Joining LIS

This is the first blog post I’ve ever written, so we’ll see how this goes. Joining LIS. What an adventure it’s been so far. As a student fresh out of sixth form, starting university is probably the scariest things you would have had to do by the time you’re around that age right? Now imagine being part of the first cohort ever of a university. Double Scary. But joining LIS was one of the least scary, daunting, stressful things I’ve ever done. From the day I walked through those doors of our small but very awesome campus I’ve felt like I belong there. The staff and faculty are honestly some of the most fascinating, supportive, friendly just all round amazing people I’ve had the honour of meeting. From day one, they did their best to make us feel welcome and comfortable but more importantly, that we are all on this journey together and that we’re supported in every way possible. The students, my classmates, my friends are hands down the most interesting, wonderfully weird, bunch of misfits I’ve ever met and I love and appreciate everyone of them.  

When joining LIS I found it so intriguing how everyone of us are so incredibly different but form such an interesting group of people and create an environment where being controversial is the norm, pushing boundaries is encouraged, having a boring conversation doesn’t exist, collaboration is encouraged and where you are accepted for who you are. Being surrounded by these people makes exploring interdisciplinarity even more exciting. For me, the expectation when receiving an interdisciplinary education is that I will be expose to a breadth of knowledge that I will be able to explore and make connections between. The hope is that I can navigate that web of knowledge and draw upon the skills and information I’ve acquired to solve problems and just approach life in general. I guess what I’m trying to say here is that without the diversity in the cohort, Faculty and staff that exists at LIS, I would never be exposed to the range of opinions and ideas, ways of viewing the world, approaches to knowledge and information that is available to me and I don’t think my interdisciplinary education would be complete without such diversity of thought. For example this term I loved our Political and legal theory and Data studies lessons. They are SUPER dense subjects to dive into but incredibly fascinating. There are so many connections that can be drawn like tying Shoshana Zuboff’s Surveillance Capitalism to the foundations of our democracy and our basic rights to privacy.  

There is only so much you can be taught and so much you can read, but when debates or conversations start in our seminars, I am forced to think critically and am exposed to so many perspectives which is a very enriching experience. I’ve had opportunity after opportunity to put what I’ve learnt into practice and be pushed and challenged when working with policy clients like Algebra or WARP snacks, and especially when working on my individual project on building a framework for impact centred investing for venture capital. Another thing that I discovered is that being interdisciplinary transcends academia. For me, after having been at LIS for over a year it means exploring the world through all sorts of activities and hobbies. Joining LIS is definitely the best choice I’ve made. There as is to be expected ups and downs but there is no other new university I would rather be a student at.

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