Orla Cura
English and American Literature and Italian BA (Hons)

So, I knew from the offset that I wanted to study English literature but I didn't want to do it just straight English literature, I wanted to have something else as a joint course with it and I'm half Italian so I thought it would be a good idea to be able to speak the language that my grandparents speak, which unfortunately I don't. So I thought it would be a good idea to come to this University because it has such an amazing reputation for modern languages to study this study my course.
In my module from last term, so in the Autumn term, we studied Italian cinema and literature, so as a module about adaptation. So, with the first text we studied was Pinocchio, which obviously everyone knows, it was fascinating to see the history of how that has been adapted various times. I wrote a 1500-word essay on a play that was only 50 pages long, which took the form of a monologue, which had been adapted into a three-hour film. So, they've taken this tiny little text and made it into this three-hour film, so I was analysing the different ways in which that was made possible, different aspects of theme and the shots used and the music that was used and just tying those two very disparate things together which was really fascinating and again not something that I've ever done before but yes really fascinating.
In Italian we're quite a small department, there's, I think there's four core members of staff that have been with me throughout my entire studies and I actually met one of them, who's one of my favourite lecturers, at the Open Day which I came to before I had applied for this University and he was one of the reasons that I applied for this University because he was very friendly and approachable and informative about the studies. They're all reachable by email, they're very open in their office hours, they're, you know, they're very happy to talk to you after seminars, they're just and because we're such a small department we've all got to know each other quite well. Two of the staff are writing my references for my Master's applications because we know each other that well now, so that's really handy.
I did a year abroad I spent it in a small town in northern Italy called Lugo, which is close to Bologna and I was a British council language assistant in a few schools out there. The thing I enjoyed the most, it was probably my job actually, I really loved my job. I was an English language assistant in, I ended up in three different schools of different levels so I ended up in a primary school and middle school and a professional high school that they have out there. And I just loved working with my colleagues, my fellow English teachers at the schools. I loved the kids, they were hilarious, they were so enthusiastic about English and I really had a fantastic time, just in my work day. Yeah it was wonderful.