By Sydney Johnson
Since moving I have a new appreciation for this country and the opportunities it’s given me to step outside my comfort zone.
At 22 years old, I made the conscious decision to move abroad for my master’s degree.
I always wanted to further my education after college, but the price for that in the United States would make that difficult.
In the US it costs $71,140 a year for a Master’s in Arts. Multiply that by four years and I was looking at over a quarter million dollars in loans.
As someone who was on a full ride scholarship all of college, I knew the only way this was going to happen was by leaving the country.
I have always been a world traveler at heart. Deep down I knew that I wanted to experience that feeling again for post-grad, the feeling of culture shock, and pushing myself to experience something new.
So, then began my journey of looking for grad schools outside of the country.
I talked with my mom about places in the UK that would be viable for studying journalism. Kent, London, Leeds, the list went on.
I spent months working with an academic advisor who helped me write out my personal statement and update my CV for my application to all three schools. It was almost as if I was applying for a job.
In December of 2022, I had heard back from all three schools and discovered that I had got into all of my choices. I was enthralled; there was no looking back.
I narrowed down my list of schools between Kent, London and Cardiff. All three university programs seemed to fit my needs.
Kent seemed like a nice place, but too far from an actual city to be able have a metropolitan experience. London looked like the obvious choice because well, it’s London! But it seemed a bit too pricey and defeated the purpose moving to the UK for a cheaper alternative.
When I came across Cardiff University and searched where it was located – in Wales, I was very curious because I had never heard of Wales before, only England – much to my own embarrassment.
I typed in the search bar on Google: ‘Cardiff’ to see what the city looked like and was shown pictures of dragons, the Welsh rugby team, and Welsh cakes.
I didn’t know what a Welsh cake was. But I was up for anything at that point. After months of researching, planning, and talking with different advisors, I decided on Cardiff. It was the cheapest option for me, offered more scholarships and had the most to offer with its MA International Journalism course.
As the plane took off, I thought ‘Wow, what have I gotten myself into?’ A year and a half later, I’ve now successfully completed my program and now live in a city an hour away from Cardiff, and here’s what I learned about myself and my experience.
My grad program actually pushed me to do practice instead of learning through lecture
Our education system in the States is vastly different from how it is taught in the UK. It was a huge adjustment.
My program was taught across two semesters (Autumn and Spring) from the end of September to the beginning of June and combined core and elective modules. At the very end we had to submit a dissertation in the form of a multimedia, documentary, or radio project.
Master’s programs in the UK are usually for a year, versus 2 to 4 years in the States. I had to remind myself that I would be learning and consuming a lot of information, but it would be at a faster pace.
Some of the modules that I took during my master’s program included ‘Foreign News Reporting’, ‘International News Production’, and ‘In the Editor’s Chair’. It really homed in on preparing a trainee journalist to ready themselves for what it’s like in the journalism sphere.
Most of the lecturers on my program were very insightful but still pushed us to think outside the box.
There were days where they would tell us to find a story by literally going out on the street and interviewing people, asking questions, reaching out to groups, being a real journalist, really.
One thing our lecturer always told us is that in order to be a true journalist, you need to define your story by the following acronym: WWWWWH (Who, What, When, Where, Why, How).
It’s funny now, looking back now at my past self who would always look at my lecturer funny when he would strike my stories in red pen if it didn’t include the ‘why’ aspect for my news angle. Now, I completely understand what he meant and now my writing has been sharper than ever.
Other days we would run our news website, InterCardiff, and switch between roles of being an editor or a writer. All of us at some point had the responsibility of publishing a story on the site or overseeing writers for the week with a focus on finding their news angle.
What I liked the most about my grad program was that I was actually doing what a professional journalist would do on the job. I was going out, filming, interviewing, learning the basics of news writing. It seemed like good, core information that I still remember and put into practice since finishing my program.
Compared to my undergrad back in the States, nothing could have prepared me for how intense and demanding the course was going to be when it came to doing everything and anything an international journalist would do, in under a year.
However, I’m thankful to have even been given the opportunity to partake in an academic journey like the one I did at Cardiff University.
Learning about Welsh culture, attending university here, trying new restaurants, and making new friends have all been such wonderful experiences because I’ve adapted so well to all of it.
Now, I’m living in Bristol which is just a short hour and a half train ride from Cardiff. I work full time as a digital content editor at a content agency and I am a regional development officer for the West England and Wales Region for the National Student Television Association.
I plan to continue residing in the UK for now as a communications professional and freelance journalist. I feel so much more open to trying new things now, since moving to this country.
