Hello! I am an international student from Latvia. I came to UEA in order to study Film and Television Production, as it was highly rated in the QS World University Rankings. The course includes both a theoretical part and a practical one – which, in my opinion, is a good combination, since everything you have learned from the book, you have the opportunity to put into practice. All supervisors and teachers are passionate about their subjects of study. All students could order private lessons or tutorings with them. What was unexpected and nice to see is that even the school staff, such as technical specialists, are trying to do the best for the students. They invited us to every possible shoot at the university so that we could get as much experience as possible. In addition, they are always ready to help. During our summative submission period, we needed to submit a short film, but we weren’t sure about its look, so we came to the technicians to ask their opinion. They not only gave us tips on what we could fix but also went with us to the editing room and showed us a lot of techniques and tips in Adobe Premiere Pro that made our short film much better.

Despite the fact that I really liked the material of our course, I didn’t have enough study hours. As an art school, we have the least number of study hours at the university. The total number of seminar hours is about 5.5 hours per week. I firmly believe that this is not enough, considering how much I pay (almost £20,000 per year). I think this is the biggest problem because in the field of film and television you can spend time on your own studying theory, but you can’t come to the set and be able to shoot without a lot of practice beforehand, that’s why I think UEA could provide more hours of practice for film and a course of television production.

Speaking about student life at UEA, I am sure that everyone would find their place here. The university has a huge number of sports clubs and societies that you can join. During the first year I joined a volleyball club, and the people there quickly became my best friends, and to be honest, they seem like family to me. In addition, the UEA holds a Ziggurat Challenge every week. Ziggurat Challenge is a competition between university schools such as BIO, MED, AMA, etc. The spirit of rivalry between schools makes each week’s competitions really exciting and is a good way to get school representatives to get together and engage in fun sports. Also, the university has the DSD( Do Something Different) program, which holds events twice per week, allowing students to try a lot of unusual things for free.

In my opinion, UEA is a school for different people from different parts of the world. As a foreign student, I really admire getting to know different people from all nationalities and places, and I feel welcome here.

This year I finished my first year at UEA. I must admit that before coming here I had no idea whom I want to be in the future, I just knew that the sphere of cinema and television fascinates me. I think this course has helped me understand a lot – and what’s going on behind our favourite movies or TV shows. During the first semester, we had a module in the TV Studio. There we were divided into groups and were able to try ourselves in different roles, such as director, producer, video mixer, sound mixer, cameraman, presenter, floor manager and so on. It was really useful, as you can try all the roles and see for yourself what you like the most. From this experience, I realized that the role of producer is the most pleasant for me. That is why I had a meeting with my personal tutor (every student has a tutor at the UEA), with whom I discussed my career prospects and my next steps. We made a short plan, and now I’m trying to follow it, gaining as much experience as possible. The University Career Center really helps in this by trying to provide students with various internships and jobs.

Overall, UEA is an amazing university! It has incredible facilities and is extremely welcoming and inclusive. We are offered many opportunities and it’s easy to make new friends here. Even though I feel like I didn’t have enough study hours, everything else was better than I could have imagined.