Forward thinking: How to make the most of university life

How would you describe your time at Warwick, what did you enjoy most/least?

My three years at Warwick have been very enjoyable, and I feel I have learned a lot. When I first visited campus, my overriding impression was of how friendly people were, and that has proved to be the case throughout my degree, both in the generosity and tolerance of my teachers and in the helpfulness and enthusiasm of students and staff involved in extra-curricular activities. The Warwick English course has been a very positive experience, and I think it stands out as a syllabus with both comprehensive survey courses and detailed special topics. While some of the compulsory elements to the course were not topics I would have chosen to study, I feel that it has also been very instructive being compelled to take certain courses, in particular the epic tradition course, which covers a lot of ground that was once covered by a classical education. It is to Warwick’s credit that they do not work on the assumption that all their students will have come from the grammar system or its independent equivalent.

Equally, outside of the course, I have found Warwick a very supportive environment. In first year a friend and I ran a small poetry journal composed of work submitted to us through a website we set up. We were able to produce a print copy thanks to a grant from the Lord Rootes Memorial Fund, which provided money to cover most of the production costs, as well as fund a research project on poetry journals. Following this, we were able to hold a launch event and a poetry reading, which went very well, chiefly due to the help of several of my friends in the English department. The publication was archived by the university library and sold on our behalf by Warwick Books, who handled the international shipping which would have posed us a serious difficulty.

You have participated in a very interesting project – the Reinvention undergraduate research journal. What was it all about?

The purposes of Reinvention are to publish high-quality undergraduate research, and to promote learning through the practice of research and publishing. We receive submissions from around the world on our website, and I screen them with the other members of the team. We are looking for novel primary research, discussion or analysis. Assuming a paper meets our criteria, and our style guidelines, we send papers to academics in the relevant field for review. If our reviewers suggest changes, we then work with the author to come up with a set of revisions to his or her paper. We then proof-read the final paper and it can be published.

One of the trickiest things for me is working on papers far outside my discipline; the physical sciences in particular can be very technical, and this is where it is particularly important that there is a team of assistant editors and subject specialists to work with. It’s also more difficult for undergraduates in the physical sciences and medicine to conduct research, since their access to resources and lab time is limited in comparison with professional researchers, in a way which does not apply to arts and humanities students to the same degree, and we do aim to accommodate this.

It has been particularly rewarding for me because of the calibre of the authors we work with, and the attention paid by our reviewers. In comparison to the typical coursework of an undergraduate degree, the feedback we can offer is very detailed, and might run to several pages of suggestions, comments, further reading and counter-argument. The reviewers are specialists in the topic under review, and sometimes the world authority on a particular issue, and I think this expertise is reflected in the quality of feedback we can give. Working with an author and the reviewers, and taking a paper from its original state into its final published form is a very fulfilling experience.

This activity enabled you a valuable insight into academic publishing industry so what have you learnt from it?

Learning how the processes of proofing, reviewing and editing are conducted has been very useful, particularly as I hope to be in the author’s role in the future. Equally, there has been much to learn from the contents of the papers we publish. I don’t think I would have otherwise come across serious discussion of topics like inflammatory polyarthritis, second-wave Norwegian black metal and the Federation of Small Businesses. I hope it’s also a helpful and informative process for authors, and from the feedback we get it seems that this is the case.

Do you have any plans after the University and how did this experience help you to decide which career you want to pursue? 

Next year I’m intending to study for an MPhil in eighteenth century literature with a focus in Romantic poetry. I have been interested in academic careers for some time, and it’s been great to see the professional side of academic publishing, as well as to be involved in a diverse range of research topics. It’s become a cliché now, but it is still true that we can learn from the methodologies and paradigms used in disciplines other than our own, whether that be in interdisciplinary work or in our own research.

How has the University supported your interests?

The poetry publishing project was supported by the Lord Rootes Memorial Fund, and Reinvention was founded with a grant from the Reinvention centre, and is now supported by IATL. Furthermore, an interview which a friend and I conducted with an academic in the English department was published by the Knowledge Centre, who helped us put together a webpage. There are many different organisations and people at Warwick who are interested in supporting new projects, it’s just a case of finding the right people to approach about the right idea.

What would you suggest to current Warwick students, how to spend their time at the Uni most efficiently?

If you are interested in starting a particular project, I think the most important thing is to focus on something you are interested in, and knowledgeable about, and try to find other people who share your enthusiasm. With a bit of knowledge of a specific field, and some contacts who are also committed, there is often the opportunity to produce something really interesting. If you prefer to dabble in a large number of things, that is just as valuable; it’s simply a question of how you want to spend your time.