tis yet another wednesday evening in newcastle upon tyne. nearing to the end of my third year in the northeast of england this americaner is steadfastly losing touch with american pop culture. what a sigh of relief!! with that the university environment here at newcastle is keeping me busy enough and interested enough to quite easily avoid being taken up by the english pop culture (let me remind you that whatsherface married to footballer david beckham is a goddess over here). have finally had time to sit down to do some of my own research and writing this week. even though it is summer holiday, teaching and coordinating teaching and random graphics projects and websites and postgraduate ejournals and postgraduate conferences and professional conferences and undergraduate summer school and postgraduate research committee and supervisor meetings still go on. we keep busy over here. some of us contributing to the overall environment and some of us hiding in our cubicles or a choice spot in the now empty (that is under construction) university to ruminate over our dissertations and supervisor comments. many people have asked me, 'why come to england to study?' as if the us has everything a girl could want. honestly for the first three years i did not really know the answer to that myself. but now i think the answer is this: because i have time to think here...well when i have no teaching duties that is. i was in san francisco last year and got to chatting with a friend of a friend attending uc berkeley's doctoral program in architecture. her laundry list of things she was required to do (most of what i do outside of research is entirely by choice) was amazing. after she finished explaining to me everything she had done her first year (ten minutes i kid you not) all i could think to say was, 'when do you do your phd?' didn't mean to be rude, but when are these future doctors of philosophy allowed to explore the information they are asked to digest and really fully whole heartedly respond to what is put before them? i don't know. so thats when i decided thats why i went to the uk to study. maybe a post-rationalisation (probably without doubt) but it seems to work. and it saves me from a few blank stares.
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So will you have the equivalent of a phd at study's end?
Contemporary Top 40 english pop is mostly horrible anyways.
Oops never mind reread and say dissertation. I always found it confusing that their Dphil (is that right?) takes shorter it seems generally then in usa.
it will be a phd in the end.
and i do not think that this is a shorter degree than in the us. on what basis do you say that???
Based on my and friends of mine experience with both systems it seems as if a PhD takes about 4-5 years in USA.
Whereas in UK it seems to consistently take 3.
Keep in mind though that my previous field of graduate studies was in the humanities.
I figured the English system was just more condensed since one finishes A levels at 16-17 instead of 18-19 when most US students (finish the loosely equivalent high school degree) start their undergraduate program.
How many years witll the Dphil have taken you?
hi namhenderson,
i think formally speaking you maybe correct. the uk tries to get their phd students to finish within three years. the keyword here is try. how many uk phds have you met that have actually finished within three years? i am curious as i am surrounded by them and have only heard of one.
i am not sure that it makes a difference whether we are speaking about the humanities proper or architecture. at phd level architecture research tends toward a more humanities like process. ... in the uk (at least at this institution) architecture is grouped within humanities and social sciences.
condensed? i think undergraduates get their degree within 3 years typically. you can also get an mphil in a relatively short period of time.
i am not finished with the phd so cannot really answer the question properly until i have. at the moment i am finishing my third year staring into a fourth.
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