Super duper late but recently, I took over our Students’ Instagram account to show everyone what it was like to study English at Exeter. As the Beast from the East snowstorm came upon Cornwall just midweek and cancelled classes and meetings, it was a pretty chilled few days for me; a contrast to my usual hectic schedule!
I did have to do some Spanish revision for my exam (which I had no idea would later be cancelled because of the snow!) but it was still great to catch up on conjugation rules that they have in the language as that always stresses me out – it’s not easy learning a new language, especially when you know it counts as being part of your degree!
This is a new scheme in the University this year, where you’re allowed to take Spanish or French as a year-long module by replacing one of your pre-existing course modules. So in my case, I decided to drop one of my English modules ‘Reason and Passion’ for ‘Spanish Beginners’, as I thought it was a really good opportunity to take. There’s no harm in learning a new language and I’ve always wanted to pick up Spanish!! The Spanish/French module counts for a part of your course – you can also get a title put at the end of your degree when you graduate e.g. BA English with proficiency in Spanish. That is, this can only happen if you do two years worth of the language during your time at uni, with one of the years being either Intermediate or Advanced. It’s been tough so far but I’m enjoying learning the language; it’s been stimulating to listen to Spanish speakers in public and grasping snatches of words they say.
I did end up having our weekly meeting with the RAD committee in Falmouth before the snow became heavier – we decided to get some pizza from Brother’s Pizza (which serves amazing pizza let me just say, and they have vegan options too!!)
We went through some plans for the hitch event I was running called Race2Amsterdam and other plans for the committee before settling down to some pizza and just relaxing. To find out more about FXU RAD and what we do as a society/group, look out for my society feature coming soon!
The snow came heavy the next day and everything was cancelled, so I enjoyed a ‘day off’ at home with some work – there was so much snow that Penryn and Falmouth were just covered in white. I even managed to make a snowball just from the snow on the window ledge.
The snow stayed on for the remainder of the weekdays, but I did manage to pop into the local ASDA – it’s only a 15 minute walk from campus and 20 for where I live in Penryn. The only trouble was actually walking over because of the thick snow! It felt like I was a baby trying to walk for the first time, even whilst wearing my boots and treading carefully to avoid ice.
At the end of the week after all the snow, we held a pub quiz at Pennycomequick in Falmouth to raise funds for the RAD Skydive challenge fundraising for Worldwide Cancer Research that a couple of us are undertaking next month (!!!) It was a huge success as we had a full house of people doing the quiz, and even had to get seats from upstairs to accommodate everyone. We raised quite a lot of money on the day for the skydive and charity, as well as had lots of happy quizzers with us which is amazing.
With that, my week was over – less hectic than what it usually is thanks to the snow hence it isn’t a fully representative view of what my daily week is like (the lack of lectures isn’t normal for sure!!) but I’m glad to show you all what I was up to the week snow came to Cornwall.
Please look forward to the rest of the year and our instagram posts on the Exeter Student’s account at https://www.instagram.com/exeterunilife/
-Mikki