What do you do with an M.A. in English?

[oloriel]

What is my life going to be?
Eight years of college
And plenty of knowledge
Have bought me this useless degree...

- - -
So today I got the diploma that officially bequeathes upon me the title of Magistra Artium. I calculated my final grade correctly, which means I'm rather under-average (the average this year was 1.7). Eh well. At least I'm not among the 10% who failed...

The official ceremony was quite nice. I hadn't really wanted to go but figured some sort of closure was appropriate, so I went anyway. Jörg (who tagged along) was surprised by the (relative) quality of the event - his faculty did no such ceremony for his diploma and even when he got his Ph.D. the celebrations were apparently rather drab and un-celebratory. We for our part got a quartette to play jazzy numbers in between speeches (not my cup, but I've heard that at other such ceremonies they played pieces from the Schindler's List soundtrack, so I guess we have to be grateful that jazz at least is cheerful...). The whole thing was moderated by the Vice Dean, whom I did not know so far but who was very charismatic and sweet. I was surprised and kind of excited that someone I know from Japanese Studies, Nadeschda, won one of the three faculty prizes for outstanding thesis work. After the special prizes, all students were called to the stage in little packs of five, got a warm handshake, a bright smile, their certificate and diploma, plus congratulations and well-wishes from the Vice Dean. He somehow managed to look as if he was truly happy for each and every single ex-student (about 170 or so who were there, and most of whom he'd never met before), and as if he truly wished each and every one of us all the best for the future from the bottom of his heart. Awwww.

Nadeschda had also organised a card and orchid and box of chocolates for our Japanese studies professor, and all (six *g*) present Japanese students managed to sign the card and find Prof E. in the audience before the ceremony. She appeared very pleased and touched and said she should rather be gifting us because we had already gifted her during our studies. Awwww again.

So now I have two pieces of paper that state that I have succesfully finished my studies. That feels... sorta weird. I'm glad to be gone but also feeling wistful.

I also got a silly feedback sheet for the university quality management team. Quite useless - I've attended both excellent and really awful seminars, and dealt both with professors who gave the impression of being interested in helping their students and by those who let you feel that the bloody students really just disturbed their precious research work. As the feedback thingy only allows for generalised, over-all answers, I'll probably have to tick "mediocre", because that's the arithmetic mean... :p

- - -
In less educated news, this morning I spent 15 minutes playing with the Jules Verne gimmick on the Google home page. And then I'd forgotten what I'd meant to google. Ouch. *g*

Comments

[cowboy-r.livejournal.com]

Here in the states, or at least, at NAU, we had to give feedback on every course, towards the end of the semester. The instructors wouldn't get to see the results until the following semester, so they couldn't take it out on us if we gave them bad reviews.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Officially, it was the same for us. Inofficially, for a long time it was up to the profs whether or not they "remembered" to hand out the feedback sheets. These days the course feedback system is run online, so it's up to the students whether they care/remember to give feedback. Generally only those who really loved or really hated it will bother...
Either way it's anonymised, though, so the profs wouldn't know who gave them bad reviews and who didn't, anyway!