Tag Archives: Student Guide

Free welcome activities for students

If you’re wondering how to spend your time at the University of Kent, what would be fun and where to meet new people, then you’ll want to know about these free events open to all. Kent Sport and Kent Union hope you can join us to try something different at the University of Kent Canterbury campus through Welcome Week and beyond. Get a taste of Kent Sport at these free events and make the most of our Student Saver membership offer to stay active all year!

 Events are varied and include:

 Check out the full timetable of exciting free activities and just turn up and join in, membership not required.

 To get up to date with Kent Sport news and events, find UniKentSports on social media and visit the Kent Sport events calendar to see what else is on.

Arriva discounted bus tickets

 For students at our Medway campus, the cheapest way to commute to university is our Arriva Student Annual ticket. This ticket allows travel on any Arriva bus throughout Medway, Kent and East Sussex for the entire year.

The Universities at Medway work with Arriva to provide highly discounted bus tickets for both students and staff. Because of this, the student annual ticket is only £140. This works out as only 39p per day for travel all around the region!

 For information on how to apply, and the exclusive University of Kent promotional codes, please visit our Medway bus webpage.

Unirider discounted bus tickets

The cheapest way for Canterbury students to travel around the local area is the Stagecoach Unirider, which allows unlimited travel across Kent and East Sussex. The Unirider ticket is valid for the academic year and the discount is exclusive to University of Kent students.

 For the first two weeks of term, the Unirider will be available to buy from the Unibus parked on the lawn outside the Registry building on the Canterbury Campus between 10:00 and 16:00. It is also available to buy online from the Stagecoach website.

 Remember to purchase up to and including 1 October for the early bird discount of £180 for the academic year. This is a saving of 77% on the public price. After the 1 October, the price will change to £255 for the academic year.

 For more information about bus routes, timetables and discounts visit our Canterbury bus webpage.

Student Art Pass- a year of art for just £5

Art Fund are launching a scheme called Student Art Pass, allowing any full-time higher education student to engage with art and culture.

Explore world-class museums all over the UK and enjoy a year of endless inspiration with friends, for your studies, or just for you.

From the V&A and British Museum to Cardiff Castle and Jupiter Artland, a Student Art Pass brings you free access to over 240 museums, galleries and historic houses, and 50% off major exhibitions.

Student Art Pass membership costs £5 a year and includes access to recommendations on what to see, creative competitions and paid opportunities in the arts.

The Student Art Pass is available for £5 for a limited time (until 9 December) to all full-time students, get yours here.

Library and IT services- Autumn term update

More library study space

You’ll be pleased to know that while you have been away we have been busy creating 140 new study spaces in Block D of the Templeman Library by converting office space on Floors 2 and 3. The toilets in Block D are also getting a make-over and will be gender neutral! The work in D Block will be completed before the end of the year.

Easier finding and checking out of books

We have been working on LibrarySearch, making it easier to:

  • see if a book is available
  • see where it is held
  • request it from another University of Kent library

When the same book is held by the Templeman, Drill Hall or Tonbridge Centre Library we have combined them into one entry!

DVDs have moved

The DVD collection has moved location, but it is still on the ground floor of Block B. This is a result of consultation with the School of Arts about how best to place the DVDs and viewing stations to enable collection-related academic activities throughout the year. Watch this space for some talks about our film collection in the Autumn Term.

Study Hubs

There have been some exciting changes to Study Hubs over the Summer. We’ve got a new study space opening in the Park Wood Student Hub complex, Darwin’s small PC room had a make-over and Senate will be opening as a dedicated Postgraduate study hub!

Professor Read co-organises International Conference in Turin

Professor Peter Read is co-organising an International Conference, Métamorphoses d’Apollinaire, this autumn at the University of Turin and the Museum of Modern Art, Turin. The conference, running on 22-23 October 2018, marks the centenary of the death of French war-poet and art critic Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918) and will bring together speakers from France, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Lebanon, Switzerland, UK and USA.

The conference will also include the opening of an exhibition on Picasso and his circle at Turin’s Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art and a professional performance of Apollinaire’s “surrealist drama” The Breasts of Tiresias, first published in 1918,  at Turin’s Teatro Stabile. Peter is co-organising the conference with Professor Franca Bruera (University of Turin) and Professor Laurence Campa (University of Paris X-Nanterre). The conference is co-sponsored by the Centre for Modern European Literature, University of Kent.

Lent by the National Gallery 1997 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/L01895

Peter Read and Picasso in Paris

Professor Peter Read is giving two public lectures at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris to accompany the exhibition “Picasso Bleu et rose” (Picasso Blue and Pink), which will run from 18 September 2018 to 6 January 2019 and include 240 works of art. Peter’s first talk, on Picasso and the Circus, will be at 3pm on Saturday 13 October in the restored “fumoir”, or Smoking Room, of the museum, which is a former railway station and hotel, opened in 1900. Peter’s talk is part of the “Picasso Circus Weekend” taking place in the museum that Saturday and Sunday, with a big top in the nave of the building and performances by trapeze artists and an “extreme dance” company from New York.  Peter’s second talk, at 12 noon on Friday 2nd December, in the Musée d’Orsay’s lecture theatre, will be on representations of Paris in Picasso’s work during his early years in the city, from 1900 to 1906.

Peter Read has also contributed several texts to the catalogue of the Cubism exhibition opening at the Centre Pompidou in Paris on 17 October, and has contributed to a Dictionnaire du cubisme being published to accompany that exhibition.

 

Autumn Short Courses Programme at Tonbridge Centre

The Tonbridge Centre has launched its latest programmes of short courses. The programmes are  designed to provide study opportunities for personal interest or self-development, among like-minded people and without formal assessment. Courses include weekday and Saturday lectures, Study Days and weekly courses at Kent’s Tonbridge Centre and Medway Campus. Subjects include French Painting and Culture, Art and Politics, The Treaties of 1919-23, The Cambridge Spies, The Modern Commonwealth, the literature of Zola and Maupassant, and The Grand Tour.

 

Full details of the programnmes can be found by visiting www.kent.ac.uk/tonbridge

 

A staff discount is available on some courses: please call 01732 352316 in office hours or email tonbridgeadmin@kent.ac.uk for further information.

 

 

Antonio Lázaro-Reboll co-edits collection on Jess Franco

Dr Antonio Lázaro-Reboll, Senior Lecturer in Hispanic Studies in the Department of Modern Languages, has just published a new collection: The Films of Jess Franco (Wayne State University Press, 2018), co-edited with Ian Olney, Associate Professor at the York College of Pennsylvania.

Jesús ‘Jess’ Franco (1930–2013) was a Spanish filmmaker, who directed around 160 films. He is best known as the director of jazzy, erotically charged horror movies featuring mad scientists, lesbian vampires, and women in prison, but he also dabbled in a multitude of genres from comedy to science fiction to pornography. Although he built his career in the ghetto of low-budget exploitation cinema, he managed to create a body of work that is deeply personal, frequently political, and surprisingly poetic.

Arguing that his multifaceted, paradoxical cinema cannot be pinned down by any one single approach, the new collection features twelve original essays on Franco’s movies, written from a variety of different perspectives. It opens up fresh avenues for academic inquiry by considering his oeuvre from a range of viewpoints, including transnational film studies, cinephilia studies, and star studies. The book effectively meets the challenge of Franco’s multidimensional cinema with multifaceted criticism – attentive to the shifting historical contexts, modes of production and consumption, and formats of Franco’s work – that supplements current Franco scholarship and suggests exciting new directions for its further development.

The Films of Jess Franco seeks to address the scholarly neglect of this legendary cult director and to broaden the conversation around the director’s work in ways that will be of interest to fans and academics alike.

For more details, please see the publisher’s page here.

 

Tips for starting university

Do your reading

Learning at university is way more independent than in college/sixth form. You have signed up for the degree and have therefore committed to managing your own workload throughout your three years at university.

This may suit those with different learning styles as it’s less regimented than school and nobody is going to check whether you have done the reading, but it may be fairly apparent during a two hour seminar if you have nothing to say.

So my advice is to occasionally check those further reading lists and get ahead on the topics you enjoy early otherwise when the deadlines start piling up, you will wish you’d done the extra reading to help you get the higher grade.

Check out the study support  on offer to help you through university life.

Get organised

The word independence pretty much covers all aspects of uni life. Whether you’re already quite mature and independent or have no idea how to start a washing machine, university definitely forces you to take some responsibility as you go into adulthood.

This may seem daunting but its ultimately really good for propelling you into working life-  but don’t worry you have three years to grasp it.

Budget for Fresher’s, don’t get carried away with the fancy dress and offers, because after Fresher’s Week you’ll find many more excuses to go out the following weeks. Don’t forget your student loan needs to last a whole term! Check out our budgeting tips. 

Also, depending on your course, you may have to buy a few expensive books but before you get onto Amazon check out the university library (I made the mistake of buying the entire reading list when half of the books were available in the library…annoying). And Amazon Prime is half price for students!

Stay healthy

Initially it seems great waking up whenever you want and having whatever you want for dinner, and really it is I mean who complains about freedom? However health is always forgotten and let’s be honest, eating well is at the back of your mind during fresher’s however fresher’s flu is no myth, and once you get ill at some point you’ll be sick of pizzas and pot noodles and all you’ll want is your mum’s famous stew.

So, if cooking is totally unfamiliar to you, before heading to university ask your parents for some tips, check out a few simple recipes and learn off your housemates because you may as well build your immune system up, until exam time comes and you’re sitting in the library with a family size bar of chocolate for dinner.

Check out the University’s wellbeing services and advice.

Utilise your time

When you start university the first term is all about getting to grips with your course, buying books, checking out the expectations and deadlines and aside from that, going out with your flatmates (nearly every night) and embracing uni culture.

However, once you have been to every event and that initial novelty wears off or fresher’s flu attacks you, you may realise that you have a lot of free time outside of your course. Now, of course this depends on your subjects, contact hours but generally first year is the time to utilise those empty hours in the evenings with volunteering, attending extra seminars/workshops, finding a student job or joining and committing to a society.

Weekends are commonly quiet during the day and after a term of Netflix marathons, maybe it’s time you explored the opportunities Kent Union offers, check your emails and the Student Guide and discover societies’ socials or if you’re already part of one, start committing those extra hours. Not only do these things look great on your CV but you meet so many different people who share that same interest as you, and who you may not have met if you hadn’t joined!

Enjoy it

There may be a few ups and downs, moments when you are homesick, feel stressed with your work load and you just want some home cooked food. But, ultimately uni life is great and once you’re settled everything will be fine so embrace the challenges and have fun!
Written by recent Kent graduate Sophia Cheraitia.