The Student Room Group

MA - summer, dissertation, internships, spending time abroad?

Hi,

I just got accepted for an MA course which runs September 2009 to September 2010. I need to backtrack and check the course details because I applied for four courses and the details have got a bit mixed up in my memory. But typically, what can I expect from the year, particularly after April? As I understand it: autumn term, spring term, exams at Easter, then focussing on my dissertation and a few tutorials in the summer? How common is it for people to do internships in the summer while still working on their dissertation, and what if they have opportunities for an internship abroad while still expected to be attending tutorials etc at their university? Or what if a student just needs to be abroad for personal reasons through the summer while writing the dissertation --- is this possible, or is the student expected to remain close to the university?

Thanks.

John
Reply 1
From current personal experience - as long as I'm in email contact which takes a while to be replied too (:rolleyes:) it doesn't matter where I am! Flatmate has just done an internship which was organised by the uni and that's not been a problem. Being out of the country long term might be an issue and depending on subject, where do you intend doing your research?
Reply 2
Thanks for your reply and for your thoughts / experiences.

Sorry if I now sound completely disorganised and clueless, but of all the courses I looked at, there doesn’t seem to be an expectation for me to do an internship for this particular MA course. However, I’d like to find out if it’s worth me doing one, the pros and cons etc. Secondly (again, maybe I sound clueless), I’m not entirely sure about the subject of my dissertation at this stage (although I have a few ideas) and I'm not sure if I need to travel to do my research or not.

When you say “Being out of the country long term might be an issue and depending on subject”, what do you mean by long-term? Is the whole of June and July likely to be too long? Three months?

Did your flatmate do an internship locally, or abroad?

Thank you very much for helping.
Reply 3
Watch out if its Cambridge or Oxford, as we have quirky odd rules like 'keeping term' by staying within 10miles of Great St Mary's church, and such oddities (although it may be different for our postgrads)
I get the impression that most other places are more open, and even here you can still easily go away and just not say you went.
Reply 4
John Paine
Thanks for your reply and for your thoughts / experiences.

Sorry if I now sound completely disorganised and clueless, but of all the courses I looked at, there doesn’t seem to be an expectation for me to do an internship for this particular MA course. However, I’d like to find out if it’s worth me doing one, the pros and cons etc. Secondly (again, maybe I sound clueless), I’m not entirely sure about the subject of my dissertation at this stage (although I have a few ideas) and I'm not sure if I need to travel to do my research or not.


Depends on what the subject is really - if it's an Arts subject, internships are few and far between and you're definitely not required to find one either. For the more practical and Science subjects they become more prominent.

When you say “Being out of the country long term might be an issue and depending on subject”, what do you mean by long-term? Is the whole of June and July likely to be too long? Three months?


Using June, July and August for a full on internship especially abroad, unless you can use what you're doing for the research would limit you big time on how good your dissertation would be. If it is an Arts subject it could cause big problems. For example a History grad going abroad for 3 months means they'd have to do their primary archival research out there as well and if it's in a country which has a language they don't speak, it could cause massive problems. 3 months is an incredibly short time to read, research and write a dissertation, especially coming off the back of the workload of an already full on MA/MSc schedule.

Did your flatmate do an internship locally, or abroad?

Thank you very much for helping.


Locally - commuting into London 3 days a week. Uni's about 40 mins away. But she has found it tough alongside the workload for a dissertation as well.
Reply 5
Thanks for your responses. I read this at the time but just realized i didn't fully acknowledge. thanks for your help.