1 week down, just 155 to go...

As I wrote the title of this post, a little déjà vu hit me. I then realised that I wrote a post with a very similar title at the start of my Masters, 51 weeks ago.

If you haven't (re)read it, I talked about the work (heinous amounts of reading), the personal side (life with new housemates and, oddly, netball) and the joy that is the Cambridge Lindy Exchange (CLX).

So what's new this time around?

The path along the River Ouse in Autumn. Pukka.
Photo by AndrewB47

Personal life first. I have a new crop of housemates but I'm in the same house - the first time I've had an address for longer than 13 months since I lived at home with my parents. It was sad to see so many fantastic people leave at the end of the MA, but a pleasing amount have stayed on in various capacities, and with an abnormally large crop of 17 PhD students, I'm not in danger of being lonely too soon. I'm also increasingly at home in York as a city - it is undeniably beautiful, and is showing all its stunning colours in this chilly autumn, which is a joy to see. I think it has taken me longer to settle in York than in other cities, for example Cambridge or Belfort, but I think that's because it is the first time in a while that I have committed to one place for an extended amount of time - for a military brat like me, it's not easy to keep still. But I'm slowly getting used to it (train trips most weekends notwithstanding).

I don't entirely agree with the framework here, but the
example is still a classic. If you don't recognise it, you can't
honestly call yourself a linguist.
Image from Wikipedia

I think the greatest difference between this year and last is the work, both in terms of the amount of it and what it entails. It's a strange feeling, the start of a PhD...this is my first year of non-taught study - I have been cut loose...maybe a little too loose. My answer to "so, what's your topic?" usually starts "well, it's very vague at the moment...", though reassuringly, my supervisor's not too concerned about this, and doesn't think we'll even look at it too much until the Spring term. In the meantime, I am reading around (lots of reading, but self-selected this year) and teaching myself semantics (just hoping that I understand it properly). Luckily, though, I have one bright flash of timetabled joy on my horizon - I am taking one seminar group for the first year undergraduate Introduction to Syntax course. It's a bit nervewracking to imagine teaching 16 first-years about something I was only learning 6 years ago, but it'll be fantastic experience, and hopefully at least some of them will be sober and compus mentis at 9am on a Wednesday morning. What's more, having something set in my timetable to work around will really help me prioritise and organise my time better around those sessions.

Oh, and CLX? Coming up this weekend, and will be a glorious whirl of polka-dot bepetticoated dresses, good friends, and fairy wings...!

Two weeks down (50 + 156 to go...)

October has passed me by almost completely, in a whirl of lectures, reading lists, journal articles, train tickets and, happily, a little lindy hop.

They did say it would be hard work...
Image by The Prudent Cyclist

Two weeks into my Masters, I'm very pleased to say that I'm enjoying what I'm doing so far. Some of it is a bit of revision (never a bad thing, especially after a year out) but there's a lot of new stuff in there too. I'm heartened by the fact that we're on the threshold of knowing more about the brain and how it does what it does, and I hope I can contribute to this new venture in the years to come. I'm finding that postgraduate study takes you from the realm of confirmed fact and certainties to the brink of real discovery - a little disconcerting, but very exciting indeed.

However, getting to grips with new theories and the latest research requires a LOT of reading - eye-crossing, mind-scrambling, fatigue-inducing amounts of reading. At time of writing, I am up to date with my reading...but give it a couple of days and a weekend in Richmond and I'll still be frantically trying to understand Cinque's 1990 account of Clitic Left Dislocation come Monday.

On the more pastoral side of things, I'm getting to know the campus and the city much better, and I'm settling into a kind of extended friendship group, thanks largely to the people I met at the York GSA's Meet a Housemate event as well as some very lovely people on my course. In fact, regarding the latter, I'd like to thank them for electing me as the MA representative for the department's Graduate School Board - I will do my best to represent them and their views as the year progresses. I've also taken up playing netball for my college, Wentworth...having not played for 8 (!) years, I was actually quite pleased with how I played at Goal Defence, my spectacular full-length face-plant across the goal third notwithstanding. Of course, we were still beaten by Vanbrugh 15-10, but they're all 18, so we win morally, I think.

Lindybombing the Festival of Ideas underneath the
Raised Faculty Building
Photo by Minh Hai Tran


In other news, CLX 2011 (that's the Cambridge Lindy Exchange, to the uninitiated) took the Sidgwick Site (and most of the rest of Cambridge) by storm last weekend. I particularly enjoyed the opportunity to see a lot of lindy hoppers, both those who are still Cambridge-based and other itinerants like me, not to mention about 12 hours worth of dancing. Cambridge itself is looking as stunning as ever this time of year (autumnal colours + 20 degree heat? Yes please!) and I have to add in an honorary mention for the East of England Ambulance Service, who came wonderfully to my aid on the Sunday morning (note to self: ask future dance partners if they've been eating Brazil nuts...)

Anyway. I should not be here, I should be at a desk getting my head down and attacking Cinque with highlighters. Poor man, he was only trying to clarify CLLD...

P.S. For a good read about PhD reading vs extreme procrastination, read here...

Thing 3: Reams of Substance and Subjects or Rhetoric and Surplus Stanzas?

RSS feeds: funnelling the information to you,
but what's the best way to digest it?
Photo from: jews4barack.com

I've been looking forward to this Thing as I was never sure that I'd fully understood RSS feeds and how to use them. Luckily it is Really Simple, Stupid and I feel a lot more confident about how to go about them. In the name of fidelity to the course I had a sneak peek at Google Reader - as with many of the other Google programs it's handy to have under the same umbrella as my beloved Gmail, but yet again it all seems a bit cluttered to me and frankly not as intuitive as other aspects of the Google brand. I may, however, have to give it another chance on a slightly faster browser than the achingly slow Internet Explorer at work and spend a little more time on it.

One other reason that I'm loath to do so, however, is because I can set up RSS feeds incredibly easy on my Netvibes page (see Thing 1 continued) - I've even set up a dedicated tab so I can keep my feeds in one place without them getting all mixed in together as on Google Reader, though admittedly this may only work while I have a relatively small number of feeds. The latest Cambridge Lindy Hopper gossip? At my desktop in a click. Sunday Postsecrets? Here you are madam, no need for all that typing. All the Cam23 updates? On a platter.

And the REAL meaning of RSS (selon moi)? Receiving and Sharing Sources. What a librarian-like tool, don't you think?