I am a Bangor University Alumni and my masters course doesn’t exist anymore.
Let me explain.
My sister graduated two years after I did, and despite my previous attempts to reach out to my lecturer and to the other students, I hadn’t heard anything from my university in a long while. I was also at a point in my business journey where I was looking for additional opportunities to gain some more experience, so I looked on my university website for my course. I typed in ‘publishing’ and clicked enter.
Sorry, no courses were found.
Strange. I searched sitewide.
Undergraduate modules, an article written about the first publication, webinars and the like from 4 yours ago…no postgraduate course.
When did it close? Was there another year after the students I spoke to? Was there any interest from undergraduates at all? Why didn’t my lecturer contact me to speak with them again and give them my insights? Why didn’t my lecturer reach out to see how I was doing?
I texted my lecturer again – we haven’t spoken since I graduated, so maybe now was a good time to reconnect.
No response.
All my other contacts in and around Bangor had either left or weren’t in contact with me anymore. As far as I was concerned, my postgraduate course was finished.
This got me thinking about other postgraduate courses in other universities – I’ve met a few people who were in publishing courses in other universities and I enjoyed watching their journey through publishing education. Then I started to feel like I was missing out. Those other courses were providing marketing experience, and work opportunities, and I was stuck being the guinea pig for a new course that wasn’t even available anymore. I felt cheated for being loyal to my university.
This was an overreaction, of course. I should have looked around at other universities that offered better courses, but I didn’t know I wanted to do publishing until I was a part of the course anyway. As I keep saying, I wouldn’t change the decision I made to take the course at Bangor – it has made me the publisher I am today, for better or for worse.
I do wish I had more opportunity to talk to publishing people, both who are beginning their journey and who are well on their way. Being in Wales is definitely limiting, but the Society of Young Publishers has given me opportunity to connect with publishing hopefuls all over the UK!