Best Female On Screen!

My daughter has been nominated for 'Best Female On Screen' for NaSTA awards 2013!!

Here's her short video compilation.

Kudos to LSTV (Leeds Student TV) for their marvelous performance every week and for providing an extremely encouraging environment for each and everyone to learn and grow! I'm absolutely amazed and highly appreciative, having seen (as a student's mom) the insides and their working, nomination or not.
LSTV, may your tribe increase!!

This was a special post for this very update. I had to shout it out!

Thou shalt wait...patiently

Thou shalt wait patiently...for UCAS to show changes in your application.

Oh the wait..the agonizing wait!
After a whole year and more of researching, planning, choosing, writing, editing and finally hitting the 'send' button, you realize it's no more in your hands. It's been SENT!

Now all you've got to do is wait. Well that's for us parents. The student concerned has to wait, yes, but has to study too. And study really hard without any distractions, if that's possible!

How does one do that when all you can think of is to log in to 'track' and check for any changes. Or may be check in the mail. Here came all my experience as a motivational speaker handy. I used my favourite quotes, pinned a particular poem near her study table (much to her annoyance, then!) and advised her to change her focus for the time being and zoom in to the 12th class exam which was closer at hand.

Easier said than done. If she got into her Universities of choice, Sheffield or Leeds, she'd be on cloud 9 and beyond. If she got into her next choice, Bournemouth, she'd be on cloud, well, 7 or 8. If she got into the others in her order of preference, she'd still be satisfied. But, WHAT IF...? What if she didn't make it to the any of them! There was a back up plan. she had applied to a couple of universities/colleges in India too. Some not so high ranking ones.

However, a 'life altering decision like studying in UK' and 'continuing with your life decision' of studying in India cannot be compared. So though there was a back up plan, it was as good as having no plan!

Yet she needed to concentrate on the exam at hand. Which I think she managed to do very effectively. We, as parents, went about our jobs routinely, keeping a stress free atmosphere at home. In fact we went a step ahead. We watched movies, celebrated birthdays that came during the exams, went for picnics, used up our 'free stay' hotel coupons, come to think of it, we all thoroughly enjoyed ourselves throughout my daughter's 12th board exams!

Which by the way, lasted for a whole month and half for 5 subjects.

Journalism or Media Studies? The SUBJECT to be!

With the aim and destination more or less defined, we moved ahead. Where in UK and what exactly was the subject of my daughter's interest. I started googling 'top colleges for journalism in UK' and kept googling till a few favourites emerged. Not just established sites like 'QS World University Rankings' or the 'Times Higher Education World University Rankings', but I scanned hundreds of forums and chat rooms too. The 'QS' and 'Times' rankings do not cover Journalism as a subject or it's ranking so I needed to use a lot more elbow grease!

I started off by making a note of all the possible names of universities that came up in any conversation/write up/rankings. Then checked individual sites for the subject. These few subjects came up again and again.

1. Media and Communication
2. Media and Cultural Studies
3. Journalism
4. Journalism Studies
5. Broadcast Journalism
6. Multimedia Journalism

(Besides 'Film Making' and related subjects, which my daughter wasn't interested in)

What I eventually found out was that all media related subjects are more generic as well as theoretical and one can study these and move on to a more specific field of interest for post graduation. In a lot of cases 'Journalism' implies print journalism, more for newspapers and magazines and online writing. 'Broadcast Journalism' is specifically for TV/Internet/Radio. 'Multimedia Journalism' is multi-disciplinary combining everything (which is offered by just a couple of universities). All of the later ones (3. to 6.) are very intense and arm the students with advanced technical and practical skills.

After reading the course content under these headings, very soon my daughter reached the conclusion that 'Broadcast Journalism' was what she wanted to do. And maybe I wouldn't spend or send her so far away to study a subject too general like 'media and cultural studies'. In my opinion if undecided, a student should rather go in for Political Science, International relations or the likes for under graduation, to pursue a more professional degree for PG.

The subject chosen, now came the daunting task of which university!

NEXT - Choosing your university