12.12.09
forward thinking
So it’s official, the paper I did crap in, I was given my grade and it’s a B-. It was what I was expecting, I am still kicking myself about it. It’s a fucking terrible grade, and I’m so disappointed in myself. I can’t remember how long it’s been since I had a grade that low, so yeah, a little upset. I’m a little ashamed of having to tell people it’s a B-, but there’s also this part of me that goes, ‘see, I’m not really intelligent, it’s all been a big lie.’
But aside from that fucked up stuff in my head, I’ve been trying to be rational about all this. As I’ve said before, to get into Masters you need a B+ average and I have that. My grade marks for my PGDA are an A, an A-, a B+ and this B-. So it will work out as either a high B+ average or a low A- average. It isn’t a grade average I would have liked, but it is still enough to allow me to apply to the Masters programme. I was reminded yesterday that one of the reasons they do an average rather than a individual grade requirement is often students will drop low in one paper and this takes that into account.
My main problem now is not one that is related to me having ‘issues’ but rather a ‘normal’ problem probably everyone that applies for Masters has to deal with. As part of the application you have to include a short (about a page) proposal for what you want to do for your thesis. My problem isn’t finding something to do, but rather deciding on which one I want to do. Over the last couple of years when I realised Masters was an option I made a list of thesis proposals I wanted to do, and have currently narrowed it down to two. I’ve now got to decide which one to do.
Oh yeah I saw Susan yesterday about the article. I had sent her the literature review. I was a little worried it didn’t sound academic enough. Now I’m not saying I thought it was crap, more, well there’s a standard for academic journals, a sound to them and I thought mine sounded too much like a student’s essay and not enough like a academic journal. It’s only natural as that’s where my experience lies. Susan seemed to think it was ok, and in fact the only major comment was about the size. The article needs to be about 6000 words, the literature review and methodology part needs to be about 1/3, so about 2000 words. My literature review alone is 3500, so yes, I’ve been a little wordy. How unusual. So we decided I should work on the Findings section this time and that will help me edit what needs to be in the lit review.