(upbeat music)
- [Jacqueline] Studying
English at Cambridge is special
because of the breadth and
the depth that you're able
to put into your degree.
- [Mariam] English is
really good for kind of
multidisciplinary study so
you can incorporate history,
philosophy as much as you'd like really.
- [Alex] The course at Cambridge
involves giving students
a really solid foundation in the history
of English literature
going from medieval period
up to the present and
introducing them to lots
of different kinds of writing
including prose fiction
and drama and poetry.
- [Subha] What it does is
offer students an exposure
to literature chronologically,
a solid grounding
in context, and a sense of the development
of English literature in
lockstep with history.
- [Jacqueline] In the final
year, the students spend
their time more on optional papers.
- [Subha] Part two has two
compulsory papers and the rest
is all optional, chosen from
a very wide range of papers
which gives you much more freedom
to choose what you want to do.
You can do post-Colonial
writing, you can do literature
and philosophy, you can do visual art.
- [Conor] My typical week
there are lectures Monday
through to Friday and then there
are supervisions each week.
I write an essay for the
supervision and then discuss it.
- [Mariam] It's okay to find
it really fast paced at first,
just kind of try and ease yourself in.
Your supervisors are there
to help you so use them
as much as possible.
- [Subha] The backbone of
the Cambridge teaching system
is the college based supervision.
- [Zuzanna] You get so much
contact with the academics
and hear people whose books
and articles I'm reading
for my essays are willing to
talk with me through my ideas,
talk about my work.
- [Subha] And that, I
think, prepares students
with certain skills in
analytical rigour, depth,
training and dialogue,
thinking on their feet.
- [Zuzanna] It's really the
best way to learn, I think,
through a conversation
with someone like that.
- [Subha] The libraries in Cambridge
are an amazing resource.
There's a whole range of
libraries students can use.
Faculty, college, university,
and indeed colleges.
- [Jacqueline] The
university library alone is
a copyright library.
- [Alex] It holds
approximately 8 million items,
most of which of course are
books but also includes things
like maps and sheet music.
- [Zuzanna] When I was
working on my dissertation
for Victorian Literature
I had a chance to look
at the original editions
of the novels published
and it really changes your
perspectives on the texts
you're working with.
- [Alex] The other thing
that is a pretty amazing
facility here in the English
faculty is the drama studio
in which we have a lot of different plays
and poetry readings as well.
(poetry reading)
- [Jacqueline] Cambridge
English graduates go
into a wide variety of
professions like the arts,
filmmaking, investment
banking, finance, the law.
- [Alex] I have seen
students go into advertising,
into publishing, into teaching.
- [Subha] They become
journalists, and some of them
have become writers and poets.
- [Conor] In my spare time I engage a lot
in creative writing.
There are events that are organised.
There are poetry workshops that I go to.
There are theatres nearby that
you can go to performances
of Shakespeare and so on.
- [Mariam] I'm a member
of the CUADC which is
the amateur dramatic club at Cambridge.
I'm a Footlight as well and a member
of the musical theatre society.
- [Subha] There's so much stuff going on
on the edges of academia.
- [Zuzanna] Sometimes I
forget that I'm actually
at Cambridge doing all this.
When you take a step back
and you're just struck
by how beautiful and old
it is and that you are here
because you made it here.
- [Jacqueline] What we're
looking for are people who
love literature and who are
willing to keep pushing forward,
reading more texts, reading
new things in order to explore
the world of words.
