| Description | Interview with Sarah Henry who has just graduated with a first class degree in English and French with a distinction in spoken French, recorded on the 4 July 2001, by Jennifer Carter
Transcript of Interview :
C So, first of all, many congratulations, Sarah, super degree, well done you.
H Thank you very much.
C I know Aberdeen's obviously been for you, in some ways, a great success, academically at least, can you tell me why you came here? What drew you in the first place?
H My main thing was I wanted to be able to do French and English combined and I applied to do that at Newcastle, but I didn't get in, to the joint honours ,and I decided anyway that I'd like to stay in Scotland, which would give me more flexibility if I changed my mind, and my Mum had gone to Aberdeen, in the '60's and I decided that she had such great reports of it, that I'd go there. And staying at home wasn't really something I wanted to do I wanted to break free a bit. I'm not particularly keen on Edinburgh.
C Edinburgh's home is it?
H No, Glasgow's home
C Glasgow is home.
H Edinburgh was a bit frosty. Whenever I came to Aberdeen Uni. the staff were always really friendly, always really liked the attitude of them, just a really friendly atmosphere.
C So you visited the University before you enrolled did you?
H Yes I did, I came up with the School Liaison in my fifth year at school and we had a wee tour round.
C Just on your own, or with friends from school?
H There were about twenty of us who came up and about ten of us came to the University.
C Goodness, we must have done a good job.
H Absolutely, sold it well.
C Which was the school, may I ask?
H It was Craigholme School
C Oh yes, I know that one, very nice school, where - did they have the lovely red blazers in your day or did that come afterwards?
H No, I was still on the brown. Yes, my sister was on the red blazers, but by the time I left it was still brown.
C Right. So Craigholme brought you to Aberdeen, and having got here what sort of first impressions did you have, do you remember? Was it an impression of friendliness you said, but of course it's a very small city compared with Glasgow?
H It is, yes. I felt it was much less cosmopolitan than Glasgow.
C City or University?
H City. The University was great because you would see the same faces and that was kind of reassuring, because you were going away and you moved into halls and you knew nobody, because all my friends from school were in different halls, which was quite good in the end, because I still saw them but I didn't…
C You didn't sort of cluster as a Craigholme group?
H Yes, but the University, I especially liked the Study Skills week.
C That's interesting, yes.
H We were the first year to have that and although I didn't necessarily learn that much from the courses, I met a lot of people from different faculties, it was really good to meet lots of people, you kind of saw them for the next four or five years around and you'd still say 'Hi' which was good.
C That's very nice yes. A lot of people have said to me that the course was pretty useless except for the IT component. Did you find that?
H I would have said so too, yes. I'd done IT skills at school, but it was nice have them refreshed. I still kept the booklet and kept using it up until my last year: 'How do I do that again?' Dig out the Study Skills leaflet. So that was good.
C Right. So which sort of degree did you do, because there are now four year and five year patterns for the joint honours aren't there?
H I did the five year. I did two years here and then for my third year I went to Rennes in Brittany and I was student over there for a year and then came back to do my honours courses here. Because I decided that the four year course would be more challenging because you have to do course work for Aberdeen while you are away.
C While you were abroad.
H And I wanted it to be purely improving my French and not having to focus on doing that as well as course work.
C How did the two subjects marry, did they go well together or was it always the case of sort of splitting you down the middle?
H Oh definitely not because I tended to do more linguistics and language courses than literature, I found that what I could use, I tried to pick my courses so that they would mingle well and marry well and in the end I felt that I made good decisions in that one subject helped the other, it halved my work load.
C No, that is interesting and I think it is one of the strengths of the system that you can, as it were, construct the pattern that suits you.
H Absolutely.
C Good. Anything stand out in either English or French, in the way of the sort of teaching you received? Good people, bad people, or was it uniformly good or…?
H I think pretty much good. I especially liked the French Department because the classes were so much smaller and you really get to know the staff and you feel comfortable with them and you can approach them. English, just because of the nature of the Department, it is so big, that a lot of people never meet the Head of Department, I mean there are several staff who - I don't even recognise their names, so it's a shame from that point of view because it's not friendly or approachable but the teaching was still excellent.
C Was fine, yes.
H Absolutely excellent.
C So even in first year you would have had, I suppose, in English, tutorials, would you? With fairly small numbers of students?
H Tutorials had about 15 people in them.
C Gosh, that's quite big isn't it?
H Yes, that's big, but lectures were in the MacRobert Lecture Theatre and stuffed full of people.
C 300 or so people.
H People that you never got to meet and still don't know who they are. There were people graduating with me that I'd never seen before in English.
C Yes, I suppose the French group which is what, I suppose 30, 40?
H There were about 30 of us in French.
C So that's a very nice little family yes.
H And you know them all really, really well, because you've shared so much about going abroad and you've all kept in contact.
C Yes, how did that work out academically for you, taking this year in which you were concentrating wholly on one side of your degree, I mean did that make you feel that the English was slipping or… how did you keep in touch with English while you were immersed in French?
H Well what you do is, well I found I was desperate to read English, because I was speaking French, listening to French, doing French essays, French lectures: I was desperate to read English literature. So I think I read more English literature in my year in France than I ever read in the other four years, so it was basically that and English is not the sort of subject where you lose touch with it, it's not like Maths, where you'll forget how to do some sort of sum - well, I don't know, it's so long since I've done Maths - but it's not the kind of thing where you lose factual information because it's not like that, so I didn't find it a problem.
C No. So that was not a problem. And how did France work out for you, was it a good experience, did you enjoy it?
H Oh, it was brilliant. I was really, really apprehensive about going, just not knowing anybody and thinking: 'Gosh, people are going to think I'm really stupid because I can't speak French' and just really quite an unnerving experience. The first few weeks were exhausting, just living in another culture, but coming back I felt that I was a lot more confident, in that if I could live abroad for a year - I know I was sort of molly coddled to some extent, because I was within a system and most of the administration was done for me - but nonetheless I came back and I felt that 'if I can do that, I can do anything.'
C Great. Were you a university student, or were you teaching in a school?
H I was a university student.
C So that's harder in some ways, isn't it? Because you're pitched right into somebody else's system and their courses.
H And doing the kind of same level of course that you're doing in Aberdeen, but you're doing it in a foreign language. So fortunately, you don't have to pass the exams which is such a relief! But I did some History courses, Linguistics and Cinema, you could do whatever you liked.
C You could do what you liked.
H So just learning about French culture, it was great.
C Rennes isn't a place I know at all, is it a nice city to live in?
H It's lovely. It's beautiful, it's kind of similar in size to Aberdeen, small cobbled streets with wooden houses with timber and it's got the market on Sunday morning where you can go and get fresh fruit and vegetables and flowers. It's really nice.
C Did you live in a student residence there?
H Yes, I was in the halls of residence which - it's taking me back to first year. It was like regression!
C Grottier or better?
H Fewer facilities, much more primitive. Halls here - I really enjoyed living in halls, it was great. But I found in France it was much more… much more difficult to make friends, they were much more closed. I think that's one of things I remember, that and the cooking facilities, they were absolutely atrocious.
C In the sense of exiguous and dirty or just exiguous?
H Just non-existent.
C Just non-existent, so you had to go out and buy a camping gas and that sort of thing did you?
H Yes, or eat out which is what we did most of the time.
C Or eat out, which, of course, is a pleasure in France, yes.
H Yes, it's not a problem really!
C Interesting, good. So you were saying that when you came to Aberdeen you were in halls, what, just for one year or…?
H Yes, I was in Johnston Hall for first year and then I moved into Aberdeen University accommodation in St Peter's Street and after that branched out on my own, renting private accommodation. Halls was a great experience though, most of my friends still were primarily Halls people.
C And they were primarily the ones you roomed next to or just anybody?
H Most of them were ones I roomed next to and some of them were ones I met at dinner because it was a very social event. You went down at five o'clock and everybody chatted about what they'd done. Especially Sunday morning brunch, what happened on Saturday the nigh before, who met who, it was very…
C Good gossip in other words?
H Absolutely. Sitting in the coffee room, just 'you'll never believe what I heard!', it's great.
C And hall was, in those days, virtually all freshers was it?
H Oh gosh yes. There was, I think, one girl in my floor of twelve who wasn't a fresher.
C Gosh. So that's good and bad, isn't it? On the one hand, it's super that you can mingle so, without threat, but on the other hand, you don't have the advantage of the sort of mixed university community?
H No, you don't have the mixture, but I think anyone who is above first year would go absolutely mad with the noise and the parties and just the general immaturity of the place! Oh, it was great, but I think if I had to moved into halls now, I would strangle people. It's not your priority in first year to work.
C No, right, that's interesting. You found the first year fairly easy academically, did you?
H Yes, I'd done Sixth Year Studies, so I found I was almost repeating stuff that I'd done, but I thought that was an advantage: you could find your feet, you could learn other things, your focus wasn't on scrabbling to keep up.
C What did you take as your third subject in first year, or perhaps third and fourth?
H Philosophy.
C Philosophy? How did that go?
H I found it really hard. It was Moral Philosophy I did, I enjoyed it, but the lectures were at nine o'clock in the morning.
C Lots of effort.
H So I didn't attend that many…
C Oh, I see yes.
H That might have been why I found it hard! No, I only had to take it in first year because I made up the credits with French Language and French Literature, so I didn't need…
C So you only needed the one outside subject, yes. A lot of people, long afterwards, remember Philosophy as the thing they take away most from university. I don't know if that will be true for you, probably not?
H I only did it for a year so, probably not even a year, I think it was just a semester.
C And it's gone already has it?
H It has. I've still got the books, which are interesting, but kind of unread now.
C Fair enough! So, you're main social base in first year was hall was it, or did you make friends through other connections as well?
H Mainly halls. I've not ever been a member of a club or society.
C So you've gone right through university without ever joining anything?
H Absolutely, which is really bad for your CV, but, you know… I'm not really a society person, I don't have any hobbies as such. So mainly that, a few friends from English and French lectures but primarily halls.
C Halls and then the flats and all the connections through that?
H Basically yes.
C So what did you do in your spare time, other than sitting drinking coffee or other beverages?
H Went to the cinema a lot.
C Was that part of your course, did you take a cinema course, or did you do that out of interest?
H I did that out of interest. That was before… in first year there wasn't all that stuff down the beach, the beach leisure all that stuff down there, that was in second year all that came in, the cinema, Amadeus and all that. First year was more going into town and just really… shopping I have to say was my main hobby.
C How extraordinary!
H Yes, shopping, a great hobby of mine!
C How amazing, yes.
H Terribly shallow.
C What did you do in the vacations, did you work for money?
H I worked, yes.
C But not at all in term time?
H No, I did actually. I didn't work in first year, because I'd worked in school and I used that money. But second year I had a job in a shoe shop in town and then in the last two years of my course I've been working in Costa, the coffee shop, so I'm still working there now, I just worked there over the holidays and any useful spare shifts I could get mid-week or at the weekend, because the grants don't cover even your accommodation any more.
C No. If I could ask without sounding too intrusive, I mean, what about the financial side, was it a struggle, did you feel you were sort of pushed for money?
H It was never a struggle in that I always had enough money to pay my rent and to eat and stuff like that. It was more that you wanted to be able to go out, visit friends, like other friends at different universities, and that was more of a struggle, but that's more quality of life, it was never a push to survive, but I got the full maintenance grant, in fact I never took out a loan until my last year. I didn't get any support from my parents either, so I was just working.
C Right, so you were absolutely on your own, on your grant and…?
H Working.
C And you took a loan of how big?
H I took the full loan this year which was…
C One thousand, two hundred, something of that order?
H It could be, I really can't remember, it went as soon as I put it in the bank. No, I found the final year was quite a struggle financially. For some reason you seem to go out a lot more - maybe it's the feeling that you're not going to see these people again.
C Sure, you will though, you will. Some of them will be friends for life.
H I hope so, yes.
C So you're graduating with a debt of what, a couple of thou', something like that?
H Yes, couple of thousand, nothing major, a bit of an overdraft, but nothing huge. But I'm lucky in that I got the maintenance grant. My sister, who's at Glasgow University, she started three years after me, obviously same family, same situation, but she gets no support at all.
C So she's got to maintain herself wholly on loans and what she can earn?
H Yes.
C That's tough, yes.
H It is much tougher, yes. But she's managing, but she stays at home as well, so…
C And was that part of her decision? Did she stay at home, partly for financial reasons?
H Partly for financial reasons, which is a shame I think, because I wouldn't of enjoyed staying at home half as much, I don't think. I don't think I would have had same experience, I wouldn't have met all my friends.
C Which would have been a big minus?
H I'd have met other ones I suppose, you'd never had known what you'd missed but it's a shame that people don't have that freedom.
C Thinking about your friends, and obviously you must have met a range of people while you were here, I mean, were a lot of them pushed for money, was it an issue among you, was it something people talked about?
H Some people definitely had financial difficulties. I know people who are struggling to leave university - struggling to graduate actually because they haven't paid off fines.
C Yes, you can't graduate till you've paid all your bills, can you?
H So, they've got no way of getting that money, and they've been trying to pay it off for the entire period, it's not as if they've just ignored their debts.
C No, no.
H So I'm hoping my friend graduates on Friday, as a doctor, but who knows? He might not be allowed to.
C Well that would be ludicrous, if you think what it costs to train a doctor.
H Absolutely, there's something wrong with the system. No, a few people have had problems, but most people, again it's quality of life, wanting to be able to do things, but can't, stuff like that. A few people didn't actually graduate, because they didn't have the money for all the…
C Really, how many people do you know like that?
H Two or three, just because of the, you say to yourself: 'Well, graduation day, the ceremony or the ball' a lot of people think the ball would be more fun!
C More fun!
H And you're going to get the graduation certificate anyway.
C Anyway, yes, so why sit in a hot, sweaty Elphinstone Hall? Yes. It is a shame though, isn't it?
H It is, yes. I was lucky in that I managed to get an overdraft.
C What are you going on to do, have you got a career planned?
H Not a career as such, I've got a job working as a lectrice in a university in France, the University of Pau, near the Pyrennes.
C Well, done, yes. The other end of France from Rennes?
H Absolutely, yes. The sunny end. So I'm doing that for a year and then I'm coming back, and I've applied to do a PhD at Aberdeen as well.
C Oh good.
H So I've got my place, I'm just waiting to hear if I've got funding.
C Oh excellent, well I hope you have, perhaps our paths will cross again in some way, who knows, when we're interviewing post-grads or something. Good. In the time you were at University, did you form any views about the kind of quality of the back-up the University gives, in all the different ways it should: like library provision, IT provision and also the welfare back-up, I don't know if any of that was ever relevant to you, but you know we have all these squads of counsellors and chaplains and regents and advisors and, you know?
H The welfare side, I never really needed it. If I had a problem I tended to turn to my family or my friends. Other than that - what were the other things you said, sorry?
C Well, I was thinking of the sort of two sides, on the welfare side you've got the chaplains and the Student Health - you were never ill obviously.
H I've used Student Health, and they were great.
C Yes, just in a routine way?
H I'd a kind of nervous breakdown at my dissertation.
C Did you?
H Well, I exaggerate, obviously, but just sheer exhaustion after handing it in. Ours were due in September, and then you…
C Of which year?
H Final year.
C So just before the final year begins?
H Just before your final year begins
C You've got to get the dissertation completed?
H So you've been working all summer, job and dissertation, and then all of a sudden you're straight back into university courses again and it's just you didn't have a summer break and you're up to high dough with panicking and being last minute, and I just couldn't cope and was tearful and stressed out, headaches, couldn't eat.
C Poor old you, so you went to Student Health in that situation and they were good, were they?
H They were fantastic.
C They'd obviously seen other people like it?
H Well, that's the thing, everyone, all my friends, pretty much had the same thing in their final year, be it finals, dissertation, essays. At one point everyone had a kind of 'freaked out' stage. Student Health were great, they were really understanding.
C That's a very interesting point, because not all universities have tame health services, you know, some of them just rely on local GPs.
H No, they were good, because I don't think other people would necessarily understand, I think they would think, 'oh you're just wanting an extension for an essay' but it's not, you really are just cracking up.
C Well, I'm delighted to see you made a good recovery.
H We all did.
C But on the more, sort of, nuts and bolts side, library facilities, computing facilities, all that sort of thing, was that all ok?
H Computing facilities, generally ok, odd occasions, when it was, clusters around weeks 8-10 there's rushes for computers and that can be a bit of a challenge, they crashed a few times but that's all right. Library facilities: very, very helpful staff, but sometimes, books.
C Just weren't there, no?
H It depends what your subject is. I find in literature there's an awful lot of stuff, but in language and linguistics, because the Linguistics Department was shut down, they haven't obviously been buying books, even though they're running courses, but under the guise of the French of English Departments, so that's not a priority for funding and you go in there and you want to write an essay or something and there's nothing available, or the stuff that's available was written in the early eighties and linguistic theory changes quite rapidly.
C That's very interesting, yes. Yes, it does.
H So you're twenty years out of date.
C So you're saying that you're coming back to do a PhD, would that be in that field then?
H It would, yes: 'use of slang in French' but there are facilities in… St Andrews, have a lot of information and Dr Fennell, who's the Head of English ,who would be one of my supervisors.
C Yes, she's a linguist of course, yes.
H Her and Dr Heskith of the French Department, but she lives in St Andrews and has access to the facilities down there, so she knows that she can always get books, it would be slightly on the sly perhaps I shouldn't be mentioning it.
C No, I was just thinking it's a very interesting example of the sort of shifts people are put to in Higher Education nowadays.
H Well, I emailed her, I checked the catalogue for St Andrews on the internet, and emailed Dr Fennell and said: 'can you bring these books up?'
C And so she did.
H So she did, it was quite a good way of doing it, but not the best situation in the world for Aberdeen, it's a shame.
C It's a great shame, yes.
H But you can't spend money on everything, can you?
C No, no. And obviously the Careers Service wasn't relevant to you or did you go and suss out other things before deciding to go for…
H Amusingly enough, I am the Careers Rep for the French Department.
C Ok, what does that involve?
H It involves putting notices on the board when they send them to me. I have never set foot in the Careers Department. Which is bad but it just wasn't…
C It just wasn't relevant to your life?
H No, I wanted to do further study and I got my job for next year for France through the Department, a simple arrangement so I didn't have to do any digging around.
C Ok, last question, big catch-all one and you may want to reflect a minute. In the time you've been here, have you been aware of any sort of, what one could describe as big changes in student attitude, you know, looking around among your friends and about the University generally? If you were to characterise this five years, is it the same now as when you came, or have there been changes which one could point to? I mean, for example, I mean this may not be a good example, but a lot of people who live locally in Old Aberdeen say students are getting worse and worse in their behaviour, 'they come back drunk from Amadeus every night and disturb us' and so on, I've no idea…
H I probably did that five years ago!
C Did you? Only for one year. So that's not a change, student, noisy behaviour has remained the same. Have there been other changes of any kind, people more worried about money, more focussed on their degrees?
H I think people are possibly more relaxed at the University. I don't know if it was the school I went to or if it was my year group, but I feel that we had a very much, the staff were teachers and we were students, and there was a kind of formal…
C Very big gap?
H You never called them…
C By their first names, for instance?
H There was a definite separation and you were reasonably formal with them.
C Craigholme was a fairly formal school I would guess?
H Yes, I would think so. But it wasn't just me, I think it was general, I would never dream of calling any of my tutors or lecturers by their first name, but I'm aware that people further down the University, people that I know, cousins, friends of cousins or whatever…
C Are now doing so? That's interesting.
H They're more, there's less of a gap between the two. More relaxed in attitude and I think people also expect to be guided a lot more than possibly we did. I think we expected to have to do things ourselves, to not to have to be spoon-fed and I think people now expect that a lot more.
C That's interesting, yes.
H 'Oh, this tutor didn't help me with this essay, he said to go and look at it for myself.' What sort of thing is that? I wouldn't think that they were there for that - I don't think the University is an extension of school, I see it as being a different leap on, but I think people more and more expect the same kind of school-type: you're given lecture notes, you learn the lecture notes, you regurgitate the lecture notes. I don't think they see it as private study half as much as we did maybe. But there are people even in my year group who did see it that way, I think that's generally a shift that's occurring.
C That's a very interesting one to pick up, because nobody else has said that to me, so that's very interesting, yes. And on the staff/student divide thing, I think first names is one of the indicators, but it's also attitudes in general, isn't it?
H I think we would fuss more. Mobile phones is another one. I went to France in third year and no one had a mobile phone. Came back from France and everybody had them!
C Walking around glued to their ears!
H I mean, I've got one now and I never thought I would. It's just become a necessity.
C For text messaging mainly or for chatting?
H Oh absolutely, text messaging.
C Mostly text messaging because it's easier and cheaper.
H It's easier and you can do it in lectures!
C Oh right, I hadn't though of that!
H I think that shows the kind of change, we would always - 'text messaging, phones, that's totally unnecessary, that's yuppyish.' Now one just does it, it's a way of life, the same way the phone at home is. Just general shifts but nothing hugely different I would have thought.
C Well that's been extremely interesting. Is there anything I haven't asked you that you would have liked to say?
H Not really, apart from that I really enjoyed my time here and I'm going to miss it.
C Well that's really nice to hear, thank you so much Sarah, it's been super talking to you.
H That's a pleasure.
C Thank you.
End of Interview
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