Law studies at the University of Sheffield - real life experience and impressions

Around the beginning of junior high school, I started to wonder what I actually wanted to do in life. I have always been quite talkative and open (sometimes even too much so). That's when I began to participate in the school discussion club, and I discovered that I love political and ideological conversations, and rather quickly I connected my interests to the conclusion that I want to study law.

A moment later, I went on a 2-month trip to London and fell in love with British culture. I began to wonder when I could go there for a longer time, and immediately I thought of studying in the Isles! At first, the costs that came with it terrified me. Fortunately, UniEdu as well as my aunt, who moved here over 30 years ago and is a lecturer at one of the top British universities, helped me understand the enormous opportunities that studying in the UK can offer me. And… that it's not that scary and complicated as I thought.

General impressions

The first thing that caught my attention at the beginning of my studies was the individual approach to each student. At the university, every student has their own personal tutor, who is either one of the lecturers or a member of the faculty where you study. The main difference is that your tutor is a tutor (at least here in Sheffield and in my faculty) for up to 5 people, including you. Many times when I had some questions, I would go to him during office hour (each member of the academic staff has 1 hour per week during which you can come to them and ask questions, talk) to solve more difficult tasks together or to delve deeper into an aspect I didn't understand. And I really felt that this person wanted to help me.

A few words about the classes themselves

I usually have 12 hours of lectures from 4 subjects per week, plus seminars - usually 6 hours. The lectures are very interesting, but it's at the seminars where you get the best chance to acquire all the important information. They take place in groups of usually 10 people (although I know that sometimes groups can be larger or smaller depending on the number of people in a given subject) and it's one big discussion for 2 hours. I was afraid that 2 hours once every 2 weeks was definitely too little, but I was very wrong. I must admit that preparing for them takes a lot of time. When I first heard that I had to spend at least another 20 hours on self-study, I thought it was a joke and I couldn't believe that one could have so much perseverance to spend so much time over the books, but there's so much individual work that my problem is that I spend even more time on learning!

Critical analyses and a lot of logical thinking

It must definitely be acknowledged that due to the fact that law studies in the UK are bifurcated, they are much more condensed. As I said, I only have 4 subjects, while in Poland there are 10 (at the University of Warsaw). The learning itself is based on studying the precedent corresponding to a given rule. So instead of spending time memorizing codes, for now, I'm focusing on remembering court cases, their verdicts, and what precedent was established in them, as well as applying this knowledge in the context of the current case.

I have the impression that lecturers really want students to scrutinize everything. Practically every question asked requires one to express an opinion and take a stance. Everything is to be subjected to critical assessment. My first assignment, which is to be evaluated, is a critical analysis of an article of 2500 words.

Summarising...

Studying in the United Kingdom is the best thing that has happened to me so far! I try to make the most of social, educational, or sports events and so far, I can't say anything negative about my experiences so far.