On The Road

We took our daughter to an audition at Liverpool's John Moores University yesterday. It was a 9 am start so we got up early and set off at 5.15 am. Traffic was heavy around Liverpool and my wife took a wrong turn once so we got there a bit late- just after 9am.

 

The campus is in South Liverpool and was very pleasant and suburban. The campus looked like an old teacher training college and later a bit of Goggling confirmed that it in fact it had been. In fact I was a bit surprised by how nice this part of Liverpool , Aigburth,  was. Not at all like my memories of Liverpool or how it is portrayed in the media.

 

The prospective students were mostly  girls, mostly  local to Liverpool and the North West (judging by the accents) and mostly  looking like extras from Hollyoaks with Jordan style hair and make up. There were a handful of parents there; who we guessed mostly had not gone to Uni themselves.

 

Whilst she was in her audition classes we went to Sudley House  which was a pleasant hour and we also went for a walk along the Mersey which was only a short distance away. I have only been to Liverpool once before and I had forgotten how big a river the Mersey is. It makes the Tyne look like a stream.

 

Anyway after a very perfunctory presentation, the daughter's audition classes and a shambolic tour of campus and  demonstration of current students work (not impressed) we were away home by 2pm, driving past the Halewood plant and John Lennon Airpor which has the  slogan Above Us Only Sky on it's welcome sign. This made us laugh. My daughter took a picture and put it on her Facebook page.

 

This is the only audition/interview we are going to with her  which is probably a good thing. Both as ex students and  parents we are pretty critical of what is on offer and although I am sure the staff and tutors etc are all competent, lovely people we were not impressed by the campus or the course as judged by the presentation – by a bloke who looked a bit like Stuart Maconie only less well maintained- or by the tour and performance.It was  a bit sixth formish and amateurish.

 

We could be wrong of course.It is many years since the wife and I were students and neither of our sets of parents accompanied us to interviews for the Unis we chose so we have no idea what they would have made of it.