In case you've missed it, I just finished my final year of university at Durham so I thought it was time for another 'year in review' post. I've done update posts for pretty much every term but I also like to do a more general summary of the year to document my university experience both for me to look back on and for anyone else who might be interested. You can read my reviews of first year and second year here on my blog as well - for continuity I'm dividing this up into sections again: the city, the course, accommodation. Get ready because this is going to be yet another long one...

The city

In third year I lived in a student house in the same area of the city as the previous year so that part of my university experience changed very little. I lived in Gilesgate, which is known among the student population for being quite remote (as in, "We'd better get accommodation sorted for next year if we don't want to end up in Gilesgate") and while it is possible to live very far out my two years living in 'inner Gilesgate' have confirmed that it is definitely still accessible and in fact a really nice part of town. I lived near a Sainsburys local again and within bus/driving distance of a massive Tesco, Aldi, Poundworld and the rest of the main retail park. In terms of transport, I made full use of the bus system again this year thanks to the £1 day tickets.

In general I carried on exploring the city and discovered a couple more nice cafés and shops, but to be honest because it's so small it's easy enough to live in Durham for a year and have got to know literally the whole city. The nice part of that is that the whole place is so familiar, I feel like I've lived there for years and years because I know it so well.

The course

Third year was by far the best year in terms of my course content as I was able to pick all my modules and really specialise in my areas of interest. In addition to the Dissertation (which was a double module) I took two 20 credit modules, 'Power, Politics, Space' and 'Territory and Geopolitics'. Then I took two 10 credit modules in first term ('Race, Nature, Crisis' and 'Neoliberal Life') and two in second term ('Feminist Geographies: Intimacy, Body, State' and 'Spaces of Health and Wellbeing'). Numerically-speaking my best modules were 'Neoliberal Life' and 'Race, Nature, Crisis', which I got 100% and 89% in respectively. I also LOVED the feminist geographies one because it coincided with my academic interests in feminist geopolitics and bodies and violence.

Having said that I enjoyed pretty much all my modules except 'Spaces of Health and Wellbeing', but even then I think it was only because we missed the most interesting lectures due to strike action in February and March. The rest of my modules weren't too badly affected, but there were a smattering of lectures which were cancelled as a result. The strikes were a weird, weird time in the term as it also coincided with the 'Beast from the East' hitting Durham and huge snowdrifts creating travel problems for everyone. I did take the opportunity to join my striking lecturers on the picket lines outside the university and had some really interesting and informative chats - getting to know my lecturers and other academic staff has definitely been a highlight of my last year as the teaching is much smaller-scale.

A significant part of my workload this year was the dissertation, which I wrote on experiences of European and national identity in the EU's European Schools. In my 'second year in review' post I was in the middle of carrying out the fieldwork at my old school, and I finally submitted it at the end of April by which time I'd been thinking about the topic for a year and a half. On the whole I enjoyed the whole process and I didn't have any major setbacks or panicky moments as everything went smoothly. Having said that it was a huge relief to be able to hand it in and have done with it - especially as I received a grade of 94% for it! I was absolutely thrilled that all my hard work had paid off. 

Another highlight related to my course was the fieldtrip to Jerusalem as part of my 'Territory and Geopolitics' module, which you can read about in more detail here. It was an incredibly tiring but very exciting and enjoyable week and I learned a lot from the various tours and talks we attended, as well as from my own research.

On another slightly related note, this year I wasn't able to continue with my French modules as in third year the Geography department don't allow us to take modules from other departments. This meant this was the first year since I was 5 years old that I haven't studied French in some capacity, and while I missed it a bit it was also quite nice not to think about it! But I have definitely noticed my vocabulary shrinking already from lack of practice so it might be time to pick it back up again next year. I did however take a term's worth of classes in Arabic, which weren't credit-bearing but just evening classes that I paid for. It was a really interesting language to study - although we barely got started in the short amount of time - but it was almost more interesting to begin learning a language from scratch as I hadn't done that for years.

Accommodation

Although I had the option of moving back into college, I'd enjoyed the independence of 'living out' in second year and wanted to live in a student house again in my final year. For various reasons I wasn't living with my housemates from second year again so at the end of first term last year I found a new group and we signed for a house. As I explained in this post we were a bit of an unexpected group but in the end we worked really well together and we had a lot of fun house nights in and days out, especially in the period after exams. We made a vegan Christmas dinner, watched a lot of Black Mirror, made a picnic, went to Edinburgh for the day, had some meals out and house dinners in, went on a fully college bar crawl, had parties, went to formals and a summer ball, did a couple of Newcastle trips and many, many Tesco food shops! Overall it's just been a lovely lovely year and they all made it extra special.

I grew to love the house itself too, despite the extremely thin walls, the temporary slug problem in the kitchen, the boiler breaking, water coming through the living room ceiling, water coming through the window frame, the bathroom light breaking, the tiny kitchen and the hoover that didn't really work - phew! Honestly though it was a typical student house so quite different to my house in second year but much more homely and I liked my room better too. 

Overall this has definitely been the best year of my university experience at Durham, due to a combination of really falling in love with Durham, my course being absolutely fascinating, achieving high marks and living with people I loved! I'm well aware that Durham as an establishment is flawed (one look at the plan for expansion and building approximately a thousand new colleges in a short space of time confirms that), but as this is a review I'm going to give my university experience and course a solid 9.5/10 because nothing is ever perfect but it was pretty close. I'm not going to get too emotional here because I've already done that to an extent in my graduation post, but I'll end with something the chancellor said during my congregation ceremony which has stuck with me: "You've been a part of Durham and now Durham is a part of you."

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