It’s October, the start of a new academic year and we’re back onto the blogging. This summer kind of feels like it never happened, and to be brutally honest, I wasn’t sure how well/quickly I would adjust to coming back after being out of the routine of studying/working/having a social life/doing something creative. I was fairly anxious for the couple of weeks  before coming back, and I know that this is to do with my own confidence- which I’m working on. And I’ve made it through week one.

A few things are different this year. We have fewer term-time assessments to complete, and no exams in January. This term we only have a couple of pieces of coursework, and one of them is optional….which may sound silly, but the idea is that it helps us to prepare for our summer exams and, being the keen students we are, I would be willing to bet money that everyone will do it. We also have fewer lectures this year and only ever one or two in one day….last year, we had four. So it feels a little less intimidating at the moment.

We also have a few students who are new to the year group, who’ve either taken years out from studying SLT at City and are re-joining the course, or who have transferred from other universities. It’s actually really nice to know that it’s really possible to take time out and come back in….I think this is testament to what a supportive and understanding environment Health Sciences (our academic school) is at City, and also that they get that lots of the students on SLT and the related courses have commitments outside the course that sometimes require a little extra attention. It’s less common that students are able to transfer, but exceptional circumstances are taken into consideration. This means there’s going to be a period of getting used to having new faces in tutorials- our small-group sessions- and also making sure we remember how tricky it might be to join a year group that is already so cohesive.

So, what’s coming up? I start my new placement in a mainstream secondary school this week, there’ll be some coursework around language processing, and we’ll be adjusting to running sessions for our peers around different skills in SLT, as part of our professional studies learning. I’m also doing some volunteering to try and build up more skills and experience with different client groups, but more on that next time. Oh, and in the spirit of making more time for pleasure this year, I’ll finally be working towards my grade 8 saxophone (TBC)….

(Image credit: Kindermusik)