I'll try and remember to cite it when I do my mid life crisis Masters in about 15 years' time.
I'll try and remember to cite it when I do my mid life crisis Masters in about 15 years' time.
I'll ask my library to buy a copy or twenty.
Send us a free signed copy.
You got anything to say about Islam in there?
If you read it backwards it says 'Muhammad was a paedo' over and over.
I'll try and work it into my Reforming Islam course, then.
That sounds like a hairy topic for a university. Have you had any bomb threats?
Speaking of Arabs and bombs, I've just spent about ten minutes, possibly longer, waiting outside of the only toilet on this floor of the library. I heard the toilet flush three times and the hand dryer used twice. And it's not like they were all in the last minute or two. First came a hand dryer about four minutes in, which I thought was odd, but whatever if the Chinese don't flush in their own flat, why would they do it in the library. Then a minute later a flush, again, odd, but whatever I just want to piss. Two minutes later another flush, followed by a hand dryer. Then another flush, then a minute or so wait before some little tosspot Arab walks out. Didn't even have the balls to look at me. Cunt.
Sometimes you got the shit with the late blooming kidney ejaculation, and you gotta go back for more. Err on the safe side
Then take that to the proper toilets downstairs.
Yea and piss yourself on the way there too?
Ne chance. Its 3 minute walk against a 20 second one. For a 10+ minute shit, its selfish to not make the walk, for a 20 second piss, its not.
I feel like there was always also the option of you walking up the stairs and going to the other bathroom, but whatever
https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/TKJ99MD
Doing research for my counselling course. If anyone fancies filling in this quick survey then that'd be pretty cool. Takes about 30 seconds.
"completely anonymous"
So this is what I have to do to complete my semester:
20th December -2000 words.For this assignment, you should critique the following statement: Historians ‘are in fact the only people qualified to equip society with a truly historical perspective and to save it from the damaging effects of exposure to historical myth. If professionally trained historians do not carry out these functions, then others who are less well informed and more prejudiced will produce ill-founded interpretations’ (John Tosh & Sean Lang). Discuss.
28th December -
Answer one of the following questions, 2500 words.Code:*What role does social class play in relation to a speaker’s use of language? Include a discussion of research in this area to support your answer. *Explain both code-switching and diglossia, and the reasons why speakers may practise such phenomena. *1 in 5 people feel they are discriminated against because of their accent. Give an account of the research that examines people’s attitudes to different accents, and the consequences of such attitudes. *It is often assumed that men and women speak the same language differently. Include a discussion of the various approaches (with your main focus on social constructionism and Community of Practice paradigm) to researching language and gender to explore whether this assumption is correct or outdated.
3rd January -2500 on one of those questions.Code:1) How have historians explained the consequences of the Glorious Revolution and why do they continue to disagree on this issue? 2) How have historians explained the willingness of men go to war during the eighteenth century? 3) How well did Britain deal with the consequences of the demobilisation of its armies and navies between 1688 and 1815? 4) How were the lives of British women affected by the wars of the eighteenth century? 5) What factors affected the British state’s ability to tax its citizens between 1688 and 1815? 6) What factors account for the hostility towards financiers and stock-jobbers prior to the 1760s? 7) What were the arguments put forward by Linda Colley to explain the emergence of a British identity during the eighteenth century and how have they been challenged by other historians? 8) To what extent did military ideals and influences shape the development of British society and culture during the long eighteenth century?
3rd January - A 2000 word (+ or - 10%) write up of the picture choice task that was carried out in class.
So shit.
Thinking of the accent one for the second assignment so I can lol at the Scouse accent and probably the third question for the History one.
What does everyone else at Uni have over the Christmas period?
I have a load of pish on 'historical myth' if you want it.
Sure.
How are you going to approach it? The full passage from The Pursuit of History makes it sound a bit stupid, because that 'responsibility' is set within the idea of producing an 'interpretation of the past that is relevant to the present and a basis for formulating decisions about the future', which, as educated guesses (at best), would be marbled with prejudice in order to make up for a lack of information, and obviously made to fit the historians' prejudiced definition of what is 'relevant to the present'. That is to say, made communist.
She told us this:
I'll probably just talk about what historians go through, piss all over David Irving and other nutcases but then talk about how great Terry Deary is probably.This statement can be broken up into three themes:
1. 'only people qualified': this is referring to the training that professional / PhD historians go through. Think about how and why professional historians work as they do.
2. 'damaging effects' refers to bad history. Think about David Irving and other distortions or misuses / abuses of history.
3. 'others who are less well informed'. Are professional historians the only ones who can / should write history?
1. I'm not sure what 'training' means, or why 'professional/PhD historians' are necessarily better. There are ethical and professional standards that you have to adhere to insofar as you can't mis-quote people or make shit up; but you are free to derive a narrative of your choosing from the facts/original materials, and they are always going to be prejudiced in reflecting your own interpretation. Some are obviously more convincing than others, but the credentials of the author are pretty irrelevant (how could you earn a PhD otherwise?).
2. Who decides what is 'bad history'? David Irving distorted sources (David Irving v Penguin Books and Deborah Lipstadt), so that was more a case of worthless history; but 'bad history' could simply be a shitty interpretation, and they do not necessarily have 'damaging effects'.
3. That goes back to the first one, and the logic of it equates the strength of any argument with the reputation of the person making it.
Historians need to wind it in, basically.
Well she mentions our first lecture where she talks about the academic training they go through (PhD, first major piece of work and 'Academic rigour'), peer review, teaching, archival research and 'engagement & outreach').
So basically make them feel more special about themselves.
That 'engagement and outreach' shit will eventually kill the subject by rendering all research worthless unless it gets on the local news.
You see, Lewis, the great thing about history is that it teaches us about who we are today.
My old supervisor got fifty-two grand of taxpayers' money to make an interactive map of the old nuclear weapons storage facility at RAF Barnham (now an industrial estate, such is its historical significance), which the university banked, mentioned in a press release, and then forgot about when it denied him research leave to write the book that the entire project was meant to lead towards.
But did he have a blog? That level of engagement and outreach is VITAL these days.
There was one geezer who used to (probably still does) list his Guardian/whatever comment pieces in his publications, but he was a known whopper. He threatened not to be on my upgrade panel because he didn't like the tone of my e-mails, so I told him that I didn't want him on it, and then he insisted on doing it. Way to go, mate.
Had a pretty beastly timetable clash with stuff that couldn't be moved.
After weeks they've come up with a solution.
I'll be dropping Britain and Africa (a first level module which I had to defer) and picking up Nation And Identity: Newly Independent States In Interwar Europe, 1918-39. I wanted to do the Propaganda unit but that clashes too.
Still, I'll get to learn about how Poland was raped by others.
I'm so skint so I've been chucking my CV at everything this week. I've also got an eye on summer events that I won't be able to afford unless I get a proper job (stewarding 2/3 times a month doesn't really help that much).
Rumor is that the union that the grad students were supposed to sign a contract with has dropped us, since apparently now that Trump is in charge there's no point in even bothering. Lol at that. Meanwhile, the administration is planning to stop calling TAs TAs and instead make them sign up to some sort of 'teaching practicum' so that they can get around the fact that a court decided that TAing is indeed labor.
Isn't it because Missouri is about to become a right-to-work state?
Could be, but that's not what was said. All of this from third parties though, I am still waiting on clarification. In any case, it doesn't look to me that the move towards unionization will get anywhere over here.
When I tried to get some teaching responsibilities the stuff I could have done was covered, so I offered to undercut the existing 'Associate Tutors' and do it for free, but they said it was against the rules.
Darn those regulations stiffling business(men)!
I think it would be good for me to teach a proper course before I graduate but I am not sure I can be arsed. I know my advisor would be cool with me teaching his undergrad course, but it is fucking Heat Transfer. If it was Thermodynamics I'd be all over it.
The same small group of suck-ups took about ninety per cent of the seminars, so it was a racket, and I was probably blacklisted when I told their leader not to add me on Facebook.
As a PhD student are you not required to teach? Here, in the Humanities, everyone teaches as far as I know. Between that and adjuncts they really are taking the piss charging $60,000 a year. But hey, they are building a larger cafeteria in the library!
It was optional, but you were only eligible to do it once you had upgraded from MPhil to full PhD status, and I sort of fucked myself by doing that as late as possible.
I can't get my head around the American system for it. I'm reading the Harvard Graduate Program[me] site, and the first three years of their seven year PhD (ten years maximum) appears to be doing what you would have been doing on a specialist History degree had you not merely 'majored' in it alongside remedial spelling, road safety, and the pointless conversational French that you have to improve as a post-graduate. I applied for a couple of American post-doctoral positions years ago, and because I didn't have any coursework transcripts to send them I had to attach notes explaining why ('Here in the civilised world, Hank...'). What a stupid system.
Oh yes. My gf's last course was last semester, during her fifth year. All of her literature courses (might be all of her courses) were mixed undergrad/grad courses. Can't think of anything more lol than that. She also needs to show 'proficiency' in two other languages (apart from English and French) and take two exams (which seem to be basically the same.)
As for me, I still have one more fucking course to take, for a total of twelve. I think two have been worth my time.
Her department has also invented a new lol 'post-doctoral teaching fellowship,' which is a lecturer with a fancier title which allegedly will be useful in 'the job market.' It's all a disgrace.
You would think that any post-doctoral position was useful in the job market (since they are so competitive), so that will probably just roll the teaching and administration load from about four positions into a new one, thereby freeing up the salaries from the three redundant people to be put towards giving the most senior layer of management another personal assistant.
Or for the new Center for Diversity and Inclusion.
Moan all you like, my life is built on that system.Originally Posted by Lewis
For the first time in like 2 years (fucking hell) I've actually submitted an essay without the need for an extension. Now it's only an essay plan but it counts for 20% in said module and I've also geeked out quite a bit on it. That's largely because it's a plan for a historiographical essay on how Poland (there were 10 nations to choose from Finland, Yugoslavia, Romania, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Czechoslovakia, Irish Free State and Poland) consolidated power as a new nation.
Looking forward to doing the essay too. Planned to talk about the May Coup/Jozef Pilsudski, minorities in the nation, peace treaties/nationalism and border tension/military/Polish-Soviet war.
That's legitimately fantastic to hear.
It's probably still a good thing to do. Teaching is a good thing to have on the CV, and it's actually quite fun.
It's really exploitative in the US. PhD students and post-docs cop the worst of it. The system is really top-heavy: the big-name professors can absolutely make bank, but everyone else is expected to basically dedicate their life to slaving constantly.
There's advantages to liberal arts, but I've generally been of the opinion that if you go to uni, you should know why you're going, and therefore you should be able to start specialising immediately. As a rule, US PhD-level courses take you a little further in their discipline than the Australian or UK systems do when you're finished coursework, but at the expense of keeping you there for a half-decade longer than anyone ever should be. But cheap labour, so there's that.
The system everywhere is broken, but there it's really broken.
I've seen a few of those. I like to think most committees see through it, but they get so many people applying for jobs that they're barely able to give it more than a quick glance. So who knows?
Do you mean that they count for more when you come to apply for jobs, or that they allow you to develop a better subject knowledge/understanding? My secondary supervisor went through Yale, and whilst she would bear the first one out, I would need to be convinced of the second.
I know, but as I said, I am not sure I can be arsed. I think I rather ride my bicycle.
I'd say adjuncts are the worst off, with postdocs in the sciences not far behind. I honestly believe they should strike, it was not too long ago that I read that 82% of all the courses in the US are taught by adjuncts. If they organized a bit they could really wreck havoc and I don't think a decent salary and a bit of job security is too much to ask.
Btw, I really enjoyed my two years in a liberal arts college, although that one had engineering and I only took one course outside engineering. The level of education was miles above than the one over here.
Grad courses at decent universities in the US go further in terms of material than a standard UK or Australian degree. Obviously there are plenty of individual fluctuations.
It's a non-issue, because a post-grad student in Aus/UK will learn relevant stuff independently over the course of their research degree, but there's no doubt that (on average) a US student who has finished their PhD coursework has covered more ground than someone starting a research-only PhD after a focussed undergraduate course. Obviously there are exceptions, etc., but the material does go further. If you do a coursework Masters degree after a standard undergrad course, you've probably covered about the same amount of territory worth of coursework.
I can only comment on the sciences, of course. That's an important caveat.
Yep. The academics in Australia and the UK are pretty organised, but I think even a whiff of unionisation in the US is pretty damning in a lot of places.
I honestly don't know how you'd fix the system though. I don't even really know what a fixed system would look like.
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