Reflections on postgraduate life

Thursday, 28 September 2006 @ 11:58pm by Kathleen Bright

Well, my first week as an MA student is drawing to a close and I have a few insights. (At this rate, I'll be writing publishable material any time now!)

What I love most about being a postgraduate is that it's exactly how I was hoping my undergraduate degree would be like, in that there are just spontaneous philosophical discussions with fellow students. In addition, as the class sizes are smaller, tutors treat you more like adults.

Discussion, facilitated

Anyway, to that end, I created a forum for all the students on my course. Hurrah! I hope they like it. Not sure if I'll do one for students & staff too or what.

Dissertation ideas

I've already had a few ideas for a dissertation, varying plausibility and creativity (indirectly proportionate, I fear). Actually, I had another couple today:

  • The Ethics of Desire
  • What can we say about God?
  • Contemporary Virtue Ethics

Reading

As anticipated, lots of books to read! Which is excellent, because I love reading.

My year off

As I've mentioned before, I've learnt so much in my year off. I've managed to break with my school note-taking habits, whereby I attempted to write down everything the teacher said. Instead, now I'm able to follow advice I always knew, intellectually, to be useful: Summarise the important bits. Still some way way to go, but I'm getting there.

Attending lectures is so much more important as a postgraduate than as an undergraduate. (NB: Obviously all lectures are important). Mainly because of the discursive nature of classes (not really lectures any more), it's impossible to write everything down and it wouldn't help very much either.

So, now, if you were to miss a lecture, you've missed out on the dialogue, on the cut and thrust of argument. You know? Bah, someone help me out on this one – I'm not explaining it properly.

Anyways, suffice to say, I'm really enjoying it so far (even more than I thought I would). Hurrah!

Related posts:

  1. Do you know what you want from your life? Or, Reflections on mine I've been thinking about my life recently. Some of these...
  2. Ethics, or Why I'm back at uni to study MA Ethics & Philosophy of Religion Ethics is a field that is on the up; it's...
  3. Can human beings philosophise about a transcendent God? Or, How to help a desperate postgraduate Hmm, well, I'm glad you asked that question… I have...
  4. University versus life, which teaches better? I love institutions: I loved being at school and going...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Posted in Education

Permalink        2 comments, add yours »

2 responses to “Reflections on postgraduate life”

  1. on 29 Sep 2006 at 1:48am   IanW

    I think you're saying that in missing a lecture, you miss out not only on the conclusion (as far as philosophical/ethical 'items' can be concluded, of course), but also on the reasoning behind the conclusion.

    As well as this discussion, you'd also miss any interesting, new points that may arise that perhaps aren't part of the coursework directly, but which are still relevant.

    I may, of course, be talking bollocks.

  2. on 29 Sep 2006 at 1:49am   Kathleen

    You? Surely not! :p

    As it happens, you're right on the money. Thank you!

    Kx


Trackback URI | Comments RSS | Track with co.mments

Leave a Reply

I'd love to know how you found Inspire With Hope...

Kathleen is anti-spam: I'll never do anything bad with your email address. Read more.


Next:
Previous: