#spatial planning

I have accepted UCL’s offer, and will be starting a Master’s degree at the UCL Bartlett School of Planning this September! I am beyond excited about this, it really feels like my education has come round full circle by accepted this course. 

I have had a passion for the built environment for a long while, and my goals and ideas around entering this field of work has gone through many phases. Honestly, I would never put this on a personal statement or CV, but it began with being obsessed with making houses on the Sims 2. My mum really encouraged it and thought I was going to become an architect when I grew up. 

This encouragement nearly steered me that way, but I really hated maths and physics and in the UK they really are essential to studying architecture. Despite this I signed up for Maths and Physics, as two of my A Levels. After a summer of sleepless nights and dread about maths A level, I asked the school to change me to Geography, Design and Technology, English Literature and History. I’m much more confident in essays, but I thought this had destroyed my chances of entering a built environment career. 

I applied to art schools and universities at the same time during my A Levels, despite having never done Fine Art GCSE or A Level. I was rejected from Kingston and Central Saint Martins during a lecture on the Wyfe of Bath with my friend Frances. I cried and she took me to Selfridges after for some retail therapy. Still one of my fondest memories. I hope she reads that. I was accepted though, to Ravensbourne University. I was also accepted to the University of Bristol to study BSc Geography, I asked to defer in order to do the Art Foundation.

It was during my art foundation I started this studyblr, inspired by my friend Sadika, who no longer posts to her blog. Sadika is super smart, and went on to study architecture at UCL (a school I thought I couldn’t ever get into). I took the 3D design pathway and did some atrocious designs, but I was awarded a Distinction, and my sketchbooks were kept as exemplary material.

The next year I began at the University of Bristol, where I had the time of my life. I swear, i met the best people, went to amazing parties, read some very difficult books and drank a lot of coffee. Those years are the majority of this blog’s content. But geography (I took the ‘human’ route) taught me invaluable reasoning skills and nuances that I think many people who go into built environment sectors don’t get. You need to reconsider your world view every day. With every lecture, what I thought I knew was challenged. It has its issues (most lecturers at Bristol were white older men, some women, still white) and these need seriously to be addressed. But I think geography is more valuable and meaningful to our world than the ‘doss’ subject its cracked up to be. While studying I kept thinking about urban design, and planning, and started to apply to a masters but couldn’t do it on top of everything else.

When I graduated, I didn’t enjoy the day. I think something about having an eating disorder is hard to explain. Its not about the food. It’s about living up to your own expectations. A 2:1 wasn’t good enough for me. It ruined it and I hate that I couldn’t be proud of myself. But I did everything you’ve just read, if you’ve got this far, while actively trying to starve myself every day, with a short stint of therapy in uni. 

Sat about the house for a few months, chanced upon an ad for a temp job in property marketing, got made permanent, that’s all okay. But while doing that I found a couple of jobs in urban planning and sort of found... hey... I like this plan. And applied. And got rejected. I found out that if I didn’t have an RTPI accredited degree I couldn’t do it, so started researching and applied to UCL, Westminster and London South Bank, and got into all three. Which is pretty wild! 

“First Life, the spaces, then buildings - the other away around never works” Jan Gehl 

The iconic tree of Ulvenhout (Netherlands).