In which mac 'n' cheese, formative assignments and quiz rounds are fed back...

Schlurp, yum.
Image by mallydally

It came to me yesterday, whilst eating copious amounts of exceedingly yummy, real American mac 'n' cheese in hono(u)r of the lovely Emily's birthday, that I have neglected this blog for a while. Whilst I will claim assignments, the truth is that they were handed in 2 weeks ago, and simply stressing about the results is NOT a productive use of one's time. It certainly doesn't excuse my recent lack of procrastinating on Blogger.

In any case, I'm pleased to announce that the work that went into the assignments was largely heading in the right direction, and I'm generally pleased with the results, especially as they're my first pieces of academic work in well over a year. However, there is no room for complacency, as these were only "formative" assignments, and therefore do not count - they exist purely for feedback.

Bad feedback, good feedback.
Glasvegas = usually bad.
Image by adaylikesunday

This in itself I find A Good Thing. Masters is a whole new level, especially after time away from studying, and it's great to have the opportunity to work up to the important summative assignments (which DEFINITELY count). But in that case, you have to actually receive feedback on what you've done, because I'm nowhere near perfect yet (shocker). In one case, the assessor's feedback was meticulous: detailed, comprehensive and clearly tailored to each person's work, despite the fact that each piece was one of 40 or so. In another case, the written feedback was there, but we will also have a one-on-one with the assessor to discuss areas for improvement. And the third case?

Now, this blogpost is certainly not intended as a forum for bitching or slagging or vilifying anyone, so I refuse to partake in any of the above. But as we are required to put in a lot of time and effort, it is so disappointing when a) your result isn't necessarily the one you hoped for and b) constructive suggestions for improvement are not really forthcoming. Feedback seems to be a recurrent issue throughout institutions, departments and levels of study, which only highlights its importance to students of all descriptions. However, there's also a large element of helping yourself get out of holes, so I see a LOT of pre-prep and chasing lecturers in my immediate future.

Quiz goddess.
Image from accessinterviews.com

In other news, the reading load remains relatively under control, I'm planning to start a reading journal to keep track of what I've actually been sifting through, and I'm starting to gather ideas together for assignments and dissertations. Myself and Becky F, the other crazy person taking Directed Readings in Syntax, have plans for a very exciting (read: geeky) project for the Spring term and, AND...I've just managed to quiz, buzz and somehow inveigle my way onto the University of York University Challenge team for 2012! As captain! Can I follow in the giNORMous footsteps of Trimble, Guttenplan and Chan (apologies to the Manchester captain who actually got it instead of Trimble, but...)? This remains to be seen, but Leonhardt, Virgo, Haines and Woods will give it a bloody good go. I wonder what kind of feedback we'll get from Paxman...?



Will those eyes be boring into us soon?
Image from Wikipedia



Assignments? What assign...ah. Those assignments.

York in November, mmm.
Photo by dvdbramhall

It's week 5, but no blues this far north of Cambridge, excepting the stunningly blue sky we were treated to on Sunday morning (is it wrong to be a little bit smug that only the North was treated to it?)

Instead, week 5 is yellow and pink; yellow for the colour that all the lecturers seem to use for printing assignment details on, and pink for the "declaration of academic integrity" cover sheet with which I shall be much more familiar by the end of reading week, which is next week.

In fact, one assignment is floating about in the print cloud now, waiting for my attention. Don't worry, I'm not being especially virtuous, it's due a little bit earlier than the others (tomorrow, in fact). This one is for Psycholinguistics, two "one-page" answers about the Motor Theory of speech perception vs. the auditory theories and also about Newness vs. length and Heavy-NP shift in double object constructions (my old friend...) The actual topics aren't too bad, firstly because I find them incredibly interesting, and secondly because we're not actually expected to do research outside of class notes/the reading pack, in this instance at least. However, the main point of the exercise is something I find MUCH more challenging...being concise. I'm sure it hasn't escaped your notice that I'm a several-line sentence sinner (if Dickens can get away with so can I....can't I?) so I'm finding it very difficult to condense lots of information into one lone A4 page. Especially as there's so much to say!

This same challenge is to be repeated in my Language Acquisition assignment, due a week today. The second section is basically a summary of a study and its main components, 500 words. OK, I can squish that down relatively comfortably. But the first section? Find data of first language acquisition in a language other than English and apply any of the theories we've studied so far to it. I've chosen French (partially because I can actually understand it), and already I can see that there's just so much to say! Carefully choosing which aspect to focus on may not be so bad, as I'll partially be constrained by the data that I can get my mitts on - but only having 500 words again?! Oh word count, you are a cruel, cruel mistress.

At least that's my only problem - I am once more thanking my lucky stars for everything I learnt last year in the library as I blithely play with Metalib. Some of my coursemates thought that this was some kind of communicable disease. This won't be the case after tomorrow, as our subject liaison librarian is giving over 2 hours of her time to drag us all out of the Google mire, but I'm quite pleased to have a mini-headstart on the data rush.

Anyway, what am I doing here? I have pages to print, data to mine and some very odd phonetic-type things to do...which aren't getting done here. To work!

(P.S. I managed to get some Lindy in last weekend, toddling off to Leeds to dance the Tranky Doo with some very pleasant lindyhoppers led by Cat Foley. I've never done lindy a la Scouse before, but it was very entertaining! And here's what we did...)

Sweet, sweet research

I had a mini-epiphany yesterday. In addition to having a generally very productive day, I was lucky enough to garner a few gems of wisdom which I think will prove invaluable over the next 4 years...and longer.

Research training: helping me to read clearly
Image by micsalac

We undertake research training with the indomitable Tamar Keren-Portnoy who, in conjunction with Eytan Zweig, kindly put on an extra hour of training to look a little closer at how to tackle academic papers.

I've read academic articles before, at undergraduate level and since coming to York, but I was beginning to wonder if I was being as efficient and productive as I could - and besides, the papers are getting exceedingly difficult! But with Tamar and Eytan on hand, I feel reassured, and here's what I learnt, if you were wondering:

• Don't imagine that you're going to understand absolutely everything you read. If you already knew everything, you wouldn't need teaching (and you probably wouldn't be human...) Try to pull out the bits that you can understand and find someone to discuss the other bits with.
• Look up unknown terms as you go along (in textbooks, dictionaries or online) - it's not like reading a foreign language, so pushing through will only cause more confusion in the long run.
• Use Google Scholar to find citations of the work you're reading - other scholars may have summarised or criticised the work previously (though be aware that they may have focused on a different aspect of it)
• After reading, try to summarise what you've read. If there are gaps in your summary, this should flag up the bits you need to go back to.

The raw material...from which a refined thesis will hopefully come!
Image from wikipedi

Between us, Eytan and I summarised (word of the moment) the transition from under- to postgraduate like this: at undergraduate level, you're given discrete blocks of knowledge like neat, refined cubes of white sugar with obvious edges. At postgraduate level, you're not just given the raw cane, you're given a whole field of raw canes which stretches as far as the eye can see. At least now, thanks to yesterday's session, I've sharpened my machete and I can get on with making my way through the field.

Finally, on a slightly different note, the importance of the arts and humanities get a boost in an inspiring piece by the Vice Chancellor of Cambridge University, Sir Lescek Borysiewicz, (a medic himself), in which the Cambridge Bilingual Information Network (BIN-C) gets a worthy mention. I can but hope that the powers-that-be, and more importantly, arts students of the future, take notice.

What am I?

I have more tongues than any one person would know what to do with.

I draw lots and lots of trees.

I am just one of the many strings to Chomsky's bow.

I am a multidisciplinary area of knowledge which dabbles in both the Arts and Humanities, and in the Social Sciences.

And in the last lies a smidgin of a problem.

I (I'm now talking as myself, and not as my subject!) am incredibly lucky to have funding from the ESRC, that's the Economic and Social Research Council, which is the main funding body in the UK for the social sciences. And on Tuesday this week, I went down to my dear alma mater, the University of Sheffield, for my first ESRC event - the launch of the White Rose Social Sciences Doctoral Training Centre, the organisation which doles out the funding for Masters and PhD students like me, and for various projects and centres of excellence at the three Yorkshire universities involved (that's Leeds, Sheffield and York, if you were wondering). So far, so good. The event was intended to give us more information about what the WR DTC does (see above), and to talk about ways in which expertise, training and opportunities can be shared across the three institutions. All very admirable indeed. This kind of information, along with (a lot of) glowing examples of existing White Rose collaborative projects took up most of the morning. Not forgetting the glorious addition of a short session by Maria Mawson, Sheffield's social sciences liaison librarian whose suggested resources yielded an awful lot of useful stuff, as librarians' talks tend to. Her session probably was the most useful of the day.

Not a definition, but a defining image:
the wug test...on a mug!
Photo by ninasaurusrex

Indeed, it was the zenith that followed pretty rapidly by a deep, ravine-like nadir when we broke out for the discipline-related "cluster" sessions. Not for all the participants, and it wasn't really the fault of the organisers either, as such. The problem lay in the different ways that the three universities classify linguistics. York takes quite a scientific angle on it, emphasising the empirical and experimental side of things with specialisms in forensic speech science and psycholinguistics - hence why I am at York, and why they offer an ESRC 1+3 scholarship. I don't know about Leeds, but Sheffield seems to take a more artsy view generally, linguistics being all wrapped up with literature and offering lots of joint modules between the two. Both departments are fantastic, but the upshot of all this is that there were no linguists from Sheffield or Leeds, completely knocking out our networking and collaborative opportunities, which was such a shame. Of course, many people found the day to be incredibly useful - some friends of mine in the Politics stream reported some great shared experiences - and I found out that there's some very interesting research going on within Psychology, for example on language processing, so that will be an area to look into in the near future. But I can only hope that future events provide a little more in the way of networking and collaborative opportunities...and that there'll be some more social sciency linguists in Yorkshire in the future!

As a non-linguistic aside, I ran into the library marketing guru himself, Ned Potter a.k.a the Wikiman, in the Harry Fairhurst building (LFA) yesterday, and had a very enjoyable library-themed natter, my first in some time! It's now about six weeks since I left the Classics library and apart from missing Cambridge as a city, there are times when the dynamism of the Cambridge library mafia and the community feeling in Classics me manque, aussi. However, seeing as I'm virtually living in LFA now, library fixes will never be too far away.

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...

The eve of the beginning of the rest of my career

Hm, lots of prepositions in that title, but it's true! Lectures start with a vengeance on Monday (that's tomorrow, at 1.15pm, to be fair, no 7am alarm calls for me until Tuesday) and my MA in Psycholinguistics will be well underway.

So what have I been doing for the last week in York? Other than acclimatising to the dramatic drop in temperatures (which, to be fair, is mostly due to freakishly warm weather across Northern Europe in early October), I have been gradually finding my way around the compact yet confusing Heslington West (or main) campus - whoever designed the signposts needs a serious talking-to - and finding out what it has to offer in the way of resources and support for me and my fellow new postgrads at York.

Berrick Saul by night
Image by itspaulkelly

And the answer to that is: quite a lot, actually! A huuuuge amount of money has been invested in learning resources over the last few years and, fortunately, a sizeable portion of that has gone towards the arts and humanities. The most obvious use of this money can be found in the shape of the Berrick Saul building which houses the Humanities Resource Centre.

Can I hope for some of this on a
Thursday?!
Photo (and cake!) by the magnificent
Jo Bradley

It's a beautiful building (a rare thing on York's campus - sorry, but it's true!) with lots of bright, airy, silent* workspace for postgraduates only. We Masters students are allowed to "perch" at any free desk, whereas PhD students can apply to create a "nest" at a specific desk...we really are the Tweeting generation, it would seem. If that wasn't enough bird terminology, the HRC also has its very own Treehouse, a round, multipurpose space which is mainly intended for seminars, small conferences and receptions. It's not all about the building, however; the HRC is a hub for setting up and running reading groups, has its own blog and houses various research groups as well...and, as a further suggestion that librarianship is closer to the postgraduate lifestyle than it may seem, Cake Thursdays encourage people to get together away from their desks...I'm selfishly pleased to see that a lot of people have already volunteered to bake on Wednesday nights. I love eating...just not so keen on the baking myself. I'll bring the bottles :)

Right, less about cake. Of course, the HRC is not York's only offering. It's a little difficult to pass judgment on the JB Morrell Library and Harry Fairhurst Building just yet, as there is still a lot of construction work going on around the two. However, I have already found the library staff to be extremely helpful (I speak nothing but the truth, I'm not just sucking up to the wikiman and colleagues!), the Humanities Reading Room is a good space for silent work and I think that the Research Lounge** in the Harry Fairhurst could become the site of some very successful group work (and more than a few reviving cups of tea).

This is not to mention the labs in my department, the incredibly welcoming and friendly staff and the (fairly) secret e-lab, which looks like it will be useful for grabbing a networked-PC in hours of need. No, I'm not telling you where it is, because I'm that bad.***

In short, I have no shortage of places in which to read, think, write and generally attempt to get my head round everything that will be thrown at me this year. Now I just have to find out where everything ELSE on campus is (toilets, for example, seem to elude me!) and all will be well.

Not my nest, but a very comfortable looking-one indeed.
Image by CaptPiper

*Not so silent when the ultra environmentally-conscious windows decide to whirr shut.
**Next to the Research Hotel. I am yet to work out what this is, but I somewhat doubt it's the same as the wonderful Library Hotel...
***Only messing...I'll tell you for a cupcake.

The wanderer reappears...in North Yorkshire

No, the sublime Helen has not abandoned Cambridge (I'm the one guilty of that), but after a week and a half lying-in in Chester, four days sunbathing and seeing friends in Paris, and a lot of unexplained stressing, I am now settled in York and just starting off on my MA journey.

Another gratuitous baby elephant,
the trepidation of taking the plunge!
Photo by urbangarden

I'm no stranger to moving house (this is my 7th address in 7 years), and I had no compunction either in decamping to France, or in disappearing off to Cambridge alone on little more than a whim. So why did my move to York fill me with such trepidation? I knew the city a little and am enchanted by it, I had three very pleasant housemates in a very pleasant house waiting for me, and I had already had two very successful and encouraging meetings with my new supervisor, George.

There are a couple of explanations for my nervousness, which my fantastic family and friends helped me deal with. As superb bride-to-be Fliss explained, after 5 problem-free moves, I was due a little wobble! But she has faith in me, so why shouldn't I have faith in myself? My mum and dad listened to more than enough self-doubt and talked me through it and Julius is endlessly supportive too. Together, they all helped me realise that my main reason for being so scared was precisely because I know what I want to do now. My year at the Classical Faculty Library was a fantastic learning experience and an enjoyable first foray into the "real" working world with some excellent colleagues. But it was particularly useful in that it made me realise that postgraduate study and ultimately, a career in academia, was the route that I really wanted to pursue. Subconsciously I think that I've known this for some time, and so embarking upon the first step towards this career, not to mention the daunting task of getting back into studying and writing, was the real reason for my wobbles.

Me and my new housemates

And, just in case you were wondering, my first week in York has dispelled most of my fears; my housemates and the other new postgrads that I met at the GSA (Graduate Student Association)'s Meet a Housemate event are great fun, we're just getting going with departmental inductions and receptions and, like the well-behaved ex-librarian I am, I'm off on my tour of the JB Morrell library and other facilities later today.

It's early days yet but lectures start next week and I can't wait to get going.