The MML course at Cambridge was ideal for me because it allows you to study the ‘language’ side in great depth, and the ‘culture’ side was not only literature. Cambridge also allows many other options aside from literature to discover the culture of a country - history, philosophy, linguistics, film- and the literature you study in your first year is very varied. (I have looked at Old Church Slavonic and Medieval French in just my first year!) Plus, the papers on offer change with the research interests of the department so you know that what you’re studying is being taught by some of the most accomplished researchers in the field and is up-to-date. Studying Russian from scratch too, it was important for me to consider when the year abroad would take place, as some universities offer the opportunity to be in Russia in your second year. Cambridge offered me the chance to consolidate my Russian with enough time to get a good foundation of grammar, before living in Russia (if you choose to) for a year.

I would divide the MML course into two sections. Firstly, the language papers i.e. grammar and translation and secondly, the ‘scheduled’ papers i.e. literature, film, linguistics. ‘Papers’ is really just the Cambridge way of saying modules. I took two languages at A-Level, so in my first two years I had grammar and translation papers in both French and Spanish. In my final year, you take language papers in only one language and I have chosen to specialise in French. In your first year of MML, your scheduled paper topics will be broad and will most likely whizz you from Medieval Literature to contemporary film, giving you a brief insight into the literature, history and philosophy of different time periods and from different places. You will have one compulsory scheduled paper for each language. Then for the second and fourth years, you can choose three scheduled papers from a wide range of choices, including different languages such as Portuguese, Ukranian and Catalan, and papers in history, linguistics or classics too. I have found that the broadness of the course means that you are forced to look at work from time periods which you had perhaps already dismissed, maybe because you hadn’t really looked at it before, or you thought you wouldn’t find it interesting. I was initially apprehensive about studying a Medieval French text in my first year because it was out of my comfort zone and two years later, I’m writing my dissertation on some very similar texts.

The MML faculty is in the middle of the Sidgewick site, and is known as the RFB - that’s the “Raised Faculty Building”. And that’s exactly what it is: a fairly standard functional faculty building, but raised on stilts into the air! It’s in the shape of a massive square horseshoe and spans three floors. In one wing of the first floor is the MML library. I like how being raised means that all the views from the library look down on people walking around the Sidgewick site. Most lectures are either in the classrooms in the RFB or in the nearby lecture block, which serves all of the Sidgewick Site (where most humanities subjects’ faculty blocks are). The lecture block is quite old and has hundreds of very steep stairs up to the top floor, where the majority of my lectures always seem to take place… keeps me fit though, eh? ;)

Work varies a lot to help you consolidate and improve different skills. Studying a language from scratch (‘ab initio’) means you’ll probably receive a lot of grammar and vocabulary exercises (work sheets, fill in the blanks, translations) that aim to consolidate your knowledge of the grammar of the language. In beginners’ Russian, in our first term (‘Michelmas’), we worked from a textbook each week that allowed us to cover reading short texts, useful vocabulary, and grammar exercises. Between both languages though, you’ll receive an essay to write on a weekly or fortnightly basis that aims to explore different texts and themes within your syllabus. You’ll also work on your oral skills which may involve thinking about a text in advance of your class and then discussing it with a native of the language. Libraries are a good source of information for reading around your texts, and your supervisors will provide you with all the resources you need if you want to revise grammar rules online or read further on a particular topic (they may give you a reading list) - just speak to them!

Jo: Until quite recently I didn’t have a clue what I wanted to do. However there are always really good career talks on here (through the Careers Service) and that helped me to realise that I’d like to run my own business. Some of my friends are currently applying for law conversion courses or for marketing companies abroad. Don’t think that an MML degree restricts you from technical jobs too - I also have a friend who has applied for coding at a local software start-up on the basis of taking a computational linguistics paper in final year!

Rachel: I am still undecided about where I would like to go and what I would like to do when I finish my degree. I have been to a few Careers Service talks and found them to be very informative. Right now I am thinking that when I graduate, I will take some time out to live and travel in either Spain or South America perhaps teaching English. Having spent my entire year abroad in France, it would be nice to get my Spanish up to speed again.

Carine: I would definitely like to see more of the world in the future and be able to use my languages in my work. I am also keen though to work in politics after I leave university. MML is a great course because it provides you with a variety of skills that are easily transferable to many disciplines so the world is your oyster.

Cambridge is great because there is a strong ethic that if you are unhappy with your course, there are many opportunities for you to raise these issues such as with your subject representative (there’s one for each year group if not paper in each subject) or your Director of Studies (somebody who looks over your course). I am very happy with my course though because it allows me to develop a wide variety of skills in a short period of time. Of course, especially with beginners Russian, this means there is quite a lot of work to complete in a short space of time. But it is totally doable and if I had to change something, it would mean I wouldn’t be able to explore all the different topics we do in our first year! It can feel hard to do sometimes, but it’s very rewarding at the end of each term when you can see how much progress you’ve already made!

When it comes to deciding how you want to spend your year abroad, you have quite a lot of freedom over what you do and where. I chose to work as an English language assistant for the British Council, so I am currently working in a secondary school in the South of France. The job is not a big commitment hours wise (12 hours a week), is well paid and is generally great fun. It also has given me a lot of time to explore France - friends in Cambridge have the impression I’m on one long holiday eating croissants and drinking coffee! If teaching isn’t your cup of tea, there are plenty of other options. I have one friend studying history of art in Paris, another volunteering in rural Peru, another working for a translation company in Seville. Although gaining near fluency in your chosen language is important, the best thing to do is decide what you want to achieve from your year away from Cambridge: do you want to study more, travel as much as possible, gain professional experience? Then, just go for it! Despite all this talk of fun, you do have to complete a dissertation on a chosen subject by the beginning of your fourth year. Although approaching this can be daunting, if you pick a topic which you are really interested in then it makes opening those books a little easier!