to fellow uni students, particularly those in the UK

[ambientlight]

my undergrad experience:
- two courses a term (out of eight/nine final courses)
- one to two essays a week
- tutorials with one tutor and zero to two other students
- no coursework; exams count for everything

my postgrad experience:
- four courses a term (= all the courses i am taking)
- no regular essays (except coursework which counts towards my degree)
- discussion seminars with up to 20 students o_o;;
- no exams; coursework counts for everything.

i am getting the impression that my undergrad experience was an anomaly (though this isn't new to me), and that my postgrad experience actually resembles that of the standard UK undergrad, maybe. except that undergrads have exams.

thoughts? i really can't get over the facts that 1) i don't have regular essays, 2) seminars are so huge. how does one have a coherent/useful discussion in such large groups? :|

Comments

[onlacienega.livejournal.com]

it is nice to get a paycheck, and nice to feel productive, but otherwise, life is dull, flat, boring, depressing, etc. help me!!!

i would love to put off Real Work. i'm assuming you were either sponsored by the government of sg or some sort of big company bonded scholarship... that's what happens in msia anyway. i refused to do bonded work because there is no way i am going back there until ready... also, thank you princeton for your financial aid.

hence, however, office drone...

tell me more about postgrad life. i wish to live vicariously through you. which college? do youhear the king's choir? i'm obsessed with chapel choirs now that i've left mine.

[ambientlight.livejournal.com]

:( well, at least you feel productive? in all my summer internships with said sponsor i frequently feel useless and surplus to requirements. :D;; i guess that's why people have non-work distractions like fandom...

yeah, company bonded scholarship indeed.

wellll, as evidenced by this post, i'm not very happy about the intellectual component of postgrad life! but cambridge has some amazing architecture, and the lifestyle is pretty laidback when one's not doing readings.

i'm at darwin college: graduate-only and very young and hence not very stereotypically cambridge-y. the college buildings are a mix of victorian (or maybe georgian) and 1960s. we have a parlour with old-fashioned furniture and a reading room with nice squishy sofas, though. also a nice location on the river, and our own tiny flotilla of punts.

i haven't been to hear king's college's choir, nope - i'm not really a choir person. i guess i probably should, though...

[onlacienega.livejournal.com]

oh my goodness, that so describes summer internships, though. i used to sit there facebooking most of the day and waiting for the hours to tick by. ....not that different from working life, except that sometimes i'm scurrying to finish things and my eyeballs feel like they're going to fall out of my head from staring at excel spreadsheets.

to be honest with you, corporate life is incredibly depressing. so not what i'm truly interested in (which would be something creative) but as an Asian Kid i feel obligated to make stacks of money so that i can buy my parents a new house &etc.

victorian and georgian? sounds lovely. i was at a grad college in oxford (the grad residence of hertford) which was also on the river (the Isis i think?) and that was lovely.

[ambientlight.livejournal.com]

haha yeah, so many hours just killing time on the internet...

i'm sorry to hear that about corporate life. maybe you could make the stacks of money quickly and then find time to do creative stuff on the side/afterwards. >_>;

so you were technically at hertford, then? did they have a nice MCR? i didn't realise that hertford had accommodation on the river, that must have been nice.