{"id":225,"date":"2017-10-12T07:00:06","date_gmt":"2017-10-12T06:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/childrensliteratureinnewcastle\/?p=225"},"modified":"2017-10-10T18:28:31","modified_gmt":"2017-10-10T17:28:31","slug":"a-fresher-at-fifty-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/childrensliteratureinnewcastle\/a-fresher-at-fifty-4\/","title":{"rendered":"A Fresher at Fifty"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Occasional Diary of a Mature Postgraduate Student at Newcastle University\u2019s Children\u2019s Literature Unit<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Jennifer Shelley<\/em><\/p>\n

Episode Four<\/strong><\/p>\n

On realising I know nothing \u2013 but am starting to learn<\/strong><\/p>\n

There\u2019s a rather lovely sense of back-to-school in Newcastle at the moment: there\u2019s an autumnal chill in the air, the leaves are turning and I\u2019ve bought some splendid new shoes.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the start of the new academic year, and for me, as a research student, it\u2019s also the end of the old one, which technically finished mid-September when I had to submit the third and last research assignment of my first year.<\/p>\n

In one sense it seems like yesterday that I started the MLitt in children\u2019s literature as a mature student; in another, it feels like a lifetime (largely in a good way). As mentioned in previous blogs<\/a>, I\u2019m taking the course over two years, as a part-time student, so this is essentially the half way point for me.<\/p>\n

So what have I learned?<\/p>\n

The first and possibly most important thing for me was not to underestimate just how much there is to learn: many years as a keen reader of children\u2019s books are certainly not a passport to academic success. There\u2019s a song by Dean Friedman from the 1970s where the chorus goes something like you can thank your lucky stars that we\u2019re not as smart as we like to think we are<\/em>. It\u2019s not a track I ever particularly liked, but unfortunately it\u2019s been going round and round in my head, almost since my first meeting with my supervisor, and certainly since I started getting feedback on my work. It turns out that academics can be \u2013 how can I put this? \u2013 blunt in asserting their opinion of one\u2019s hard-sweated efforts, and any notion that I\u2019d walk in being brilliant was quickly dispelled.<\/p>\n

The second lesson was somewhat connected, in that it involved a growing appreciation that challenge and criticism is not only good in a \u2018swallow-your-medicine\u2019 kind of way, but that it can also be thoroughly enjoyable. It can be disconcerting at first to be forced to justify everything you say or write (at some points when asked why I\u2019d included mention of a particular critic, for example, I just wanted to wail \u2018well I don\u2019t know, it just seemed a good thing to write\u2019). But actually, being forced to anticipate that kind of challenge has made me much more stringent in my own writing, both in my academic and professional life.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s probably the nub of the third lesson: academic writing is a skill in itself. Having been a journalist for almost three decades, freelance for half of that, I\u2019m accustomed to writing for a variety of different audiences from the general public to policy-makers and specialists. Before I started this degree, I was aware that I\u2019d have to abandon some of my most dearly-held tenets, such as never writing an introductory sentence of more than 30 words; I also knew that I\u2019d have to get to grips with proper referencing. But I had thought less about other aspects of academic writing, from the simple (such as not using contractions) to the harder-to-judge, like avoiding colloquialisms. In each of the three research assignments I\u2019ve submitted, I\u2019ve been picked up for using informal language, even though I\u2019ve tried very hard to stamp it out in my writing.<\/p>\n

Has it been worth it? Well, I have to say I\u2019ve absolutely loved it, challenges and all. It\u2019s been possibly harder than I anticipated to balance my professional life and university life (not to mention life-life and all its inevitable issues), but it as also been hugely satisfying. I\u2019ve genuinely had a sense of progression, not just because my marks have steadily grown higher over the course of the year, but because I can see myself that while my work still has an enormous way to go, it\u2019s definitely improving. In case anyone\u2019s interested, my research topics covered my existing interests \u2013 mid-twentieth century books for girls \u2013 but through a lens that was new to me, that is, the feminine middlebrow<\/a>. The first essay was on career novels for girls, the second on the family novels of Noel Streatfeild, and the most recent on Mabel Esther Allan\u2019s coming-of-age novels, specifically the Drina<\/em> series (written under the name Jean Estoril).<\/p>\n

So now it\u2019s time to plan the dissertation \u2013 probably in itself the topic for another blog \u2013 and to jump in to my second and final year as a mature student. I\u2019m looking forward to it very much \u2013 and did I mention I\u2019ve got some great new shoes?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Occasional Diary of a Mature Postgraduate Student at Newcastle University\u2019s Children\u2019s Literature Unit Jennifer Shelley Episode Four On realising I know nothing \u2013 but am starting to learn There\u2019s a rather lovely sense of back-to-school in Newcastle at the moment: there\u2019s an autumnal chill in the air, the leaves are turning and I\u2019ve bought … Continue reading A Fresher at Fifty<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6724,"featured_media":229,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[91,114,20,21,42,112,113,41],"class_list":["post-225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorised","tag-elinor-m-brent-dyer","tag-feminine-middlebrow","tag-fresher-at-fifty","tag-jean-estoril","tag-mlitt-in-childrens-literature","tag-noel-streatfeild","tag-studying-as-a-mature-student","tag-studying-at-newcastle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/childrensliteratureinnewcastle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/childrensliteratureinnewcastle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/childrensliteratureinnewcastle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/childrensliteratureinnewcastle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6724"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/childrensliteratureinnewcastle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/childrensliteratureinnewcastle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":237,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/childrensliteratureinnewcastle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225\/revisions\/237"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/childrensliteratureinnewcastle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/childrensliteratureinnewcastle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/childrensliteratureinnewcastle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/childrensliteratureinnewcastle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}