At the end of 2018, I came out of my school exam hall after the last SPM paper I had with my mind full of thoughts. What do I want to do now? What course should I take? What am I good at? All my friends had their minds set on what they wanted to further their studies in and where they wanted to go. I felt lost and out of place.

Now you must be wondering how I ended up in this line of studies. It started from a dear family member of mine who mentioned how he loved the way I’m able to look at things from a different angle and how I am able to describe it in a story. He also directly told me that I should study journalism or mass communication because of that. Being the lost duckling that I was, I took his advice and jumped straight into this line, and I have zero regrets.

Before looking up where to enrol, I did some research about this subject and topic to see what I would be jumping into, and to my surprise, it ticked off all the boxes on my lists of interest. The job scope for mass communication, as many do not realise, does not stop at being a journalist for the newspaper or an anchor for a news station. Instead, there’s endless possibilities. One can be thrown in the line of film and photography and even business and entrepreneurship.

I enrolled in Manipal International University (MIU) because after thorough research I realised that this university can provide me with everything I need without having to pick a major. This does not mean that I do not know what I will be doing, but instead, it gives me the freedom of being able to choose what I am interested in pursuing because the university has given me knowledge in all aspects of mass communication. I joined MIU in the most inconvenient time possible some may say because it was during the start of the world lockdown. The Lockdown Batch were what they called us here. Honestly, I enjoyed every second of every day I was here. Even though all classes and exams were held online, I had a great time because of the supportive lecturers I had and amazing classmates, even though it was just the 4 of us in class. It was kind of a taboo at first having to roll out of bed straight to my desk for classes.

Studying on its own is stressful but it is bearable if you are studying something you are interested in. This course I took was a 2-year long course and the format was completely different compared to high school, so it took some time to get used to the new way of learning plus everything was online. The time it took to adapt to this new lifestyle was not long because I was eager to learn, and I had a great support system who was always there to help me up when I fell.

Manipal International University is an underrated university in my opinion because for the two years that I have been studying here, I had no troubles at all. If I had an issue in class, the lecturers would always help me resolve it and advise me on how to avoid facing these problems in the future. In terms of mass communication in MIU, it was a breeze. It could also be since it was all online, but I think that if I had the chance to study in physical classes here, it would just be an add-on to the amount of joy I had. The campus itself is a beautiful place to be with all the greenery around it and the layout of it, it almost feels like I was transported to another country.

There is so much more that can be added on the list as to why studying mass communication in Manipal International University is a blast, but these are all the reasons that have surfaced off the top of my mind as of now. As I write this, I am currently in my last semester of diploma, doing my industrial training as a digital marketing intern at StoreHub and most of what I do here in the company can be related back to what I have studied in MIU. I am very grateful to be able to study mass communication here as I know it can take me far in life.