S. Worthen | Weblog

My MA was hellish to the max - I realize now that Toronto's expectations were stunningly unrealistic in terms of workload, (a ONE year MA - four courses done concurrently when in my PhD I did 2 per term and found that challenging). The PhD was fun at first - course work was terrific, comps were okay - reading list was interesting, exams and viva hellish but MAJOR sense of accomplishment afterwards. Dissertation... hell, largely due to supervisor difficulties which I gather are not uncommon. You also get so fed up with people who are by this time effectively your peers treating you as a "student" - in my case, I'm a mature student and had been teaching in a community college for years, and actually had more teaching experience than my diss supervisor...