The end of the first yearI can hardly believe it but last week I finished
the first year of my degree at the University of York. I think it's fair to say
that I worked a lot harder than I thought I would in the first year (who said
studying at university was easy?), but I have enjoyed the experience
tremendously and certainly have no regrets about my decision to return to
academia, and particularly the choice of philosophy as a subject. Although I'm
not sure I'm much closer to solving the mysteries of life, the universe and
everything (sorry folks…), I do at least have a clearer idea of what some
of the issues are, and my own position on them, even if I'm not always able to
justify it in purely philosophical terms.
I thought I'd take this opportunity to mention a
few of the highs and lows of the last nine months, the high points of which have
been:
• Making Mexican waves in Central Hall while waiting for the NUS president, who was stuck on the A64 in traffic, to arrive to give a speech to all the first years in Fresher's Week. • Listening to Miles Davis A Kind of Blue being played over the lecture theatre PA during our first philosophy lecture… If only they were all like that! • Having part of the ceiling collapse in the house where I'm staying after several weeks of calling the landlord to advise him of the large crack that had started opening up in the kitchen ceiling… • Attending my first philosophy colloquium, which was quite an experience! I've been going to these for some time now and may even be chairing a session at the National Postgraduate Analytic Philosophy conference (!). • Having a barbecue in the back garden while listening to Live 8 and celebrating the end of term on a (relatively) pleasant summer's evening. Vegetarian sausages have never tasted so good! A few of the slightly less enjoyable parts were: • Living apart from Heike for another year while she was finishing her degree in Lancaster. Happily that is now over and we can look forward to spending the next few years in York together. :-) • Sitting in seminars with a bunch of 18/19 year olds who have little or nothing to say about philosophy, or anything else for that matter, and haven't even bothered to read the text we're supposed to be discussing. D'OH! • Having the constant worry of essays and exams hanging over my head. No wonder students always complain about having so much work to do! • Metaphysics. (Don't even ask!) All in all though, it's been a very enjoyable experience, and one I would recommend to anyone considering returning to full-time study, although this certainly isn't a decision to be taken lightly. As someone who went straight from school into the world of work without first taking a degree, I'm glad that I'm able to take the opportunity of studying a subject at an advanced level as a (relatively) mature student. Although this has meant that I've had quite a different experience of university from the one I might have had if I'd gone there straight from school, in many ways I feel that I'm more able to appreciate it now, and am certainly more focussed and motivated than I would have been at the age of 18. A lot of these youngsters, although interested in philosophy, have no idea of its relevance, and have little way of relating what they learn to their own lives or the world in general and so find it all very abstract and theoretical. Although youth is definitely an advantage in terms of having a quicker mind and better memory, when it comes to applying what they know, a lot of them seem to struggle a little. Perhaps Plato was right to say that nobody under the age of 30 should be allowed to study philosophy—particularly the dangerous art of dialectic, which is way too subversive for such tender young minds! Who knows, they might start to question the authority of their elders, and then where would we be?! Anyway, I'm glad to have got through the first year relatively unscathed and am looking forward to the challenge of the second and third years, which is where the work really begins. In the autumn, I'll be starting off with an in-depth study of space, time and causality, which sounds like fun, and the political views of Hegel, who is regarded by many to be the founding father of continental European philosophy (as opposed to the nasty analytical Anglo-American stuff that we do over here). In the meantime, I have the NPAPC conference next week and the UK undergraduate philosophy conference in Durham this September to look forward to, plus a stack of books to read that would quite literally stun an ox (as the Laurie Anderson song goes), so I won't be suffering from philosophy withdrawal symptoms this summer. Oh, and I'm working full-time for Ingenta too. No rest for the wicked, eh? Posted on Thursday - July 07, 2005 at 02:05 PM |
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Published On: Sep 07, 2007 08:02 AM 
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