London's Global University

This year's primary goal, of course, is earning a Master's degree (followed extremely closely by traveling Europe and enjoying newlyweddedness). It is about time, therefore, to post something about my school and the nature of my programme (gotta use the British spelling).

To save time, I'm going to paste the post Tammela did on this subject a few weeks ago and then add my two cents at the end. You can see the original here.

Issues in Modern Culture

“Hi, I’m _____________ and I do ‘Issues’.”

That’s how about fifteen of us introduced ourselves in this week’s inaugural Contemporary Short Fiction Reading Group. (I am not doing this reading group, at least for now.)

“Issues” is, of course, short for “Issues in Modern Culture,” which is the official name of my MA program at University College London (from here on out known as UCL). It’s a “taught” program on Modernist literature with a smattering of culture/society/historical context.

This post will give an overview of the program’s structure — quite different from the US university system — and what we’ve done thus far. I can’t promise to post weekly updates but will try to periodically share particularly interesting tidbits. I will also update my Reading List with the texts we’re meant to tackle each week.

There are 47 of us “doing ‘Issues’”: Brits, Americans, Canadians, Singaporeans, a Romanian, an Australian or two, an Israeli, and probably people from other countries whom I haven’t met yet. Many have just finished their BAs, but some of us (myself included) have been out of school and doing other things for a number of years. A pretty diverse group, overall.

We’re split into two groups for our weekly two-hour seminars, of which we have two. Yes — only 4 “contact hours” per week! That’s already a departure from the American system, which likes to get you into class as often as possible. Over the course of the next 12 months, we’ll take four courses:

• “Authors” spans both terms and, as you may expect, covers the main (canonical) authors leading up to and through literary Modernism. For Authors, we have to read at least a novel or so per week — that’ll keep us busy when we’re not in class. Our first two weeks covered Flaubert (Madame Bovary) and Henry James (The Turn of the Screw and In the Cage); next week is Conrad (Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim).
• “Contexts” happens this term and looks at the social/historical/cultural contexts behind the development of Modernism. It’s broken into two chunks: “Modernity and the City” and “Modern Forms.” We’re in the first part now and have already covered Baudelaire’s poems and prose poems on mid-19th-century Paris. Tomorrow’s seminar is called “Epiphany and the Everyday” and is theory-based (think Barthes, Blanchot, Lefebvre — dense stuff). Next week is “Detective Fiction”: Poe, Conan Doyle, Raymond Chandler. 
• Next term, we’ll pick two of six more specific “Options” — each will last half a term. Our choices include “Modernism and Sex,” “Film,” and “Cultures of the Night.” Exciting! More on these later.

Unlike the American (undergraduate) system, where we had at least two or three papers to write throughout each semester, the grades for our MA depend on one paper per course at the end of each term, plus the dissertation. And no class participation grades to pad the final mark. Not much room for error! But, as a classmate pointed out, getting the MA is the real goal in the end, regardless of final grade.

We have a group of professors/lecturers/teacher-people helping with the course — each lecturer teaches his/her specialty, so we have a different seminar leader almost every week (with some repeats). This is nice because we’re getting “expert” perspectives, but it also may prove difficult to form any kind of personal/professional relationships with our lecturers. We will be assigned a Tutor, though, who will guide us on the Contexts paper, so that will be a good connection to make.

That’s about it so far. I’m still getting to know my classmates, but the ones with whom I’ve interacted are nice, smart, and interesting. Everyone seems really excited and willing to collaborate. Stay tuned for future updates, and don’t forget to check out my Reading List to see what we’re studying.

my view of the main building on my first day of orientation. Kind of awe-inspiring and intimidating at the same time, don't you think?

We have now completed 5 weeks of the semester and have one week off of our classes for "Reading Week." I have a sneaking suspicion that this is built into our schedule more to accommodate undergraduate midterms than for our benefit, but they did assign about a thousand pages of James Joyce reading for when we get back, so I may be wrong. (Ulysses is mandatory, Dubliners and Portrait of the Artist are strongly suggested.)

So far I like my seminar discussions most weeks. It's strange. At first it seems like the university isn't really asking much - read at home and then come in and discuss what you've read. Sometimes the text assignments aren't even that long. But then you start them and they can be so dense that it really does take all week to make sense of them. Sometimes we get together in small groups outside of class to try to wrap our brains around the more difficult materials, sometimes we just commiserate in our Facebook group over how frustrating some of the readings are. And I haven't even considered what I'm going to write for my papers yet.

UCL is considered London's Global University because over 30% of the student body come from outside the UK. (The only university I can find that is higher is the London School of Economics.)

Some quirks to note:
- Students call their professors by their first names. It makes me severely uncomfortable as my respect for education and my background as an educator myself see this practice as highly disrespectful. It also seems odd to me since we tend to think of British people as being so proper and this feels extraordinarily casual and impertinent to me.

- There is no university bookstore. When I asked about one, I was directed to Waterstone's across the street, basically the equivalent of Barnes & Nobel.

- My programme is set up so that everyone takes the same courses. We don't pick something we're interested in and delve into deeply with a particular professor for the whole semester. Like Tammela said, we see each professor/lecturer for one-off sessions.

- The direction on any issue is scant at best. This may be a British thing or a graduate degree thing, I'm not sure. Before the program started I waited months for an American-style, fatty envelope to show up from my university outlining all of the necessary information and steps for new students. It never came. The program is pretty similar; we have a list of reading assignments and a graduate student handbook. Other than that we are on our own to navigate the expectations and requirements to accomplish this degree.

While this experience may seem glamorous from back in the States (and it definitely is sometimes), don't be fooled by the posts about events and day trips and travel to new and interesting places. The reality is that most of the time I'm sitting on my couch reading for school while Joe is at work or playing video games.