A University Experience: Chapter 1 - Choices

Introduction

Hello and welcome to you all. New and returning visitors to my blog.

I'm not going to lie to you, I honestly wasn't sure what to write about this week. I figured it out about 5 seconds ago. As you can tell from the title, this should be a bit more structured and organised. I found that writing mini-series on my experiences works best for me, in terms of both quality and quantity of content. So I'm breaking down my 3 year university experience.

My hope is that it is educational if not entertaining.

My Motivation

My final year of college was back in 2017, I had a certificate that said Level 3 Subsidiary Diploma in Computing and a part time job in retail. After college, I said that I was going to take a break. It was an idea that someone else put there actually. A group of friends were saying how we'd never actually taken a break from education and this was an opportunity to do what we wanted. So I took up more hours at work, meaning I was there 4 days a week from 6am to 2pm. The initial waking up was a killer, but I could meet up with friends in the afternoon and it felt like a whole other day.

I did a bit of travelling to Los Angeles, France, Spain and Poland in that time. I saw bands that I liked and I could do those kind of things on a last minute notice. Life for me was decent, I didn't feel like I was missing out on anything.

It was my brother moving out of home that shifted my perspective. He's 3 years younger than me and he got this once in a lifetime opportunity to move in with 2 of his friends. What got me was that it wasn't some tiny apartment that they could barely afford. They had a nice house that was near to town, they had a garden and would often throw barbecues or have friends meet for drinks at their place. I sat there with a fair bit of jealousy, thinking how I was in the same job, how I hadn't done this or that. I actually started feeling pretty shit about my situation. I thought the grass was greener on the other side, I found out that I was wrong. I'll explain that later.

It's been said since, that my brother moving out was the launchpad that I needed to get to where I am now. It's that same sibling rivalry that is making my brother question if he should go to university or change career.

I do feel weird that it took my brother doing his own thing to make me realise that I wanted more than what I had. My thinking was that he was 3 years younger than me, so I should be 3 years ahead. That right there is total bullshit. Everyone moves along at their own pace and you shouldn't feel bad for not making leaps and bounds.

Looking at my options

I started to think about what I could do. University was one of the last things to join that table. With my brother moved out, I immediately thought about getting a place of my own. It would be harder because I wouldn't be moving in with friends, but it was a possibility. I thought about going into management and getting more responsibility that way. In the same train of thought, I looked into changing jobs, changing career. I even toyed with the idea of working abroad. It was then that I looked at university. But what course would I do, what would I study? I got out my old college work and I enjoyed looking back over it. Remembering how overwhelming Autodesk 3DS Max felt when I first looked at it. I actually found my first attempt at a lightsaber handle, a barrel, a chest and what I think was meant to be a car?? It looked more like a misshapen blob, but who's to say it's not a car.

I remember sitting down with my Mum and saying I think I want to give this a go. I told her that I wasn't sure that I'd be any good at it, I hadn't touched 3D in about 4 years. It was a guarantee that I would be the oldest person on the course by a few years and I could very easily make myself look like an idiot. As it turns out, that wasn't the case.

What if I don't get the grade? What if I get part of the way through and don't like it? What if I'm not good enough? What if? The advice my Mum gave me was this: No matter the outcome, you will have learnt something. If you don't like it, then you can always drop out and you will have learnt that you don't want to make games. That alone will be worth the money you put into it. You can always choose something else. On the other hand, if you find you do like it. Then great! You'll have found something that you enjoy doing and you can make a career out of it, if that's what you want.

You won't lose anything by trying.

Choosing a University

With that in mind, I applied to as many universities with game design courses as I could. I knew that I wanted to make something that people would see when they play a game. Whether it's a character, vehicle, environment, prop or something else.. I like the idea that I can point to something and say I helped make this or I did that.

From this thought, I narrowed my searching to art oriented courses.

I applied to Southampton Uni, Portsmouth, a couple in London and then I came across a course based in Liverpool. When I applied to Liverpool, I already had a couple come back as unsuccessful. So I sent that off thinking it would probably come back as nothing. I thought that until I got the offer. I got a positive result from Liverpool and one of the London universities that I had applied to when I chose to accept Liverpool. I was holding out hope for Portsmouth as I had a couple of friends that moved out that way, only I didn't hear back from them until I got a phone call midway through my first week at Liverpool. Turns out they accepted me onto their course but never sent the acceptance letters or emails to me. The call was to ask where I was, as I was missing lessons.

With Liverpool and London being the only options I knew about, I weighed them against eachother: London would be the most well known when applying to games companies that are based abroad. It would also be the larger of the 2 courses. Meaning more students to a lecturer. The price of accommodation in London is nuts and student loans don't cover nearly as much as they should. Liverpool on the other hand was sold to me as a smaller class with a handful of specialist lecturers to teach art, 2D and 3D game design, 3D modelling. Meaning that I could have more time with a lecturer, ask any questions I might have and not feel rushed. The course would begin with creating a boardgame, to building a balanced game in the Unreal Engine without using a single line of code.

That made my decision pretty easy.

I often get asked why I chose to go all the way to Liverpool when I have Bournemouth Arts University on my doorstep. My answer is because Liverpool isn't on my doorstep. I wanted the full university experience, moving away, learning something new, meeting new people and staying out stupidly late. Bournemouth Uni isn't far from where I live, so I would have gone there from home. Only I wouldn't have been in the thick of it like many students that moved to study there. I wouldn't have seen it as the big change that I wanted in order to match my brother moving out.

The next chapter is going to be on Accommodation, I was going to write about it here but trust that I have plenty to say about finding a place in Liverpool as a student. Thanks for reading this far! Please feel free to take a look at my projects. Or if it's out already, the next chapter.