Coming back to Bristol

Having been away from Bristol for 15 months, it was certainly a bit strange to be back on Woodland Road, in the ASS Library and going out on the Triangle. That said, Bristol is a truly special city, especially for students, and getting back into the swing of things was far from difficult.

I am starting my fourth and final year here where I study Spanish and Portuguese. All language students are required to spend a year abroad, splitting time equally in countries where their chosen languages are spoken. I’ll be writing a separate blog on this in the next few weeks.

One of my ‘concerns’ of coming back this year was that a lot of my friends from first and second year who did three-year courses had left and that I’d be starting again on the friend front. Fortunately, with so many languages on offer at Bristol (French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Russian, Czech,…), there remains a very strong fourth-year cohort. Added to that, engineers, medics, dentists and people who may have repeated a year are all still around so you’re still bumping into people you know.

Work is the main priority this year of course (not easy after a year out…). This year counts for 60% of our degree so a lot more time is being spent in libraries but everyone is in the same boat and incredibly supportive of one another.

I’ll be writing various blogs throughout the year on a range of different topics – year abroad, sport at uni, Bristol PLuS Award and things I wish I’d done at Bristol are some of the themes that will be covered.

– Freddy