First blog post and introduction

Hello and welcome to my first blog post! Just to introduce myself if you haven’t read my bio, my name is Peggy and I study MA Museum Studies as a campus based student. Things you can expect from this blog include information about the course and living in Leicester, with a few random musings thrown in there. You might even get some of my bad attempts at humour if you’re lucky.

This first post is going to be on how I got to where I am now and how I have found the course so far – it will be a bit of a whistle stop tour so I will make sure to do a few posts later on the module specifics. Firstly, a bit about me. I grew up wanting to be something like a lawyer or a linguist, so naturally I ended up doing an Archaeology degree in Birmingham. This was a lot of fun, however I ended my degree resolute that my career was not going to involve digging in a field in the rain and evoking traumatic DofE flashbacks.

During the generic mad third year panic of applying for graduate schemes and jobs, I gave myself an ultimatum of applying for jobs straightaway or applying for further education. At the risk of rewriting my personal statement, I have always had an appreciation for the museum, and ended up writing my third year dissertation on Dark Tourism in museums (this is a great book if you are interested), so I decided I would like a career in a museum. I researched into Museum Studies courses and was immediately attracted to Leicester, mainly from their great research reputation and dedicated Museum Studies building.

I’ll confess something here: Leicester was the only place I applied to, as I didn’t really have a plan B. Luckily I got the acceptance letter the same day as I got my degree results; cue a summer of full time restaurant work trying to raise funds and attempting to find somewhere to live (Student Room forums helped me find a house and housemates but I know a lot of people who live in halls type accommodation – I plan to post about this at a later date).

I turned up in Leicester in September not really being sure what to expect from a Masters course. Reflecting on it now I think the three words I would use to describe it so far would be: intense, engaging and enjoyable. One of the biggest shocks was going from 6 contact hours a week to classes being 9-5 nearly every day on some weeks. I know, you have to work on a Masters course. Who would have guessed?! At this point in the academic year we have already finished two assessments (an essay and a presentation) and have been on several trips, including the British Museum and Birmingham Museum Collections Centre. I feel like I am still trying to get the work/life balance right at the moment, especially when I am attempting to take part in extra-curriculars (it can be done!), start going to the gym (we’ll see if this lasts…) and have a social life alongside coursework. Even so, I am enjoying the course so far and I am looking forward to writing about it in future blog posts.

So that was a quick overview of everything up till now, if you have any questions or comments feel free to post below, and I will see you in the next post!