Interview with Selena Jolley
Selena is a second year English and Drama student. She is from a small town in Hertfordshire and she loves reading and painting. Writing plays has always been an interest of hers, with many many ongoing drafts. She gets a lot of her inspiration from music, specifically music such as Harry Styles, Fleetwood Mac and Stevie Nicks.
CARMEN: Could you start by telling us your name and what course you're studying?
SELENA: My name is Selena Jolly and I am doing English Literature and Drama.
CARMEN: What is your essay about and what interested you in the topic?
SELENA: My essays are split into two. So my first essay was about the exercise 'Walking into Space’. I argued that this exercise is useful in performance making because it covers loads of skills that we need for performance. The second essay is about using Bogart's 'Viewpoints' to argue that performance making is about personal connection to theatre and that you need that connection in order to be really skillful and succeed in performance making. I think I chose them because I understood them quite well. They weren’t necessarily simple, but were still easy to understand in my head and I thought that I could use that in order to write a really decent and engaging essay and I could show that I understood what was wanted from the essay. I also felt that I was engaging with what I was writing rather than choosing something I didn’t really understand and then just not knowing what I was talking about.
CARMEN: What was the process of preparing for the essays like for you? How do you tend to go about planning, researching and drafting your writing?
SELENA: I have to read something about a thousand times to understand it so when I chose 'Viewpoints' I read it about ten to fifteen times to know what I was talking about. Then I picked out sections of the reading that I wanted to talk about because with 'Viewpoints' there's nine different sections. Obviously, I couldn't talk about all of them, so I just chose a couple that I was really interested in. Then, for the 'Walking in Space' exercise, I did a mind map of the exercise including everything I could remember about it, and if I was stuck or I couldn't remember something, I just asked my lecturer about it. There was a lot of re-reading and re-capping. When I plan, I write a brief outline of each of my main points and then an outline of each paragraph that I’m writing and then I'll plan my conclusion as well. This really helps as when I sit down and write it it's not a case of 'oh, I have 1000 words or 2000 words to write', I can break them into 250 words each and I'll be fine.
CARMEN: Within your research, apart from 'Viewpoints' as that was the main reading that you had to reflect on, were there any other books or articles that you found particularly useful?
SELENA: My lecturer was Dick McCaw and his writing was amazing. I used a lot of 'Rethinking The Actor's Body' which was really useful and because he was my lecturer it kind of went hand in hand. A lot of what 'Walking in Space' and Bogart’s writing is about Dick talks about in his writing and he also talked about it in his lectures. We also did exercises that were helpful e.g. David Zinder’s exercise with sticks. That was really useful in specifically talking about Bogart's writing. It wasn’t just about readings, exercises that we did in relation to other readings were important too. I could then use this in my own way, in my own interpretation of the readings and the exercises.
CARMEN: This essay was a little bit different in the fact that they were two reflective essays rather than the more typical research based essay. What was the process of reflecting like?
SELENA: I do English as well as Drama, and in English there is a lot of research and reading so I think the difference between that and a reflective essay is that you really have to think about your own opinion and your own experience of the reading or the exercise because that's the most important thing in the essay. With a reflective essay you have to ask 'what did I get from this and what did I learn from this and what can I tell other people about it that will help them?' rather than a research essay where it's 'I've got this, this and this and I need to include these in an essay where it's more factual based.' For me, reflective essays are nicer to write. I find it's quite engaging to sit down and write them. I got to points with these essays where I was tapping away and I was getting really into them. With reflective essays, they want to hear what you have to say which I think is the most important thing. They want to see you link things together, which I think is much more engaging than a research based essay.
CARMEN: Although this was a reflective essay, you still needed to bring in references and cite sources. Did you find that a little bit more difficult to do?
SELENA: Yeah, because although it's reflective, you have to balance it with your research and show that you're well-read and that you've got a few references. I think when I was writing my essay, I didn't find it particularly more difficult because I knew what I wanted to write about and I had certain sources of inspiration that I thought I could reference because they had inspired the way I think about my reflective essay. I don't think it was harder, I just think it took quite a lot of multitasking to think 'okay, I've reflected on it, but I need to include some research as well.' I wouldn't say it was harder, it just took more time.
CARMEN: These two essays are relatively short; the word count wasn't that long. However, you still manage to get a lot of points through and get your voice across. That can be really difficult, especially when you're first coming to univeristy. Having to pack all of your points into such a short word count can be really hard. Do you have any tips or advice for being able to do that?
SELENA: I think just drafting and redrafting, even if it's not the whole essay, just paragraphs or sentences. When I write an essay, if I have a point and I write it and it's just long winded and it's waffley, then I will set that aside and then just come back to it and think about how I can make it shorter, more concise and more to the point. I was just constantly rewriting phrases because 1000 words for each essay is not very long, you have to be really concise with what you're saying.
CARMEN: We've already discussed a couple of the challenges that you faced with the essay, but would you be able to tell us about any more challenges that you faced whilst writing this essay and how you went about overcoming them?
SELENA: There were a lot of times where I just didn't really know what to say. It was more the initial planning stage; I'd never written a drama essay before and so the initial sit down was challenging. When I was writing my first draft, I ran out of a lot of things to say, so I think at that point I just left it and came back to it a couple of days later. I think if you're stressing about an essay and you need to write these 1000 words by this deadline or these 2000 words I always step away, do something else, leave it for a couple of days and then come back to it with a fresh mind. That way, in your head you'll be like 'oh, I want to write about this'. Then, you'll connect things to other things. I think especially with the Bogart essay, because it was a reading, I struggled a lot to fit in the 1000 words. Even though 1000 words isn't a lot, I struggled to fit it in, so I just left it for a couple of days and came back to it a week before it was due. I think it was in the evening, like half ten and I just thought about my essay and started writing and planning it, and I ended up nearly finishing the first draft. It was just challenging thinking of things to say.
CARMEN: As you mentioned, this was the first essay that you wrote at the university, which I can only assume was daunting, but how do you feel like you've grown and how do you feel like your essay writing has grown?
SELENA: Initially, when I got the result for this particular essay, my confidence grew a lot. I thought ‘I’ve got a good score, I know what I’m doing’ and then it was a case of really listening to the feedback from the lecturers and using that in my other essays as well. I think I just found it easier to listen to feedback and respond to it as the year went on. Also, talking to friends about their struggles, or their feedback from their lecturers was useful. Talking about it to other people and knowing that it’s a hard thing and everyone is in the same boat really helped. Just listen and respond to feedback where you can and talk to your lecturers and personal tutors.
CARMEN: I feel like for every essay, especially in first year, you gain something new from each one. Whether it’s learning a new piece of information, or you figure out a style of writing that works best for you. What do you feel like you gained specifically from this essay?
SELENA: I think, as I said briefly, it was the confidence that I could write a good essay. A key point when writing an essay is having the confidence to actually write it, or having the confidence in yourself that you can sit down and write an essay and know what you’re writing about and write it concisely. I think with this particular essay I became comfortable with writing an essay, because this was the first drama essay I did. I kept coming back to this essay as an example of how I write concisely and it showed me that I knew what I was doing with academic writing. It was the confidence more than anything, which is a blessing in disguise as so many people just don’t have the confidence.
CARMEN: Finally, you’ve touched on how you’ve grown throughout first year, but looking back on first year as a whole, what would you say is your key advice or your top tip for students starting out writing in the drama department?
SELENA: Just keep constant communication with your lecturers. They are so useful, especially If you have a question or you just want to elaborate on things, or you don’t understand things. They are the backbone of your essay. Dick would go through his writings and he’d go through a lot of the readings; if we had any questions he’d answer them and if he could see we were engaged with it, he would elaborate on that. Constant communication is my number one tip. If you don’t understand something, the lecturers are there to help you understand and help you engage in the things that they’re passionate about; they are dedicated to this subject and teaching us this subject.