Back to School!

Image from http://www.gold.ac.uk

This week has been quite an important week for me.

Last Thursday I saw a great tweet from the BBC College of Production saying: ‘A ‘no’ is just a delayed ‘yes’’. Well, on Monday I finally got a yes!

At the start of March I submitted an application form to study for a Masters in Radio at Goldsmiths University of London. I’m very excited to say that at the start of this week Goldsmiths accepted my application and offered me a place on the course. I’m so excited to start in September and I can’t wait to spend every day studying the subject I love the most: radio.

But this was a lengthy decision and one that did not happen overnight. Oh no. The idea first popped into my mind about a year ago when I was about to finish my undergraduate studies. I pondered the thought, and then decided to shelve it for a while and focus on final year essays rather than tackling a whole heap of application forms!

I finished my degree and it wasn’t until September of last year that I started to seriously search for a course. I found 3 I really liked: Goldsmiths, Bournemouth, and Sunderland.

Sure, you could easily say: why not just apply for all the courses? Well, good point, this is an option I considered for a while. But then at nearly £7,000 a pop to study for an MA I felt I didn’t really want to get on a course I had only applied for as a ‘back-up’. Seven grand is a bit too much to pay for a half-hearted option. So I had to make a decision…

Now, I believe every decision to study is a personal one, and your choice of course or institution is based heavily on your own needs and your reason for undertaking further study. I wanted to apply to study for an MA in Radio because, despite all my years of experience and how much I had already learnt, I had no formal qualification in any of it. I’m largely self-taught, or I’ve learnt what skills I have from watching others do it and picking up what I can. Sometimes I’m not even sure if I’m doing anything the way I’m supposed to! So my decision behind choosing further study was to hone-in these skills and to develop them so that I can get better at what I do and create more professional radio productions (gosh, I feel like I’m writing my personal statement all over again!)

This rationale had a huge influence on me when choosing a place to study. I wanted exceptional course content and I also wanted to study at a University with excellent links to the industry itself, and one that would prepare me for professional working life in Radio. Finally, I wanted a location that I could see myself living in. Now, in all honesty, this last criteria ruled out Sunderland for me. Sorry Sunderland. So I was left with 2 options: Bournemouth and Goldsmiths.

Goldsmiths had the obvious advantage of being based in London, a location I was hoping to move to either way. But really it was the course content that won me over. I’ll learn about Broadcast Journalism as well as Media Law, the cultural history of Radio, current industry practise as well as (and I think this is one of the things I’m most excited about) how to adapt texts for Radio broadcast! It’s quite an all-round course and is 70% practise based, so I’m looking forward to plenty of hands-on experience. That’s not to say that it is in any way a better course than the one offered by Bournemouth, who equally cover a whole range of excellent and exciting topics on their Masters programme, it’s just that Goldsmiths’ course appealed to my own tastes a lot more. And really, I think so long as you stick with that (or, as Mary Anne Hobbs would’ve said last week – trust your gut!) I think you’ll be fine.

If you’re thinking about going into further study on a Masters course but aren’t sure if it’s the right move for you then, well… I don’t really have an answer for you I’m afraid. I know how you feel though – I spent the months leading up to my application deadline asking people if it was the right idea. A lot of people I met said yes, and these were mainly the people who had themselves undertaken a Masters or similar study in broadcasting. For them it seemed to have opened doors and lead them into work experiences that eventually landed them with a job. In December I went to visit Goldsmiths and sit in on lectures and tutorials. I spoke to a lot of the students who had gone on the course for the same reasons as me. They all seemed to be getting out of it exactly what they wanted, which I found very encouraging.

However, when I was asking people whether or not to apply for a course there were some who told me it wasn’t a necessity. They didn’t out-right tell me not to do it, but that it wasn’t essential although it is a nice qualification to have. Indeed, I don’t think it is essential. I think there are still plenty of other routes into radio that don’t involve further study. But as I always say in these posts, there are hundreds of ways to get into radio and the people already working in it will each have a different story. So again it comes down to personal choice. For me, I feel this is the right option for what I would like to achieve. And if you feel the same way, then go for it!

If you would like to find out more about further study check out the British Journalism Training Council website. They accredit courses across the UK, including Goldsmiths, and are a good place to start a search. There’s also the Creative Skillset website that has a brilliant search facility for Masters courses, apprenticeships, and short courses. Or, alternatively, just Google it! Don’t forget as well that my search was for courses in Radio, which is a fairly general search criterion that will give you courses that offer up a whole range of topics related to the medium. There are also plenty of courses specifically in Broadcast Journalism, which also have a focus on Television broadcasting, journalism, and some courses which also include training on reporting on news and politics.