So, I abandoned this in February. Oh wow… A lot of things have happened since February. Interestingly enough, the highest page views I got happened in August. At a point when I hadn’t logged in here for what? 5 months? How strange! I almost feel like this could be an excavation of it’s own kind!
I made a very scrappy scrapbook over the summer on my year, and once I’m back home for Christmas, I’ll put up some pictures and stories from that as well.
Life has also been strange. But it’s getting better. I ended up changing my degree after first year!
As you might imagine, that is a bit of a strange thing to do, but I also wasn’t the only one! Of course, you can’t go from first year Anthropology to second year Physics, but if your subject is part of any Joint Honours degrees, it is definitely worth a go (unless you are really unhappy, in which case I’d suggest starting first year again in a different subject, or having a gap year to figure out what’s going on, or just leaving uni – and just out of the people I met in the first month of university, I can give you an example for each of these options!) I had the options of a general combined honours degree (that was basically impossible to get into) or doing a joint honours degree with either Sociology or Archaeology.
I will admit that I very much considered dropping out (not that that would be a bad thing!), but realized it wouldn’t be the right approach for me. As it was the social anthropology part that I didn’t like, sociology didn’t seem like the best option. So I went for Archaeology instead. It turned out fairly well in the end, I even kept a course rep position!
The process involved a lot of offices, but was okay in the end: first, I had to go to the Director of Undergraduate Studies in Anthropology, who had a chat with me about why I wanted to make the change, and then sent me to the Archaeology department to talk to the responsible people there.
She ended up sending me to the wrong person – namely te academic adviser for Arch and Anth students, who is very friendly, and does fit the archaeologist stereotype (a lot of the archaeologists here do, actually, and who is still a very useful person to know, only not the person I needed in that situation – but that was okay, as he knew the right person, walked there with me and then even knocked on the door to tell her why I was there. I was very, very grateful for that. I’ll have him as a lecturer next term as well!
Having found the right Archaeology person, the chat I had with the Anthropology Undergrad Director sort of just repeated itself. I thought everything would be fine then, but I was wrong! What happened next was what i like to call the „courtesy wars“, in which every single time I asked one apartment what was going on they just sent me to the other department to make sure they were all in agreement over what was happening. It can’t be that bad, you say? Well, I started addressing e-mails at both the Archaeology and Anthropology Directors of Undergraduate studies and to some office members of each department, and they still sent me back and forth for quite a while!
After I got my grades (I needed to get at least 50% average to pass, which was fine), I send out another round of e-mails, setting off another chain of both departments being very, very, British-ly polite and refusing to actually say something, which at that point got a bit awkward as I had to choose my modules for second year, not knowing which course I would be doing. My solution: not choosing any modules. I did get a reprimanding e-mail for that halfway through summer, which I took as a nice opportunity to enquire once again what had happened with my course switch, and eventually (in September) I got the confirmation that I was allowed to switch! Success! No more chicken oracles!
I did still have some module picking problems, but that was mostly because I was being very indecisive. It is also a lot more difficult to start a subject on only second year modules, as they do expect basic knowledge that I don’t completely have, but then I think that that might be a joint honours student problem in general, as you only ever take half of the modules in the subject!
Anyway, the morale of the story is: Where there’s a will, there’s a lot of e-mails, and eventually a way! Switching your course without starting over is possible in some degree, but be prepared for office hours. And hope you, too, will be surprised by really suportive, nice lecturers!
See you soon!
Mary
maryvstheworld 