Last night, while waiting for my weekly seminar to begin, I was asked a strange question by a Linguistics PhD student: "What's it like being an MA student?" Hm, good question.
"It's a bit like purgatory," I replied. For some reason that was the first thing that came out of my mouth, but as I thought about it, it made a lot of sense - life as an MA student is a bit like purgatory. Why?
Well, it's a transient state, albeit one that feels like an indefinite amount of time despite knowing when you'll be finished. I know that at a certain point next year I'll be done with all this and there should be some feeling of accomplishment at that point, but I'm not exactly sure how long it will be until then. The future is clouded by strange clouds of deadlines, IPA, vowel variation graphs and statistics.
The intellectual purgatory is more poignant than the existential one, however. At one end of the spectrum, you feel a bit proud and envision yourself a learned scholar, delusionally placing yourself in a type of premature 'intellectual paradise': you can read most of the dense academics texts with ease, difficult concepts come fairly easily, and in class you can answer the questions that leave the undergraduates in an embarassing stuporous silence. You feel glad you're not in their shoes - you got that bit over with years ago, you're ahead of the game now. You're on your way.
And then you go to your MA seminar to be licked by the torturous flames of intellectual hell. You think you're clever? An hour with your MIT-trained professor will tell you otherwise. As you listen to them lecture on about unergatives and unaccusatives and raising analysis in Gurung syntax you think, "Damn, I haven't got a clue. How the fuck did they get so smart? Where do they learn this stuff? How can I learn it? Where do I start?"
The lecture soon goes on an off-topic tangent: "So, what are your linguisitic interests?" You know that you like languages and have a bit of a knack for them and that you want an MA because you think it will help you out professionally down the road but you've got no clue about which specific areas you'd like to focus on and besides Linguistics is such a big field full of interesting stuff how does anyone ever figure it out anyway?.....
You try not to sound stupid and piece something together quickly: "Well, I was a teacher for a bit, so I'm interested in bilingualism and code-switching, but on the technical side of things I'm fascinated by syntax and its relationship to semantics." At least when you become an MA student you get upgraded to a Grade B bullshitter.
"Oh, really!? Well you should talk to Dr. So-and-so about that he's working on a book about..." Yeah, that'll make me feel better. You hope that the topic of dissertations doesn't come up, because you've got less of a clue about that than ontological questions about the existence of God.
"Have you got any questions?" you are asked at the end of the seminar.
"More than when I came here, thanks," you reply.
"Don't worry if you don't understand a lot of the material," Professor Genius explains. "Most of your master's career you're not going to understand a lot and you'll have more questions than answers, but it does get easier."
"Is this from personal experience?" Professor Genius pauses thoughtfully.
"It's from experience. Don't worry, it'll get easier." You leave the seminar wondering if this is just standard mawkish consolation for all fresh graduate meat or if it really does get easier, and also if there was any condescension guised in all of that.
One thing is for sure, though - you've got a lot of catching up to do, on top of your weekly reading and the four new computer programs to be learned. Don't forget you have a linguistic interview due next week, and you've got to design an experiment by next month. Oh, and don't forget you've got to sort out the path of your academic career soon, too.
But that's why you've come here in the first place, isn't it? To learn?
