Stockport Degree Workshop

As UCAS have changed the application times it means that Colleges and Universities have to have their open days a lot earlier than usual. I was asked, along with a few other people from the other 3 pathways to do a day of activities with the foundation students from Stockport College. The day was split into three 90 minutes sessions with 3 separate groups. Each session began with a short presentation to introduce the Design and Visual Arts course followed up by a series of activities and a question and answer session in small groups.

What I noticed throughout the day was how much I enjoyed being involved. Part of the activities was to build a tower out of paper that would hold a boiled egg at the top for up to 10 seconds. Normally this isn’t really my thing but I found once I got into it I really enjoyed it. I’m naturally quite a competitive person and as soon as we split into groups and it became a little bit of a competition between the people helping out it made it quite funny, but also made me a lot more sociable with the foundation students. I guess with some of them it was difficult chatting to them because they had no real interest in who we were and it was a bit slow starting at first but after the first initial stage it was okay. I had promised myself that by the third and final tower building exercise that I would step back and let them make their own decisions but my need to beat Kris took over but he unfortunately won!

There was a little question and answer session afterwards where all the students were asked to prepare a question and then we split off into small groups. It was great to be able to voice my praise for the course and I didn't once feel like I was overselling it. Some of the questions raised went from the opportunities the course leads to -to how beneficial the briefs we are set are - to if we think we study enough hours. The 3 sessions threw up very different individuals, some of which had a clear view of where they want to go and some pretty clueless. It was hard to try and some up the course without barricading them with information in such a short period of time. But hopefully our enthusiasm showed that it was all relevant. It reminded me of when I was that age and trying to decide where I wanted to go. I thinks it's really tough for kids these days because it's no longer about doing something you enjoy it's about doing something you know will guarantee you a job after, which is something that cropped up quite a few times over the course of the 3 sessions.

From chatting to the other people I did the workshop with we all agreed that it was a kind reminder of just how good we have it here and actually just how much we have learnt. By the end of it we had almost convinced ourselves to sign up again. haha.