Jamie Reeve, English and American Literature and Philosophy

I chose to study English and American Literature and Philosophy because I had so many questions. I'm really interested in why we do the things we do as humans and why we think the way we think and I now have so many more questions but they are so much more relevant especially to society of today and the things that are happening today, I find that philosophy is really, really helping me get a better grasp on everything that's happening. 

Although I've never studied philosophy before, I really enjoy the subject knowledge, there's so much variety, there's so many different modules that you can take on the course that really opens every single door. There's so many different avenues that you can take it and I've really found that to be beneficial for my studies. 

So, a recent piece of work that I've done that was particularly interesting was a public philosophy piece, where you have been given free rein and you are allowed to write about pretty much anything that you wish in a public philosophy setting, so whether it's a speech, whether it's a blog post, an article and you write for your audience and it really helped me to understand how to write for a philosophical audience and how to address certain audiences in different settings and different writing styles. It was a really, really useful piece of work that I did.

The facilities here are very, very useful in supporting my studies, from the library having thousands of books that you can just get lost in for the philosophy department, the lecturers and the seminar leaders are always open to answer your questions, very quickly as well I find. The course content as well is always online, so if you have any questions or if there's anything you would like to look over, the lecture slides are usually there for you to reassess and see where you are and where you're stuck. 

I take part in some student ambassador activities on campus, so I attend lots of Open Days and I'm there to answer any questions and help any prospective students out. I have attended some Welcome Days as well where you can come and have a taster of what it would be like to attend a seminar at Kent. I find that very, very useful and it's really fun to meet prospective students and get their interpretation of life at Kent. 

The advice that I would give to a student about to come to Kent to study my course is that it's okay to not know, you don't have to have all the answers yet, you don't have to know everything straightaway. The thing about this course is that it is so accessible and that you can come in having never studied philosophy before a day in your life and you would be brought up to speed, you will learn new things every single day, you don't have to know everything as soon as you come here.