"Learning never ends"

As of this Wednesday, I am officially a graduate from the University of Sheffield with a 2.1 in English and French. It's taken me 5 years from finishing A levels, which I could never have anticipated, but I got there! It's been an unexpected 4 years in many ways (who knew I would end up doing half my degree in French?!) but also incredibly rewarding.

And I've come out the other side still loving literature. The day of my last English literature exam (Modern literature, on which I got a first - another surprise!) the first thing I did was to go to Sheffield City Library and get out a pile of books, and since the end of exams I've pretty much been reading between 3 and 5 books per week. Now's the time to make the most of it, since come September I'll be starting my PGCE (teacher training) to become a secondary school French teacher (who also now has roughly GCSE-level German!).

Why not English? Practical reasons: most of my experience so far has been in language teaching, there is a greater need for language teachers, I get a bursary for it (!). Also I imagine I will end up teaching English some time anyway. Part of me is a little worried at teaching English, that I wouldn't be able to get across my enthusiasm for the subject to teenagers. Also I feel like teaching languages is a more practical skill.

Still, if I ever take the step to do a Masters, I like to think it would be in English. I genuinely love the academic side of the subject, whereas with French I was only ever interested in upping my language skills. Although my favourite historical period in literature is probably now the Renaissance (the Victorian literature module somewhat ruined the period for me... apparently it's all about Darwin; who knew?!) my highest marks were in the 'Enlightenment Britain' and 'Modern literature' modules, which I enjoyed more than I ever expected to.

I suppose what's really fascinating about literature is the way it interracts with culture, history, society and everything else in the world yet creates something new in it and, in some cases, affects those things itself. We had a set of very confusing 'Modern literature' lectures about Modernist art (never Modernist music, oddly) which compared Gertrude Stein to art of the time by comparing syntax to subject and grammar to form (if I remember correctly), so that Modernists are obsessed by form. I still love the short stories of Katherine Mansfield, and finally have lost some of my T.S.Eliot hangups. No-one really understands the guy's poetry, it's all just posturing.

As our Pro-Vice-Chancellor ("tips hat") said on Wednesday, "Learning never ends." I've learnt lots about developing critical skills and analysis at university, but about enjoying literature for its own sake - well, I learned that years ago anyway.