I just got back from submitting my three five-thousand word "extended
essays" which form 25% of the grade for my master's degree this year.
Taking the rest of today and tomorrow off from work before starting
revision; I'll have a little over four weeks to revise for my three
exams worth the other 75%. These three essays represent my first
attempt at doing some real philosophy: though the nature of the
subject means that you can't be expected to do produce anything truly
original for at least three or four years from where I am now, there
are a few maybe-original ideas in each of the three essays and the way
I have put the essays together is original. So it's worth reflecting
on the process.
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posted: at 16:23Z on 24 Apr 2013 | filed: /writing/diary
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I learnt this week that I will very likely have to make a choice about
which areas of philosophy I want to specialise in rather sooner than I
had hoped.
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posted: at 22:29Z on 02 Feb 2013 | filed: /writing/diary
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Here's a blog post I just read, plus the things linked from it, about
undergraduates wanting to go into academic philosophy, such as me.
I'm currently working on the assumption that this is what I am going
to do: hopefully go away to Korea to teach English for a year, and
emerge from that ready to face graduate study. What this also does is
give me a year outside of the academic world to become more sure, or
otherwise, that this is what I want to do. So I don't have to make
any decisions now, since only the next year is relevant for the
moment. Even so, having read the things I've just read, I want to
review my reasons for wanting to pursue academic philosophy and the
alternatives to this I have in mind. This is all in the context of
careers-pressure from friends applying for and obtaining jobs, and
what a young Oxford graduate is expected to do etc.
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posted: at 19:58Z on 27 Jan 2013 | filed: /writing/diary
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I want to write about the term since I just handed in my last piece of
work, but first two reasons why I am reluctant to go ahead and do
so.
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posted: at 23:38Z on 27 Nov 2012 | filed: /writing/diary
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On returning from Korea I found that while I had absolutely no
antipathy towards my usual university studies, the fact I was looking
forward to the new term was almost by default: no reason to not be
looking forward to it, but not any real emotional attachment to
getting back, either. It's been interesting to see that change over
the past few days as I get more into my vacation reading (something I
need to get a bit of a move on with, predictably). And now of course
Korea feels rather more distant than it did.
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posted: at 11:12Z on 16 Aug 2012 | filed: /writing/diary
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