Its good to be a postgrad

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Well, apart from the masses of reading and total stress at the final and somewhat overdue realization that I actually have to write about 30,000 words this year to actually GET that Master's Degree, I have figured out that there are certain advantages to being a postgraduate:

1.) They entice you to come to class by giving you food and sometimes alcohol. There's a whole series of optional research seminars that actually take their conversation to a pub after the University kicks them out of the room they rent out for the occasion. Apparently, over the course of the year, they make the whole circuit around the University area's watering holes. We, as postgraduates, are strongly urged to attend many of these seminars.

2.) You get to hear how much professors actually don't like undergraduates. In many of my meetings this week, I have heard more than one professor go on and on about how much they dislike undergrads, how unintelligent they are, and how they pretty much don't understand them. Its really funny -- although its a little bit disconcerting because it makes you wonder a.) what THEY are saying about you behind your back and b.) what your undergrad professors said about you back in the day. But if you think about that kind of stuff too much then you will just drive yourself crazy.

3.) You are wedged into the academic world somewhere between undergraduate and faculty, so you get to feel like part of the gang, but you also get to look at undergraduates and say "when I was an undergraduate...blah blah blah..." Which has the simultaneous effect of making you feel old (hell, over here, I am concidered a "mature" student. Hmmmm...)

4.) You are provided with really great perks -- like the Postgraduate Resource Center, from which I am writing this entry. Where ResNet failed, the FREE wireless in the Resource Center succeeded -- making my laptop useful once again. :-) Furthermore, the Resource Center has comfortable seating, a homey atmosphere, and FREE tea and coffee with milk and sugar. Which means that I get to spend less money on the on the fly coffees I am so very very fond of getting. And I have someplace to eat my peanut butter and nutella sandwiches.

Coffee -- here's an interesting bit -- I have it on reliable sources that my new chosen haunt, my new stopping off point in the morning, my very "own" Black Medicine is none other than one of the three "Harry Potter" cafes where JK wrote her first book. Not that I am really a Harry Potter fan, but I think its at least cool that the thing that everyone told me to find while I was in Edinburgh kind of fell into my lap with very little effort on my part. For anyone who is actually flipping out about this little bit of information (and I can think of at least two people who are as they read this), I will snap a picture or two and post it on the blog.

So I have my third class as a postgraduate in about an hour -- I have 10 pages of prep notes for it and spent about 4 hours reading last night and today. And I am sure that I have way overkilled the subject actually, but I want to be really really prepared for it. So that's my life today. No class tomorrow -- but I do have a job interview at 11 for a part time filing position. 15 hours per week for 7GBP an hour, which is pretty good concidering the fact that all the crap retail jobs would have given me 5, with very little scheduling flexibility. So cross your fingers!

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Comments

[amanda]

so cool because
sbw -i'm reading the half-blood prince now -just this morning on the subway on my way to work and then i come in and who is sitting at your desk but a new person! actually just a writer, but it's not you and we miss you!!!!!!! keep blogging cause i love hearing it! cheers big ears :)