sending each other various relevant links to the places we’d be going to.

We will write many more blogs about our time in India, as we would talk about it forever! We thought we’d talk about this subject because it is such a great opportunity that the department offers!

Becky and Katie x

An Introduction…

/ Katie Work

Hello!

Before we start writing about our experiences, let us introduce ourselves.

We are Becky and Katie, both third year students in the PPR department. I, Katie, am doing a BA hons in Religious Studies and I, Becky, am doing a joint BA hons in Religious Studies and Politics. We have taken many modules together over the past three years and now have a close friendship within university, as well as outside.

We are writing this blog with the aim of informing you about what the ‘real’ university experience is like. We will cover topics both academic and social, including things such as life within the PPR department as well as life in Lancaster as a city.

Each week we will write about a specific topic, covering various aspects of our time at Lancaster University. We will cover most things, from our first day of moving to uni, to essay deadlines, picking our modules and friendship gains and losses.

A big part of life at uni is all the opportunities Lancaster and the PPR department have to offer. This summer, through taking the ‘PPR in India’ module, we were able to spend two months together studying in, and travelling through, India. This experience was literally life-changing and we will be sharing many of our stories (both good and bad) which will show that anything is possible when you’re thrown in at the deep-end!

University has definitely expanded our horizons, both socially and in terms of our plans for the future. We both feel we have made a friend for life in one another, as well in others from our colleges and from our courses.

We will be writing this blog together with the aim of giving an informative and well-rounded view of student life in Lancaster.

Each week we will share one small piece of advice that we wish someone would have told us when we were new to student life. This week’s little piece of encouragement is – simply do not worry. You may feel out of your depth and like you’re not ready to live away from home or to start student life, but firstly, you’re not alone. We guarantee everyone else is in the same boat as you. And secondly, as long as you keep an open-mind and always be yourself, you’ll soon find you fit in very well and will wonder why you ever even worried! Basically, don’t worry – everything is always fine in the end.

Next week’s blog will be about our experiences within the first few weeks of university when we started in first year and how we dealt with all the new things which we had to adapt to and understand.

We hope our posts will be helpful and informative, and that you find some of our stories as funny as we do…

Catch you soon,

Becky and Katie x