It has been a crazy-ass month and a half. I have done what I set out to do, namely:
- Written up and submitted my dissertation thereby (hopefully) finishing my Msc
- Planned, organised and got married at my wedding
- Gone on a wonderful 2-week honeymoon to sunny Mexico, where we explored various Mayan ruins and sampled local culture (also many, many cocktails).
Here's a picture of the view from our balcony. Luxurious doesn't even begin to describe it! (But I can't help but feel we kind of earned it!)
Now that they're done, I've been reflecting on it all a bit (and frankly, putting off the mounds of work I've got to catch up on having been away from my desk for nearly a month).
It's done...so what?
I'm pretty sure I remember feeling overwhelmed and slightly bricking it at the prospect of getting it all done, to the very, very strict, absolutely-no-leeway-whatsoever deadlines (I'd be kicked off the course on 30th April, the date of the wedding was unchangeable). And yet, now it's all over, I'm emerging, blinking in the light of day and not only saying "What was I worried about?", but also "Huh, shouldn't I feel a sense of accomplishment?"
I do have to bear in mind that I haven't passed the degree until the university says I do. Academically, I feel I probably have, even though I felt that what I wrote was inadequate, but until the certificate comes through, there's always the doubt, particularly since hindsight is 20:20 and you can always spot improvements you could have made. But even so, it was a big deal, wasn't it? And I did it, no? I feel relieved, certainly, that it's all over, but not proud, exactly...
Work of art or merely artifice?
One thing I distinctly felt while I was in the process of writing up, was just how artificial the process seemed. I couldn't shake the feeling of "you're testing my ability to compose a structured 10,000-word essay, you're not testing my library skills". I had a major problem in that my supervisor and I were largely incompatible, and I got little support, which meant that right up to the point where I had to submit it, I'd received little feedback, and I had pretty much no idea whether what I was doing was right. My "research", for I am singularly loathe to call it that, was not good, but I can write well, and argue convincingly.
But the librarian as an academic researcher is only one of the avenues librarians can take. Why then, should it be such an integral part of the degree? I have pretty much no intention (currently!) of undertaking any further research in this way, so to spend half of a degree to prove I can, rather than finding out whether or not I can actually help the patrons/would-be-patrons of the library I work in (which to my mind is far more important), seems unnecessary. To all those who exited with the diploma, I say "good call", and wish I could have done more modules to get the Masters instead.
To thine own self be true...
So the lack of sense of achievement, but the fact that I got things done, and the feeling that coursework is guff - these are all leading up to the fact that ultimately, I'm an exams person. I know this, and that's why I planned it so that the wedding and the dissertation submission date were close together. Give me pressure, see me thrive. So I got everything done in time, and that was fine. But the other aspect of being an exams person is the single focal point of achievement. It's kind of like needing instant gratification, I think. I need a "crisis moment", a sink-or-swim event, to know whether I can really deliver. Exams, concerts, tournaments, or even just having someone come into the library with a really tricky question - these are how I know whether the work I've done has been sufficient.
I hated coursework at school. To my mind, being left to do the work with resources on hand gives very little idea of whether the individual actually knows anything. Exams, where I had nothing except the knowledge I'd gained and the analytical skills I possessed, felt like a much fairer test. I know the arguments for and against, and the people who suffered exam panic, and being able to memorize facts not a true test of knowledge, so I'm not going to say outright that exams are the true test of a person's knowledge and understanding. But they felt a true test of my knowledge and understanding.
This sounds terribly negative, doesn't it? I don't mean it to, and maybe with greater distance I'll feel more positive about it! But I guess the greater implications of having done the degree are yet to be borne out. We'll see, and in the meantime, I've still got thank you letters to write, wedding gifts to find room for, and a job to return to!
