im at uni in huddersfield studying advertising design in my first year atm, for anyone contemplating it dont rush into it, but i would definately recommend going - it changes you as a person COMPLETELY.
it makes you be a LOT more mature and forces you to grow up fast and prepare yourself for the proper world, but you obviously get time to p*ss about and sleep a lot in the process.
on the subject of people who are deffo going - i know youve probably heard it all before but make sure you manage your time efficiently, i cant stress it enough being here myself, especially if your coursework is anything portfolio related.
over the last 5 weeks for mondays lectures ive had to do:
make notes on every lecture
week 1 - 14 pages in a sketchbook
week 2 - 7 pages + 3xa1 sheets of rough work
week 3 - 24 pages (across 4 exercises) + rough work for each exercise
week 4 - 14 pages (across 2 exercises) + rough work for both
week 5 - 7 pages + rough work
we then had a reading week (or day, we only got the monday off lol)
this week i started another 5 week project to do with layout design (the above was all typography work, practical not digital)
wednesday lectures:
3 weeks of illustrator
3 weeks of photoshop
^^^^^ notes for the above
an indesign file with 4-5 a3 pages of research, eperimentation of different techniques in the programs, and a final piece using X amount of X image in each ( works out at around 10-15 A3 pages per program
and im starting 3 weeks of flash tormorrow, then ill have 3 weeks of indesign with the same sort of thing to do
fridays lectures are my contextual studies lectures and i have to make regular blog posts doing reviews on art/graphics, finding visuals in response to reading materials given to us, with explanations of why we chose the images. and occasionally we'll get guest lecturs of designers which we normally have to write up to 1,000 words on, on top of the blog posts.
the final coursework for this project is a 1,500 word essay on a piece of art/graphics/photography of our choice.
as you can tell, slack for a few days or a week or so and you fall very far behind and have a lot of catching up to do! balancing time is key at uni, learn it quick
and yes, im only in monday wednesday friday - but as you can see above i have enough work to keep me busy every second i have spare.
and as you may or may not know your first year doesnt count to your final year grade (you just need to pass the first year to progress) - my advice to people is to actually try and see what you get - the way i see it is if you mess around and just aim for passes to progress then youre never gonna know how much effort you need to put in to your second year where it counts - you get no "hand backs" like in college to redo work to a higher standard, its hand it in, get your grade and thats that. if you fail it you get a week or something to get it up to scratch but you can only get a 40% on it (a D-)
im assuming it works like this at all unis...?
when i was looking i looked at leeds met, uclan, sheffield hallam, huddersfield and stoke.
sheffield and huddersfield were the only two that when i went to the open day/interview i instantly thought (i love it) - the rest of them were nice but youll know straight away if you want to go to a place after youve looked around properly, i actually cancelled my last interview (stoke) after i got my offer from huddersfield i loved it that much here, and i still do.
and for anyone not sure on what course to take go speak to people (staff AND students) at the open days, speak to your college/school tutors, just speak to everyone relevant (yes, your parents too) and make sure you have a good look through the prospectuses, and dont make any knee-jerk decisions (saying that, dont spend forever either...)
some people might disagree with stuff that ive said but at the end of the day this is my opinion, i came to uni a year later so i might be a bit more mature than some anyway (i have noticed that with some of the people i live with at accommodation) - but take what you like out of it
EDIT: holy essay batman.
