Study in blue

[j4]

Seeing hoiho's enthusiasm for his PhD application, and reading marnameow's post about wanting to study again, is really bringing home to me how much I miss studying. I originally wanted to do postgrad work in English, but my tutors talked me out of it (on the grounds that people only stood a chance of getting funding if they got a First, and they didn't think I should count on getting one); so I left, and got a job, and now I'm still in that job, and I feel as though I've achieved precisely nothing in the 3+ years I've been doing it.

The problem is, I don't think I'd know how to study any more. And I certainly wouldn't know how to begin writing about my "current research interests" as I'd have to do if I wanted to apply to do postgrad study -- basically, looking at the application forms and requirements, I need to be doing research in order to start doing research. Which means I should be doing it in my spare time while I'm working ... and I simply don't have the energy. Which, of course, means I'm not capable of doing postgrad study anyway: if I can't make the time/energy to study now, there's no way I could do a postgraduate degree.

I have so many ideas for things I want to write about, but I no longer seem to be able to put them into words. And if I do try to put them into words, the ideas seem to shrink and shrink until they're the kind of ideas that 14-year-olds would scorn to bother with for GCSE coursework.

I wish I could just make myself accept the fact that I'm not an intellectual, and never will be. Yes, I was passable at my schoolwork; that doesn't mean I can compete with adults. ... I wish I could stop thinking altogether.

Comments

[j4.livejournal.com]

they're giving out firsts out in a way thay didn't 20 years ago.

I thought it was pretty much taken as read now that standards have slipped so far as to make modern education worthless, and that any fool can get a degree?

("Modern education", of course, begins 3 years after one left full-time education...)

[hoiho.livejournal.com]

Quite so: why d'you think I've waited so long before looking at a PhD?

[j4.livejournal.com]

Given the rate of standards slippage and the elapsed time between present day and the end of your full-time education, I calculate that a modern "PhD" will be approximately equivalent to what I believe was called the "Eleven Plus" in your day...

(Yes, yes, I know, you didn't do the Eleven Plus, because Scottish education is BETTER THAN THAT.)

[hoiho.livejournal.com]

Not better, just different.