Things I Learnt During My Undergrad in Media and Communications

This is going to be a blog post that is about two things – one the things I learnt during my undergraduate course but also the things that may be useful for those who are either currently enrolled on a Media and Communications course or are about to start a course.

I studied my three year course at Canterbury Christ Church University between 2014 and 2017 and graduated with a 2.1 or Upper Second Class. I completed a range of modules during the three years that consisted of topics on research skills, advertising, writing for the media, celebrities, broadcasting, journalism, radio and digital/online.

Two sets of skills were learnt during the course – one being skills which relate to the subject matter of the course and the other being more general university and life skills. I plan to write another post on the latter so this will just be on the skills I learnt to do with media and communications and the topics that I liked and disliked within the modules I took.

When you take a media-based university course, there is the choice of whether to do modules that are more theoretical or modules that are more practical. At Canterbury, there seemed to be more theoretical ones than practical but I managed to do one to two practical modules each year. In the end, I wish that I had done fewer practical modules as it appeared that I am more of a theoretical learner however I do not regret any of the modules that I did take as I learnt new things both about the subjects and myself. The more practical ones actually raised my confidence and the more theoretical ones made me learn more about the media that I had learnt in my A-Level or GCSE.

First year was basic but also hard work. This is where I expanded my knowledge on topics I had learnt about in my A-Level such as Mise-en-Scene and Narrative with being taught about journalism, branding and how to research. Ah, the joy of research skills. It was basic in the sense that a lot of it was to do with learning how to read academic literature, how to write about academic literature and how to cite academic literature. Whilst I won’t go over those details now, there will be a later blog post on academic tips (which we all know is going to be full of exciting stuff). However, one thing I will mention is that, looking back on the work I did then now, it does identify the topics I wanted to focus on – gender, celebrity and branding.

Second year was mentally tough. Whilst I got to further consolidate on my particular niched topics, particularly getting to do a WHOLE MODULE ON CELEBRITIES, there were academic and social problems throughout the terms. I chose to do the creative module but then found the subject matter of storytelling and having to do things such as taking and editing photos and videos rather challenging. One of my A-Levels was Photography which partially stripped me of my love for the subject – not the taking of photos, but having to be artistic and distribute everything (print, cut, stick, annotate). Returning to that in the form of my university life was NOT FUN. I was also living in an incredibly grotty student house at the time and had also by the end of the year realised that I should be being myself socially rather than someone that I’m not but was trying to be.

However, second year also led me to figure out what I wanted to focus on in terms of my final year dissertation. In a module on media industries’ presents and futures, I chose to focus on women’s magazines and fell back in love with a medium that I loved growing up. As a young girl, I grew up reading Girl Talk, Sugar, Shout, Bliss and Top of the Pops. I also had a letter and photo from myself published in a Pingu magazine when I was two or three. The work that I did made me start reading adult women’s magazines as I was now old enough to read them but also was focused more on glossy high-end titles which on a student budget were not always readily bought.

Third year was the best both academically and personally. I moved back into student halls and made a best friend but I also got to write about the subjects I’m more passionate about to a higher degree and in more detail. I wrote one of my all-time favourite essays during one of the modules entitled Media Futures which centered on whether Disney is a creative company or not and its future as a corporation. This merged my new theoretical understandings of creativity and innovation with my love/hate relationship with Disney. I used the examples of their line of princesses and their collection of Disney Channel programmes and films from the late 2000s/early 2010s to back up my arguments and came to the conclusion that it is both a creative and uncreative conglomerate.

My dissertation in the end was on how British women’s weekly magazine target different age demographics. This was spurred by an essay I wrote in second year on the changes within women’s magazines in general over the last fifteen years that involved very basic research that I wanted to expand upon. My report revolved around the four concepts of gender, femininity, age and representation through the examples of four specific magazines. The research was text-based, numerical and focused only on the covers and contents pages of ten issues of each of the four chosen magazine titles. The data was then organised into three categories – celebrity, fashion and beauty, and real life. Quantitative data from the research concluded that though magazines may have specific age demographics, they care more about the interests of their audiences’ rather than how old they are.

So, what are five things I learnt during the course overall? One was that I was obviously meant to be more of a theoretical thinker than a practical creative. This has become more a reality through discovering that my preferred learning style is reading. Secondly, it made me realise what areas of the media I would like to work in and the skills have been used both personally and professionally since I graduated. The third thing I learnt was how much I still adore the media and that my love for it continues. Fourthly, I grew as a person by realising that I don’t need to change for other people and that I can overcome obstacles. And last, but not least, that living away from home can be both fun and lonely all at the same time.

The dissertation and the whole course itself led me to discover the basics of gender studies and feminism which I wanted to know more about and which grew into me jumping straight into a master’s degree. But that’s for another blog post.

What are your thoughts on your undergraduate degree and the things you learnt from it? Or are you planning on doing a media undergraduate degree and this post has helped? Let me know in the comments below. Thanks for reading!

Beth x