Eleanor, French and Linguistics

“Hi!  I’m Eleanor, I study French and Linguistics at Magdalen and I’m from Brighton.

At Oxford I’ve love getting involved in university drama and when I got to Oxford, I started college rowing which is something I’d never done before or thought I would ever do!”

What advice would you give to someone considering applying to Oxford?

My advice for someone applying to Oxford is to choose a course that you really love. Look at how the course is taught, assessed and what kind of things you will be studying. Your degree is your main focus at Oxford and so it is really important to make sure that you choose a course you think you’d really enjoy. There is no ‘typical Oxford student’ and your experience at Oxford can be anything you want it to be. There are so many societies and clubs to get involved in and so many amazing people to meet – never be worried that you won’t fit in, because there is literally something for everyone!

What is your favourite thing about your course?

For me, the best thing about my course is the diverse range of things I get to study. In French, I’ve studied several periods of literature from medieval to modern and everything in between, as well as translating texts from lots of different periods and genres. Linguistics is also amazingly diverse, in one week I can be writing an essay on the meaning of words whilst also looking at sounds on spectrograms and writing transcriptions into the International Phonetic Alphabet (which I discovered upon coming to Oxford). Due to the breadth of my course I was able to study lots of different areas within my subject. Now,  going into my second year, I’ve got the opportunity to focus on things that I am really interested in and tailor my degree to the topics within my subject I am most fascinated by.

What is your day to day life like?

At Oxford, my day to day life can vary greatly. I am studying French and Linguistics, so I have quite a lot of contact hours (tutorials, classes & lectures for both subjects). A typical day could include getting up for lectures, having coffee with a friend, having a couple of contact hours and then working in one of Oxford’s amazing libraries. In the evening, I love cooking so will often make dinner with friends or go to hall. Some nights my friends and I will have a film night, to pubs and bars, go clubbing or I will pull the odd all-nighter in the library for an essay. Some days are busier than others depending on how much work and contact hours I have, but I always find time to do things I enjoy. I love walking around University parks, hanging out with friends in their rooms or simply having a lie in if my lectures don’t start until the afternoon!