I have always enjoyed the pattern of work that comes with academia. The books to be read, thought about, questioned . . . key points to be picked out ready for future use. Emma and I were watching the movie of "The Paper Chase" the other day, a film from the seventies set in Harvard Law School and which features the "Socratic" method of teaching law, which always seems really tough. I re-read the book a few weeks back - my copy is from 1973 and is now falling apart. Still one of my favourite books and guarateed to raise my excitement about going back to Uni.
In the past, I have realised, I tended to be too uncritical in my reading - not really trying to appraise arguments, more to simply follow them. One of my aims in the MSc course is to really try to boosts my critical appraisal of arguments. I also want to develop a much better academic style of writing.
At present, I am also having to do quite a bit of other work related to preparing for some other work going forward. So each day I am up and working by about 5:30, do three hours related to this other work, have a break and then try to do another four hours related to the MSc. So far I have managed only a couple of days to this routine, but it could be a good pattern for the period to the end of September. It is very possible that I won't be able to do much of the MSc course in the first few months, so anything I can do now would be good.
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