The guardian angels in one's life: 03 (The ex-tutor)

Having sort of decided to try out Linguistics as an MA subject by attending the free evening classes first, thinking, “That’s at least one decision made for now, phew!”, I then happened to mention it to Paul Thompson, my ex-tutor (academic and personal on the BA course) and ex-supervisor (on the Chinese computer research projects).

    Having the sort of mind he did, always exploring different arguments, testing them out, Paul Thompson then laid out his arguments for my case:

Quote [in the spirit of how he’d said it, as far as I can remember it]

So, you are trying out the MA option because you don’t know if you’d want to do a PhD.

[The reason he said “trying out” is:  an MA can be converted to a PhD if one so wishes and if one passes the exam at that level, or one could just leave it at an MA.]

And you’re trying out Linguistics because you don’t know whether you want to do an MA in Linguistics [or in Education].

So, you’re going for the evening classes in Linguistics to try out Linguistics, and you’re going for the MA to try out if you’d want to do a PhD.

You’re therefore trying out [Linguistics for the subject field] for the trying out [doing an MA or a PhD].

How long is that going to take you?  You might as well just go straight ahead and do the MA Linguistics, which means that you’ll at least get a master’s degree at the end of it.

Unquote

    Once he presented it like that, it was dead easy to decide.

    What a wise man he was!

(More in another blog about his earlier counselling as my BA Personal Tutor.)

(London, 1992)

The guardian angels in one's life: 02 (The senior colleague)

I was taken aside one day by a senior colleague who asked what I wanted to do with my life.

    That is a difficult question for a drifter to answer.  I said I was just happy to carry on with being a part-time teacher, having no ambitions at all in life.

    What I didn’t know at the time was that she was preparing me for taking over her post after her departure for her home country (a year or so later, which was not known at the time by anyone except herself).

    I said I didn't care about titles and all that.  She said having a first degree was not enough for modern-day employers, if I wanted to survive in the jobs market, suggesting that I go for at least an MA, if not a PhD.

    The next question was what to study.  She proposed Education or Linguistics since I like both.

    Being a Libran (described by some people as “the unbalanced balance” sign, constantly yo-yo-ing), it’s difficult for me when presented with a choice.  (I’m very good, however, at managing other people’s lives and making decisions for them...)  Well, this senior colleague had pointed out the way for me, and narrowed it down to two subject options.  All within five minutes of a face-to-face conversation.

    As staff could attend for free, I thought I’d try out the basic Linguistics course on the university’s evening programme, and see how I’d feel about Linguistics on an MA level.

    With the balls set rolling for doing post-graduate studies and which subject to pursue, the ball was now in my court to act on it.  (Enter the next guardian angel, in the next blog.)

(London, 1991)