(no subject)
Submission day!
Was it just four short (hah!) years ago that I picked up something by William Morris and thought 'I could write a PhD on this sort of stuff'? Ye Gods it felt good to hand in the bloody thing. Now I just have the viva to worry about. But not this day. This day I am drinking cava. Select quotes from the guide to vivas I picked up:
'11g. Questions during the viva should be fair and appropriate, fair play should be maintained, and proper procedures should be followed'
Fair play should be maintained?! Because it's just not cricket to drop another chap in the soup or something. What an oddly Woodhousean world academia is.
'13d. The outcome given at the end of the viva is a recommendation, subject to approval by the Senate.'
No good can come of a procedure whereby one is being judged by a 'Senate', whoever they might be. Seriously, who are this mysterious senate? For some reason I'm picturing seven old men dressed in robes who live in some abandoned atic in the university secretly pulling the strings of global capitalism. What an oddly Kafkaesque world academia is.
Still it could be worse, apparantly in mainland Europe vivas are public affairs where the audience get to ask questions. I'm trying to think of something more horrendously terrifying than trying to justify your contribution to the sum total of human knowledge in such an environment. Only moths. And it would have to be a lot of them.
Was it just four short (hah!) years ago that I picked up something by William Morris and thought 'I could write a PhD on this sort of stuff'? Ye Gods it felt good to hand in the bloody thing. Now I just have the viva to worry about. But not this day. This day I am drinking cava. Select quotes from the guide to vivas I picked up:
'11g. Questions during the viva should be fair and appropriate, fair play should be maintained, and proper procedures should be followed'
Fair play should be maintained?! Because it's just not cricket to drop another chap in the soup or something. What an oddly Woodhousean world academia is.
'13d. The outcome given at the end of the viva is a recommendation, subject to approval by the Senate.'
No good can come of a procedure whereby one is being judged by a 'Senate', whoever they might be. Seriously, who are this mysterious senate? For some reason I'm picturing seven old men dressed in robes who live in some abandoned atic in the university secretly pulling the strings of global capitalism. What an oddly Kafkaesque world academia is.
Still it could be worse, apparantly in mainland Europe vivas are public affairs where the audience get to ask questions. I'm trying to think of something more horrendously terrifying than trying to justify your contribution to the sum total of human knowledge in such an environment. Only moths. And it would have to be a lot of them.