The leaves are turning brown, Halloween is fast approaching and one more student comes along, eager to find out what goes on behind the scenes inside a Russell Group University. Hi, I’m Holly  and I spent 5 days working at the University of Nottingham, alongside their wonderful CLAS department, which stands for Cultures, Languages and Area studies ( don’t worry, I had no idea what it meant at first either). On my first day when I had a tour of the campus, it struck me just how much there is here! Shops; cafes; classrooms and most importantly, a lovely atmosphere to be surrounded by. From that first day, I could tell that I would enjoy myself here. This is my experience of working in this wonderful place.

For most of my experience, I was inside the grand Trent Building located at the heart of the campus… it even has its own mini Big Ben that chimes every 15 minutes! The team always kept me busy with various tasks: making spreadsheets for language evening classes, organising last year’s exam papers and creating signs for each room in the building. It was particularly interesting to have a sneak-peek at some of the exam papers- I can’t believe I’ll have to get to that standard one day! I also spent some time with a SPLAS student, (that’s Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies, sorry for all the abbreviations). I spent an hour with Dom, who was friendly and to the point when answering my questions about studying languages here- I couldn’t believe that you could study paintings in a Hispanic degree!

In terms of what the University offers, no doubt there’s a lot- and I mean a lot. You think of a society or club, there will most likely be one here. I also had the amazing opportunity to attend some lectures in Spanish and Portuguese that taught me the basics of the languages but in so much more detail than they teach you at Secondary School. These subtle introductions to life at university makes me even more excited to start a new chapter of my life somewhere new, or possibly at Nottingham, who knows?

The week I spent here gave me gorgeous blue skies and the floor covered in crunchy caramel brown leaves, the walks I had at lunch resulted in many autumnal pictures you don’t get at school! All of the buildings here are stunning: from the older Trent building with its two grand organs, to the much more modern Teaching and Learning building with interactive seminar screens and state-of-the-art performance studio. A welcoming atmosphere is present throughout the campus, with helpful students and friendly staff always willing to lend a hand whenever I was unsure of anything. The self-access centre located on the top floor of the Trent building, was quiet, spacious and gave me access to some Spanish documentaries and TV programmes (very cheesy but very useful).

Doing something like this gave me a real insight into what goes on behind the scenes to keep those university cogs turning- I couldn’t recommend this University highly enough.

Finally, a big thank you to the School Management and Research team for taking such good care of me.

Holly Ward- Year 11, Toot Hill School

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Every academic year, students of Russian are lucky enough to get involved with the tradition of the Russian Play, an entirely student-led initiative. Although we agree that Chekhov and Bulgakov must be celebrated, we decided to do something a bit different this year and write our own play from scratch. It was a challenge but we enjoyed the creativity that came with it from everyone involved!

The play is based on the first gig performed by the band Leningrad in Saint Petersburg, 1997. Whilst researching Leningrad’s early days, Sam and I realised that we had actually visited Art Klinika, the venue where the gig took place, during our year abroad. The venue inspired our set design, which incorporated graffiti-covered bar tables and a music-themed backdrop.

In our rendition, Leningrad’s Shnurov and Vdovin perform four songs to music (which was made by a talented friend and former UoN student). To really embrace and exaggerate the 90s theme, we had several sub-plots: diamond smuggling; a Russian woman’s desperate attempts to find a way into Paris through marriage; flogging black market goods; police corruption; a stubborn Soviet woman’s disapproval; and a no-nonsense babushka who resolutely mops up everything from cheap vodka, to blood from gunshot wounds. Shnurov is eventually blamed for destroying the bar’s reputation, but is happy in the knowledge that he is ‘Saviour of Russia’.

The best thing about writing our own play was that we could take inspiration from anything and everything, and develop and tweak the plot over many months. The initial inspiration for the play was my babushka host in Rostov-on-Don, who vocally expressed her hatred of Sergei Shnurov when I brought home a poster advertising a local Shnurov exhibition. However, it didn’t stop there! Observant audience members will have noticed our references to Russian films throughout the play (some subtle, some not), which really helped us develop a storyline. We were also inspired by first-hand insights into late 1990s life in Russia from Lidija’s mother, as well as learning about the Soviet and Russian underground music scene in a final year module, Russian Popular Music.

Thankfully, everything came together in time for our two performances at the end of March. We were amazed at the number of people who turned up, including students, family, staff, teachers from Teremok Russian School (the organisation which received our proceeds), and even some special guests from the Youth Coordinating Council of Russian Compatriots of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. We were so happy that it was enjoyed by both Russian speakers and non-Russian speakers alike.

A small group of us recently went to Teremok Russian School to attend their Poslednii Zvonok day (a celebration of the students’ and teachers’ achievements over the year). We handed over the £226.60 raised from the play and were invited to get involved in various activities. The teachers were keen to demonstrate to their pupils that university students from Britain and other countries learn Russian too, but for fun!

We enjoyed working with a fantastic cast, which consisted of fellow final year students, some very talented first years, and Russian-speaking students from other departments. We are very proud of the play and are grateful that it could be filmed – it is available to watch in full on YouTube.

Written by Jagger Biggs

Play directed by Jagger Biggs, Sam Boyse and Lidija Melentjeva

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It seems that rarely a day goes by without a negative news story about the decline of languages in UK schools (see BBC News, Language learning: German and French drop by half in Schools and The Independent, Britain’s dwindling language skills are a disaster for the country and needs action, MPs warn  for recent examples). An article in the Guardian this week offers a more positive perspective, highlighting the ways in which languages undergraduates can help to motivate pupils to continue with languages at GCSE level, the point at which, in most secondary schools, languages become optional and the much publicised decline begins. The article lauds the impact that undergraduate students can have on school pupils, referring to the students’ enthusiasm for languages, their proximity in age to the school pupils and their ability to relate languages to their own “real-life” experiences.

The Department of Modern Languages works with a number of East Midlands schools’ languages departments, engaging second and final year students in exactly this endeavour; to enthuse and motivate local school pupils to continue with language learning at GCSE and beyond. Working closely with local languages teachers to pinpoint the most effective point in the GCSE options process to intervene, pairs of our students deliver 45 minute sessions to classes of 30 pupils with the aim of influencing the 13 and 14 year olds to reflect carefully before jettisoning the opportunity to really engage with French, Spanish or German. The students deliver presentations outlining their own language journeys (some encompassing fear of failure alongside enjoyment and success), sharing images and stories of their year abroad and delivering a 20 minute language taster in Portuguese or Russian.

The purpose of the latter is to demonstrate to the pupils how they can apply their language skills to a new language and learn a great deal in only 20 minutes. Feedback from local teachers has included: “It has really boosted our options numbers and encouraged a few to tell me that they want to study Spanish at university” and “The impact that you had on the kids was absolutely brilliant; they went away buzzing after the taster session and we’ve had a few comments about foreign travel at uni, which is completely out of the ordinary for our profile of students”. However, what if, once pupils have started their GCSE language course, they struggle to master unfamiliar grammar structures and fear of failure prevents them from participating in class?

Language “anxiety” is a well-documented phenomenon (Young 1991, Horwitz  2001, MacIntyre & Gardner 1994) and can have a crippling effect on pupil participation in language classes and, as a result, on a pupil’s belief in their language capabilities. This is another area, in which our languages undergraduates can have a considerable impact in a more sustained intervention. Up to 30 final year linguists participate in a teaching placement in a local primary or secondary school as part of an academic module. Frequently, our students are deployed to practise speaking skills ahead of the GCSE and A level oral exams. Students recount that, by sharing their own experiences of language anxiety, pupils come to understand that making mistakes is a crucial part of the language learning process; through recognising their errors, pupils understand how to improve their oral skills. Bringing enthusiasm, empathy and a high level of skill, students as languages ambassadors can be highly influential and effective as a means to halt the languages decline.

Young, D.J., 1991. Creating a low‐anxiety classroom environment: What does language anxiety research suggest?. The modern language journal, 75(4), pp.426-437.

Horwitz, E., 2001. Language anxiety and achievement. Annual review of applied linguistics, 21, pp.112-126.

MacIntyre, P.D. and Gardner, R.C., 1994. The subtle effects of language anxiety on cognitive processing in the second language. Language learning, 44(2), pp.283-305.

Written by Tara Webster-Deakin, Widening Participation and Outreach Manager
School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies

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Bienvenue! This week, at the University of Nottingham, we certainly received, as the French would say, an ‘acceuil royal’, during our work experience here in the Faculty of Arts. Thanks to the organisation of Tara Webster-Deakin, we’ve had a brilliantly varied week, all whilst getting an insight into the intricacies of the University of Nottingham machine.

Firstly, as one might expect with ‘work’ experience we got to try our hand at some actual work. Tasks including filling out spreadsheets, which was surprisingly satisfying, subtitling, and working with the prospectus, which gave us a newfound respect for the work that goes on behind the scenes in a University. Through this work, we explored the many possibilities available for students here, learning about the unexpected variety of pathways accessible through courses and societies.

Surprisingly enough, we weren’t the youngest people at the University this week. In fact, we had the opportunity to help out with a number of Primary events, where we got to see the way the University played a crucial role in encouraging the pursuit of further education in young people. By encouraging language development from a young age, these children will certainly be able to say ‘hola’ to a wide range of opportunities in later life.

Our experience here, however, was not limited to work. In exploring the campus, talking to students and even attending lectures, we certainly got a bonne impression of life at University, here and beyond. Charlie, a quality lad from Northern Ireland (we don’t know his last name) spoke to us about the possibilities of studying languages, including the options of joint honours degrees and studying abroad, as well as unveiling to us the truths of student life. This included getting to go to a lecture on Russian art and learning where to buy the cheapest spaghetti (Tesco, 20p).

As French enthusiasts, the opportunity to attend lectures on ‘Entre les Murs’ and French Grammar gave us insight into how French is taught in Higher Education. The lecturer, Jeremy Lane, explored the French education system, providing us with a more well-rounded knowledge of social issues and ideologies in France. We even learnt some Verlan, and are now quite the French gangsters. Tom Godard’s French language lecture taught us about examination styles at degree level French, and tested us on some rather taxing grammar (which thankfully we won’t have to face for quite a few years!).

This week has been enlightening in many ways, but nothing more so than our quality chat with Dr. Paul Smith, Head of French and Francophone Studies section. Through picking his brains on the wider University applications process, we learnt about the reality of languages degrees at different universities, especially in taking a beginner language. Both of us had queries about possibly doing joint honours French with History, and given Dr. Smith’s background in History, he was the perfect person to ask. Access to the language labs in the Self Access Centre allowed us to use resources to help further our search into possible degree options.

We’d like to thank Helen Nicholls for letting us invade her office and for giving us a cracking song to translate. Alongside Jess Lewis, they’ve both been so lovely and welcoming, giving us a real flavour for working in the Department of Modern Languages and Cultures, and in a University in general.

Thank you to Tara Webster-Deakin and Dr. Paul Smith for giving us this opportunity, we’d recommend it to anyone.

Nina Drury and Elodie Cavill – A Level students

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Haya Kay completed a work placement with the Work Placement and Employability Programme in the School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies. Once she registered her interest she subsequently applied and was accepted onto a placement with professional consultancy firm Prism, based in Nottingham’s Creative Quarter. Haya worked on developing and creating promotional and performance videos for Prism, skills relating to her degree in International Media and Communications.

Through her placement with Prism, Haya’s language skills in Arabic were picked up on by Creative Director Sarah Phillips, who invited Haya to undertake a further placement with her company Vein Train, one of Languages for Business’s placement partners who specialise in healthcare training.

The company were looking to expand into Qatar and engaged Haya on a work placement to help explain the business culture and how the health care sector works in the country. As well as support around cultural awareness, Haya worked on translating business documents and web copy into Arabic. The placement partner was so impressed with Haya’s work, they invited her to accompany them on a trip to Qatar to represent the company at a major healthcare industry event, the World Innovation Summit for Health (WISH).

Sarah Philips, founder and director of Vein Train:

“(It was) wonderful to have Haya see what can happen at work when you put time and effort in and produce excellent content, good enough for a global showcase! Haya was on a student placement from University of Nottingham to help us with filming and we discovered she could translate our subtitles into Arabic and her family lived in Qatar. A few emails later and here she is!”

In Haya’s words:

“As a part of my placement at the University of Nottingham I worked with a SME called Prism in Nottingham’s Creative Quarter. I shot and edited educational videos for VeinTrain with the purpose of teaching nurses venepuncture and cannulation skills. Months later VeinTrain was invited to attend the World Innovation Health Summit: WISH 2018 in Qatar, to display their products and showcase their educational videos. The lovely Sarah and Phil asked me to join them and showcase my work there myself. With the help of my university with the funding and my brother who lives in Qatar with the accommodation, an amazing opportunity became reality.

The media course I’m studying at the University is heavily theoretical, therefore, I’ve been seeking out opportunities to gain practical work in the industry.

My placement at Prism was one of my favourite experiences and it taught me valuable lessons about video making and working in a SME. But I never thought that it would give me the chance to share the humble videos I made on an international scale and chat to people from all over the world about my passion. I will forever be grateful for this once in a life time opportunity!”

by Jodie Thompson, Languages for Business

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Routes into China – jiù dì chóng yóu or; a trip down memory lane

Exactly four months on from our recent ‘Routes into China’ conference held at Nottingham Contemporary in July, I just want to remind myself of everything I learned on the day. What I loved about this conference is how much the whole day of activities and events reflected the nature of international business and the foundations of our ERDF work placements project, Languages for Business.

Trading internationally is about so much more than translating marketing materials. Languages for Business knows that achieving success internationally requires a real understanding of the culture you are marketing to, or trading with. The conference also highlighted just how strong UoN’s links with China are, particularly with the talk from China Britain Football Centre.

My favourite bit of the event was the Chinese Tea Ceremony demonstration, pitched in the middle of the tea break. There are a lot of metaphors you can take from a Chinese Tea Ceremony, namely the reminders to take your time, pause, focus and appreciate the moment. It was interesting to see the parallels with our unofficial ‘British Tea Ceremony’ – get out favourite mug, head to sofa, dip a biscuit in, get a phone call, forget tea, pour it away cold, repeat!

Another really popular session was the Chinese business etiquette workshop, which included advice on how to order meals for business meetings, how to serve drinks and the importance of making a toast. Cultural business etiquette advice is an important part of the services we offer as part of Languages for Business.

After some interesting follow-up conversations with Chinese colleagues, here are a few more pieces of business etiquette we learned:

• Strong relationships are important before making a deal so be prepared for lengthy business lunches and dinners.
• Gifts are welcome but avoid presenting umbrellas, books, or clocks as all of these items have names that sound very similar to negative words in Chinese.
• Take business cards like a gift, with both hands and look at them for a moment before putting away.

Other workshops included an introduction to WeChat, China’s 1 billion (yes billion!) user social media platform as a must-know tool for engaging with the Chinese markets.

In the last year, 49% of our work placements have been in Chinese translation, market research or cultural advice. It has so far been our primary language for work placements with a large proportion of those students simultaneously undertaking degrees in Chinese/English translation.

‘Routes into China’ was hosted jointly by Languages for Business, the Confucius Institute and the Asia Business centre.

One success story to emerge soon after the conference was Far Composites who attended the workshop which introduced the businesses to Nottingham’s strengthening trade links with China.

As a result of the conference, Far Composites have now been shortlisted in the 2018 Nottingham Ingenuity International Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition, and are visiting Ningbo to discuss opportunities to link up with the Nottingham-Ningbo Incubator to secure business in the region.

We wish them the best of luck and success! Or rather, zhù nǐ chéng gong!

Languages for Business is part of the Enabling Innovation ERDF scheme to support Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire small to medium enterprises expand and grow. We offer support in the form of student placements in language and cultural expertise to grow and strengthen international trade. Recent language placements have focused on market research, translation, interpretation and basic language and cultural business etiquette training. To find out more and get involved, please visit our website, or contact Project Co-Ordinator, Jo Gregory.

Written by Jodie Thompson, Marketing Assistant, Languages for Business

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Kathrin Yacavone, assistant professor in French in the Department of Modern Languagesand Cultures, was awarded a Humboldt Research Fellowship for Experienced Researchers from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, which enables internationally outstanding researchers to pursue an extended period of research in Germany.
The fellowship will enable Dr Yacavone to complete her book project Portrait of the Writer: Photography and Literary Culture in France (see www.portraitofthewriter.com). The study will provide a new critical and historical context for photographic portraits of writers, showing that since the advent of photography in the mid-nineteenth century, easily reproduced portraits were and remain a highly effective and influential means of authorial (self-) construction. A combined cultural history of photography and textual authorship, it explores multifaceted relations amongst renowned French writers and portrait photographers, thus revealing significant and hitherto neglected visual dimensions of French literary history and theory from the 1830s to the 1980s. The book’s multidisciplinary approach entails extensive archival research, text and image analysis, and cultural-historical synthesis of written and visual material.
Starting in February 2019, Dr Yacavone will spend the first six months of her fellowship at the University of Constance, working with Professor Bernd Stiegler – an internationally renowned expert on photography history and theory, with expertise in French literature and culture – and a further six months at the University of Cologne to collaborate with Professor Wolfram Nitsch, a highly regarded scholar in nineteenth-century French studies and media history, as well as the interaction between literature and photography.

“While bringing my own research expertise to Constance and Cologne, the Humboldt Fellowship will allow me to establish working international and cross-disciplinary relationships with these major European universities, and beyond, furthering comparative and transnational approaches to French studies. I see such international collaboration as essential to my discipline, as well as to the humanities more generally.”

Kathrin Yacavone, Department of Modern Languages and Cultures

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As part of the Languages for Business team, I’ve been thinking about how we translate the varied and culturally-steeped language of business networking.

Is it true that there are only two types of people in the world – those who love networking and those who would rather communicate via messenger pigeon than don a nametag and swap business cards?

Networking is often seen as essential for succeeding in business and in the UK, the hallowed ‘networking event’ is an institution of its own! For some reason we love a lanyard, and a geometrically carpet tiled room on the edge of a motorway, not to mention the ever-warm tea urn, the individually wrapped biscuit, the PowerPoint presentation and the business card. Do any of us Brits make the mistaken assumption that this cultural ritual is an international business standard?

As Languages for Business is based in a very, very international department, we end up learning a lot about other cultures not only from the work we do but also from our watercooler conversations. My French colleague, Francoise told me about how her old workplace in France ‘did lunch’. All employees lunched together and it lasted over an hour. This seems a world apart from the British norm of eating a sandwich with one hand whilst sat typing with the other. The British eating at desks may well be a display of dedication to the job. Similarly, the lingering French lunch is seen by some in France as essential to team building and business relations.
Cultural business etiquette training is one of the more unique elements of our project that is often overlooked in its importance to successful trading. You know the phrase “When in Rome”? Have you ever been to Italy and noticed how many Brits start draping jumpers over their shoulders and going for gelato at midnight? AirBnB’s recent ad campaign is called “Live like a Local”, tapping into the pleasure people seek in absorbing and learning about other cultures. If Languages for Business did huge TV ad campaigns, I’d like ours to be “Network like a Local”.
Below are some sample business communication tips for three of our most requested European placement cultures. Please feel free to comment with your own, or better yet, get involved with our work placement scheme and help international business grow!

Germany
• Punctuality is very important, aim to arrive 10 minutes early for meetings.
• Formal titles are almost always used to address clients and trading partners and even between employees and employers.
• Business is viewed as a very serious subject so use of humour is not appropriate.

France
• It is best not to address people by their first names unless invited to do so, instead use ‘Monsieur’, ‘Madame’, ‘Mademoiselle’ and the polite ‘vous’ form.
• Personal lives are kept separate from business matters.
• The hard sell approach is not advisable as French business is typically weary of being pushed into quick decisions.

Spain
• Take into account non-working periods when suggesting meeting times, for example, siesta times. Also, be aware that Spain has the highest amount of variable, public holidays in Europe.
• You may hear people referring to taking ‘puentes’ or ‘bridges’, in effect, a four day weekend.
• Negotiations tend to take time so be patient in waiting for decisions and opinions, the Spanish tend not to hurry deals. It is common for people to work on negotiations as extra hours or over lunch/dinner.
• It is common to interrupt another person speaking in a meeting or have several people talking at once, it isn’t considered offensive.

Languages for Business is part of the Enabling Innovation ERDF scheme to support Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire small to medium enterprises expand and grow. We offer support in the form of student projects and placements, providing language and cultural expertise to grow and strengthen international trade. Recent language placements have focused on market research, translation, interpretation and basic language and cultural business etiquette training. To find out more and get involved, please visit our website, or contact Project Co-Ordinator, Jo Gregory.

Written by Jodie Thompson, Administrator, Languages for Business

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Peter Boyle, who died on August 3, had a long career as a teacher and historian of US foreign policy at the University of Nottingham. In hindsight, he seems to embody a particular phase in the development of American Studies in the UK, and his passing signals the end of an era. Peter read History at the University of Glasgow but like several of his generation, his career sprang from his graduate study in America. His doctoral thesis at UCLA was on the politics of Senator Hiram Johnson, a leading figure in the defeat of the 1918 Versailles Treaty. Completed in 1970, it looked at the origins of Johnson’s opposition to Woodrow Wilson’s internationalist approach, and judging by a subsequent article he published in the Journal of American Studies (1972), his interpretation reflected contemporary concerns that the anti-Vietnam war movement might foster a spirit of neo-isolationism.

By the time this article was published Peter was already a lecturer at the University of Nottingham and alongside others, like literature scholar Brian Lee, he was a founder member of its new American Studies department. What makes Peter’s career so emblematic is that he then stayed in that same department for more than three decades. The contemporary pattern, for good or ill, is for academics to move around (partly because first posts are so often temporary, and also because the RAE/REF has nurtured what might be called a “transfer market.”)

Peter was a productive scholar with a biography of Eisenhower (2004) and a synthetic history of US-Soviet relations (1993) to his credit. He may ultimately be remembered for his careful editing of The Churchill-Eisenhower Correspondence (1990), a volume that reflected his switch of research focus to the Cold War period, and he produced a flow of scholarly articles and conference papers that made him a fixture at BAAS conferences. Thus, his decision to stay at Nottingham reflected a genuine attachment to the place and especially his dedication to its students, both at the university and in the wider community since Peter also taught adult education evening classes on US politics and foreign policy. In this respect, too, he represents a different time when academics chose freely to take their expertise out into the wider community without the ulterior motives (“will this make an Impact Case Study?”), which so often colour contemporary choices. Over many years Peter proved a consistently popular teacher with many students recalling appreciatively his clear and straightforward style.

Certainly when I arrived at Nottingham, Peter’s classes on the American Presidency from Truman to Clinton and on US-Soviet Relations were among the options that filled up most readily every single year. Time in California had left Peter with an abiding belief in the value of study abroad, not in a narrow academic sense, but far more broadly. It was there rather than home in Scotland that he discovered his liking for tennis, and more exotically: scuba diving. He used to delight in telling how he had once been on the courts at UCLA when an elegant African American player asked if he would care for a non-competitive knock up. In the brief exchanges that followed, Peter recalled, he only touched the ball on his own serve. Only later did he learn that his partner was future Wimbledon champion Arthur Ashe. Peter championed the place of the year abroad in the American Studies degree and I recall his dismay when we stopped allowing students to take a lighter load of courses in North America in order to ensure that they had time to explore American society for themselves.

Peter’s contributions to American Studies at Nottingham were enduring and multifaceted. Only after he retired, did I discover that several key journals in the library were effectively “hand-me-downs” from Peter. The student lounge would similarly receive last week’s copy of Time magazine, courtesy of Peter’s subscription. This explains his outrage when it began to disappear on a regular basis. Incensed, he produced dozens of notices, but what were intended to be “wanted” posters, read more like Delphic utterances. “Who is the Thief of Time?” is a phrase that will live with me forever. And so will memories of Peter Boyle, a dedicated scholar and teacher, of a type we probably won’t see again.

Peter J. Ling Professor of American Studies

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As the heat wave blasts its way through Nottingham, turning our beautiful greenery into a yellow-ochre abomination, one place stands above it all, with its classic, grandiose campus established as a Teacher Training College in 1798, and a University College in 1881: the University of Nottingham. Here is my experience working in this magnificent place.

The motto on the University’s coat of arms boldly states: ‘Sapientia urbs conditur’, which translates to: ‘A city is built on wisdom’, no doubt this statement refers to it’s approach towards higher education, however, after my tour of the campus, it could easily refer to the University itself, for it struck me as just that; a city of wisdom. It seems to me that if you were to come here, there would be little need to stray out; the campus has everything, from restaurants to clothes shops. I did my work in the main building which is perfect for those who enjoy a little traditional flare to their University. The hall, with its organs, is grand (the word organs was not a mistake by the way, there are two in the hall), and every 15 minutes the bells of the clock tower sing their tune. Every hour, they are followed by a deeper bell, the amount of dongs indicating the hour. The beauty of the place is striking, if only I had pictures… you’ll just have to book an open day and see for yourself.

The actual work I carried out may seem boring to most, but was perfect for someone like me, who lives for boredom and monotony (any assumptions you now have of me are probably correct). My tasks consisted of: firstly, copying the online prospectus on the University’s website into word documents and, secondly, updating the online modules. The latter I made decent progress on and the former I finished. This is a reminder that university’s depend on a lot of usually unseen but hard administrative support work, which is vital and really helped the Marketing and Communications team I worked with. Something like this can give you a real insight into the working world, so – to people as like-minded as me – please do consider applying.

Ben Colley – Year 12 The Carlton Academy, Nottingham

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