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CoffeeAndPolitics: The Journey to Achieving a 1st Class Degree - Year 2 (2020/21)
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Monday 18th January 2021
I'm back again after a hiatus from posting regular blog updates, I've been struggling with my mental health when I last updated 2 weeks ago and had kept in touch with close friends which has helped somewhat with things. Being in a third national lockdown isn't ideal and I'm now having to adjust to doing online learning from my family home in London which has been really challenging and I have a Zoom seminar for politics tomorrow afternoon. As for the summative assignments I'm working on, I've been making quite slow progress, but everything is fine at the moment. I've made minor revisions to my UK politics essay just to add a couple of points in, cut out unnecessary words, and re-wrote the conclusion to take into account the new points I've added. I've spent this afternoon editing my plan for my Victimisation and Social Harm assignment and looked for a handful of sources I could reference throughout, it's a very short assignment and based on the recommended structure for the assignment, I don't have a lot of words to play with in terms of picking apart case scenarios and linking it with the theory.
As for teaching and learning for this term, I'm actually looking forward to my UK politics lectures which will be exploring the varied nature of power in UK politics today and the 'Recreating Government' workshops for The Policy Process later in the term in which we'll be acting as government ministers - I believe we get to choose our department and I haven't quite made my mind up about which brief I should opt for. Probably the environment brief, HCLG brief or the health brief. I would also be interested in the education brief.
In other news, I need to submit a draft application for a placement role at the House of Commons which I need to submit to the Careers and Placements Team at uni via email by this Sunday. Admittedly, I've not been doing a great job with looking for placements mostly because I'm temporarily bombarded with assignments, but once those are out of the way, I'll have more time to do just that. As for accommodation for next year, there's still a lot of uncertainty as to where I'll be living next year because I don't yet know whether I'll be successful in securing a placement (fingers crossed) which is causing stress. Depending on things, I could be living with friends (so not my current housemates) somewhere in York near the uni, but it depends on whether her application for a MA/PGCE is successful or not. Otherwise, I'm a bit stuck in terms of options, but everything will be fine, I guess.
Hope everyone is doing well btw. <3
I'm back again after a hiatus from posting regular blog updates, I've been struggling with my mental health when I last updated 2 weeks ago and had kept in touch with close friends which has helped somewhat with things. Being in a third national lockdown isn't ideal and I'm now having to adjust to doing online learning from my family home in London which has been really challenging and I have a Zoom seminar for politics tomorrow afternoon. As for the summative assignments I'm working on, I've been making quite slow progress, but everything is fine at the moment. I've made minor revisions to my UK politics essay just to add a couple of points in, cut out unnecessary words, and re-wrote the conclusion to take into account the new points I've added. I've spent this afternoon editing my plan for my Victimisation and Social Harm assignment and looked for a handful of sources I could reference throughout, it's a very short assignment and based on the recommended structure for the assignment, I don't have a lot of words to play with in terms of picking apart case scenarios and linking it with the theory.
As for teaching and learning for this term, I'm actually looking forward to my UK politics lectures which will be exploring the varied nature of power in UK politics today and the 'Recreating Government' workshops for The Policy Process later in the term in which we'll be acting as government ministers - I believe we get to choose our department and I haven't quite made my mind up about which brief I should opt for. Probably the environment brief, HCLG brief or the health brief. I would also be interested in the education brief.
In other news, I need to submit a draft application for a placement role at the House of Commons which I need to submit to the Careers and Placements Team at uni via email by this Sunday. Admittedly, I've not been doing a great job with looking for placements mostly because I'm temporarily bombarded with assignments, but once those are out of the way, I'll have more time to do just that. As for accommodation for next year, there's still a lot of uncertainty as to where I'll be living next year because I don't yet know whether I'll be successful in securing a placement (fingers crossed) which is causing stress. Depending on things, I could be living with friends (so not my current housemates) somewhere in York near the uni, but it depends on whether her application for a MA/PGCE is successful or not. Otherwise, I'm a bit stuck in terms of options, but everything will be fine, I guess.
Hope everyone is doing well btw. <3
Monday 25th January 2021
Hello again! Since I've last updated a week ago, I've been working on my Autumn summative assignments of which I got deadline extensions for due to extenuating circumstances near the end of the Autumn term. This morning, I've submitted 3 of 4 and will be working on completing the last assignment before tomorrow's deadline of 10:00. Safe to say, I'm slightly stressed that I've got less than 24 hours to complete this, but it's a 2,000 words reflective journal for Social Research Methods and it's not too bad - I have some stuff I can definitely talk about.
In terms of academia, I'm now in Week 3 of Spring Term which is surreal - perhaps what's more surreal is that England has been in a third national lockdown for 4 weeks now and it's rather depressing. Sometimes, I feel like there's no end sight of this pandemic and a return to some level of normality - whatever that means. I have my second politics seminar of the term tomorrow at 15:00 which will look at the devolution question in the UK, i.e. Scotland and Wales and whether this could eventually mean the end of the union - the SNP has been renewing calls for indyref2 this week (unsurprisingly) and it would be interesting to see where that goes. TL;DR this week is rather busy as I need to need to go through pre-recorded lectures, do the seminar prep work for each of my modules (excluding Social Research Methods - we're meant to be doing workshops in normal times, but they've set flexible work instead to do in our own time), and I submit my application for the House of Commons Social Statistics Research Assistant placement by Sunday 31st January 2021.
Outside of academia, things have been rather quiet in general and I'm still struggling with my mental well-being - keeping in touch with close friends has helped to keep me going, but obviously, I miss being with them in person (in a way that complies with Covid restrictions). What's really bothered me a lot is that an anonymous person wrote on one of the unofficial uni confessions pages (i.e. they're not run by the uni itself but by students) something really horrible and idk for definite if it's aimed at me, but I have a good feeling that is was - it's just disheartening. To add insult to injury I suppose, my housemates have been giving me unnecessary stress over sorting accommodation for next year despite the fact that I've previously stated I'm looking to do a placement year and I'm in a predicament over whether I'll be in London or York or even elsewhere. In terms of the placement year prep itself, I'm slowly ramping up with applications, but just need to take things a step at a time. There's an interesting placement with Northern Trains that I'll be applying to albeit it's not in a sector that I want to work in, in the near future and I could be based in various locations - their HQ is in Leeds, but on the pdf document about the placement, it said that I could be based in York and elsewhere such as Manchester, etc. What I find really appealing I suppose is the transferable skills you gain/enhance from the placement and the pdf document also includes a lot of information about the experiences of past placement students and what they've gained from the placement.
There's not much else left to say really except that I almost forgot to mention that my Head of Department sent all students a really pissy email in which he predominately ranted out of frustration about our persistent complaining/moaning (we have legitimate reasons) about online teaching and learning provisions amongst other things. Tbh, I don't feel particularly well supported in terms of academia atm, I only have my academic supervisor who's been great and my college team is also there for well-being support. My department did send an email about what's happening this term, but that's pretty much it.
Hello again! Since I've last updated a week ago, I've been working on my Autumn summative assignments of which I got deadline extensions for due to extenuating circumstances near the end of the Autumn term. This morning, I've submitted 3 of 4 and will be working on completing the last assignment before tomorrow's deadline of 10:00. Safe to say, I'm slightly stressed that I've got less than 24 hours to complete this, but it's a 2,000 words reflective journal for Social Research Methods and it's not too bad - I have some stuff I can definitely talk about.
In terms of academia, I'm now in Week 3 of Spring Term which is surreal - perhaps what's more surreal is that England has been in a third national lockdown for 4 weeks now and it's rather depressing. Sometimes, I feel like there's no end sight of this pandemic and a return to some level of normality - whatever that means. I have my second politics seminar of the term tomorrow at 15:00 which will look at the devolution question in the UK, i.e. Scotland and Wales and whether this could eventually mean the end of the union - the SNP has been renewing calls for indyref2 this week (unsurprisingly) and it would be interesting to see where that goes. TL;DR this week is rather busy as I need to need to go through pre-recorded lectures, do the seminar prep work for each of my modules (excluding Social Research Methods - we're meant to be doing workshops in normal times, but they've set flexible work instead to do in our own time), and I submit my application for the House of Commons Social Statistics Research Assistant placement by Sunday 31st January 2021.
Outside of academia, things have been rather quiet in general and I'm still struggling with my mental well-being - keeping in touch with close friends has helped to keep me going, but obviously, I miss being with them in person (in a way that complies with Covid restrictions). What's really bothered me a lot is that an anonymous person wrote on one of the unofficial uni confessions pages (i.e. they're not run by the uni itself but by students) something really horrible and idk for definite if it's aimed at me, but I have a good feeling that is was - it's just disheartening. To add insult to injury I suppose, my housemates have been giving me unnecessary stress over sorting accommodation for next year despite the fact that I've previously stated I'm looking to do a placement year and I'm in a predicament over whether I'll be in London or York or even elsewhere. In terms of the placement year prep itself, I'm slowly ramping up with applications, but just need to take things a step at a time. There's an interesting placement with Northern Trains that I'll be applying to albeit it's not in a sector that I want to work in, in the near future and I could be based in various locations - their HQ is in Leeds, but on the pdf document about the placement, it said that I could be based in York and elsewhere such as Manchester, etc. What I find really appealing I suppose is the transferable skills you gain/enhance from the placement and the pdf document also includes a lot of information about the experiences of past placement students and what they've gained from the placement.
There's not much else left to say really except that I almost forgot to mention that my Head of Department sent all students a really pissy email in which he predominately ranted out of frustration about our persistent complaining/moaning (we have legitimate reasons) about online teaching and learning provisions amongst other things. Tbh, I don't feel particularly well supported in terms of academia atm, I only have my academic supervisor who's been great and my college team is also there for well-being support. My department did send an email about what's happening this term, but that's pretty much it.
Just a quick message from me...
I've since submitted all of my Autumn summative assignments which has been a major relieve - it's just a massive weight off my shoulders and I hope my hard work pays off when I get the marks back. I've no idea when that will be as I applied for an extended deadline.
I've since submitted all of my Autumn summative assignments which has been a major relieve - it's just a massive weight off my shoulders and I hope my hard work pays off when I get the marks back. I've no idea when that will be as I applied for an extended deadline.
Monday 1st February 2021
I'm going to keep this update relatively short as there isn't a lot update you on. Around this time last week, I submitted almost all of my Autumn summative assignments with the remaining one very late in the evening - it was a reflective journal for Social Research Methods which was ok in the end, but just boring and daunting to write up. At least it's now submitted and I'm going to have to wait for quite a while because departments have changed their assessment feedback policy due to the on-going Covid-19 pandemic so I'll be lucky to get my mark and feedback by the end of the month. We're probably looking into early March which isn't ideal as I'll have my next set of assessments for some modules.
In terms of academia, we're now in Week 4 of Spring Term (this term is really flying by) and I'm yet to start off my day properly. I desperately need to catch-up with the workshop-style tasks for Social Research Methods so I'm up to speed - there isn't a ridiculous amount tbf and I can complete this over the week + do this week's tasks. I also need to watch the politics lectures and prep for the seminar tomorrow aha. As for the other modules, I need to do the same as politics really and for the Policy Process, we're moving into the 'Recreating Government Workshops' after next week which will be interesting - we have to submit a workshop report by mid-April.
Outside of academia, I've not been up to much except spending my weekend frantically editing my CV and drafting my responses to the application questions for the House of Commons Social Statistics Research Assistant Placement and the Northern Trains Year in Industry Placement. It's all submitted now and I'm rather nervous, the former is really competitive and I've already been emailed a link to complete a test to prove I'm competent with numeracy or something along those lines - that's all I'm allowed to disclose. I've also been doing some Department Rep related work whereby I've spent some time completing revamping our Student Voice VLE page, organising several meetings with various groups of people to have a long-overdue catch-up on departmental stuff, etc. Additionally, my friends organised a nice Zoom sesh which was fun and we just chilled lol.
I don't have a lot else left to say, but I've been thinking a fair bit about my future trajectory from the end of this academic year. * Fingers Crossed * that I secure a Year in Industry Placement - I'll be applying for more placement opportunities between now and the beginning of May. I have until the end of May to finalise everything with the uni's Careers and Placements Team. Slightly further along the line from that, I definitely want to do a MA in the field of public/social policy and have a handful of unis in mind that I would consider applying to, including York. Having said that, I do prefer Nottingham's MA Public Policy course in comparison to York's MA Public Administration/Public Policy and MA Social Policy as it has a broader variety of modules.
P.S. I said I was going to keep this short, but it turned out to be a fairly standard-length blog post.
Tag List: (For those who may be interested?!)
@Lemur14@CoolCavy @MidnightSymphony @Darya @04MR17 @CheeseIsVeg @xCaHx
I'm going to keep this update relatively short as there isn't a lot update you on. Around this time last week, I submitted almost all of my Autumn summative assignments with the remaining one very late in the evening - it was a reflective journal for Social Research Methods which was ok in the end, but just boring and daunting to write up. At least it's now submitted and I'm going to have to wait for quite a while because departments have changed their assessment feedback policy due to the on-going Covid-19 pandemic so I'll be lucky to get my mark and feedback by the end of the month. We're probably looking into early March which isn't ideal as I'll have my next set of assessments for some modules.
In terms of academia, we're now in Week 4 of Spring Term (this term is really flying by) and I'm yet to start off my day properly. I desperately need to catch-up with the workshop-style tasks for Social Research Methods so I'm up to speed - there isn't a ridiculous amount tbf and I can complete this over the week + do this week's tasks. I also need to watch the politics lectures and prep for the seminar tomorrow aha. As for the other modules, I need to do the same as politics really and for the Policy Process, we're moving into the 'Recreating Government Workshops' after next week which will be interesting - we have to submit a workshop report by mid-April.
Outside of academia, I've not been up to much except spending my weekend frantically editing my CV and drafting my responses to the application questions for the House of Commons Social Statistics Research Assistant Placement and the Northern Trains Year in Industry Placement. It's all submitted now and I'm rather nervous, the former is really competitive and I've already been emailed a link to complete a test to prove I'm competent with numeracy or something along those lines - that's all I'm allowed to disclose. I've also been doing some Department Rep related work whereby I've spent some time completing revamping our Student Voice VLE page, organising several meetings with various groups of people to have a long-overdue catch-up on departmental stuff, etc. Additionally, my friends organised a nice Zoom sesh which was fun and we just chilled lol.
I don't have a lot else left to say, but I've been thinking a fair bit about my future trajectory from the end of this academic year. * Fingers Crossed * that I secure a Year in Industry Placement - I'll be applying for more placement opportunities between now and the beginning of May. I have until the end of May to finalise everything with the uni's Careers and Placements Team. Slightly further along the line from that, I definitely want to do a MA in the field of public/social policy and have a handful of unis in mind that I would consider applying to, including York. Having said that, I do prefer Nottingham's MA Public Policy course in comparison to York's MA Public Administration/Public Policy and MA Social Policy as it has a broader variety of modules.
P.S. I said I was going to keep this short, but it turned out to be a fairly standard-length blog post.
Tag List: (For those who may be interested?!)
@Lemur14@CoolCavy @MidnightSymphony @Darya @04MR17 @CheeseIsVeg @xCaHx
Don't have a lot to update on atm, but the placement year applications aren't off to a good start - one of my applications got rejected and I'm waiting to hear about the other. Will be applying to more in due course.
Yesterday, I got one of the results back for my Autumn summative assignments and I got a 64 in Victimisation and Social Harm which I'm happy with because the assignment was rather difficult - the word count was really restrictive. That's a 2.1 so if I get similar marks or higher across the board then that's quite reassuring since I don't have official grades from last year to fall back on. York has a provision to protect grades in the form of a so-called 'safety net', but in its current form, it doesn't do much except pile more pressure in my final year if I do badly this year - they've only changed the weighting so that the year you do better in will account for a greater percentage of your overall degree performance which is crap.
Also, for my 'Policy Process' module, we had an interesting Q&A seminar about our 'Recreating Government Workshop' which will replicate the current Johnson administration albeit, in our scenario, my lecturer is the Prime Minister + another academic is the Chancellor and we have a small number of government departments. Atm, we have to audition for a ministerial role and I'm leaning towards HCLG (Housing, Communities and Local Government) and I might go for the big role as Secretary of State (basically BTEC Robert Jenrick lol) or a high profile junior minor role. I've jotted down a few realistic policies I have in mind, I was going to chuck in NIT (Negative Income Tax), but that deviates too much on the reality. I'll chuck in a proposal to trial UBI (Universal Basic Income) for sure - just need to do more research on that and sort out basic costings for policy proposals we have in mind.
Finally, I got invited to virtual social (Among Us) with a Lib Dem society at a different university which is nice (well someone from my uni's Lib Dem society shared it) and I did attend albeit very briefly - it was just too awkward when I was the only one from my uni's Lib Dem society so I left. I've got more virtual socials lined with the societies I'm involved with at York so if I'm not too busy, I'll defo get stuck in with those.
How's everyone doing, btw?
Yesterday, I got one of the results back for my Autumn summative assignments and I got a 64 in Victimisation and Social Harm which I'm happy with because the assignment was rather difficult - the word count was really restrictive. That's a 2.1 so if I get similar marks or higher across the board then that's quite reassuring since I don't have official grades from last year to fall back on. York has a provision to protect grades in the form of a so-called 'safety net', but in its current form, it doesn't do much except pile more pressure in my final year if I do badly this year - they've only changed the weighting so that the year you do better in will account for a greater percentage of your overall degree performance which is crap.
Also, for my 'Policy Process' module, we had an interesting Q&A seminar about our 'Recreating Government Workshop' which will replicate the current Johnson administration albeit, in our scenario, my lecturer is the Prime Minister + another academic is the Chancellor and we have a small number of government departments. Atm, we have to audition for a ministerial role and I'm leaning towards HCLG (Housing, Communities and Local Government) and I might go for the big role as Secretary of State (basically BTEC Robert Jenrick lol) or a high profile junior minor role. I've jotted down a few realistic policies I have in mind, I was going to chuck in NIT (Negative Income Tax), but that deviates too much on the reality. I'll chuck in a proposal to trial UBI (Universal Basic Income) for sure - just need to do more research on that and sort out basic costings for policy proposals we have in mind.
Finally, I got invited to virtual social (Among Us) with a Lib Dem society at a different university which is nice (well someone from my uni's Lib Dem society shared it) and I did attend albeit very briefly - it was just too awkward when I was the only one from my uni's Lib Dem society so I left. I've got more virtual socials lined with the societies I'm involved with at York so if I'm not too busy, I'll defo get stuck in with those.
How's everyone doing, btw?
Monday 15th February 2021
It's now Week 6 of Spring Term which is honestly ridiculous - it's gone relatively quickly I suppose and there are now 4 weeks left to go. Atm, I'm finding things a bit tough, the Placement Year stuff isn't going particularly well, but I'm definitely not giving up hope - I do need to apply to a couple more placement opportunities though! Also, it's been quite hard to stay motivated let alone positive about this term since we're fully online and I'm around 1-2 weeks behind on work for some modules - I should be able to catch-up on this from this week since we're starting our 'Recreating Government Workshop' for The Policy Process.
So far today, I've planned out what I need to do for the week and just procrastinated quite a bit ngl which isn't great. Anyways, I'm going to make a start on my politics lecture before I join a virtual coffee and chat session at 14:00 with one of my favourite lecturers from last year as she focuses on well-being tips which I would definitely find useful and likewise, studying fully online can be really isolating so it's nice to talk to somebody. Later at 15:30, I have a cohort Zoom drop-in session which is basically an informal student-staff forum really and I'm expecting my coursemates to raise the issue of feedback turnaround times for departments and harsh marking in some instances for the Autumn assessments that we did.
As for non-academic related stuff, I've been feeling sorry for myself I guess as I've not been up to much, but it was nice to get out of the house in a number of weeks just for some fresh air really - everywhere is relatively quiet given that England is still in a national lockdown. For the Lib Dem society, we have a webinar about liberties and lockdown tomorrow which I won't be able to attend as tomorrow afternoon/early evening will be quite rough as I have a really packed schedule. The society is also due an AGM next Thursday and I'm currently finding myself contemplating whether I should re-run for my current role, go for a different role or stay on as a Non-Portfolio Officer (NPO) as I'll probably have to step down later if I'm off to do a placement year. The reason I find myself contemplating over whether to say on the society's committee is primarily down to how I feel about a really tiny minority on the current committee who make me feel uneasy - I don't wish to elaborate on that. I'll probably stay on as a Non-Portfolio Officer (NPO) tbh unless I change my mind which I very much doubt. Finally, it's student union elections in York (again?!) which feels like we're still back in February/March 2020 all over again lol. Someone nominated me to potentially re-run as Working-Class and Social Mobility Officer or as Social Sciences Faculty Rep and they gave me quite a nice compliment, especially in my current role as a Department Rep which is just sweet. But, I'm not interested in either role really and since I'm looking to do a placement year, that would be a barrier if I did consider running for something.
It's now Week 6 of Spring Term which is honestly ridiculous - it's gone relatively quickly I suppose and there are now 4 weeks left to go. Atm, I'm finding things a bit tough, the Placement Year stuff isn't going particularly well, but I'm definitely not giving up hope - I do need to apply to a couple more placement opportunities though! Also, it's been quite hard to stay motivated let alone positive about this term since we're fully online and I'm around 1-2 weeks behind on work for some modules - I should be able to catch-up on this from this week since we're starting our 'Recreating Government Workshop' for The Policy Process.
So far today, I've planned out what I need to do for the week and just procrastinated quite a bit ngl which isn't great. Anyways, I'm going to make a start on my politics lecture before I join a virtual coffee and chat session at 14:00 with one of my favourite lecturers from last year as she focuses on well-being tips which I would definitely find useful and likewise, studying fully online can be really isolating so it's nice to talk to somebody. Later at 15:30, I have a cohort Zoom drop-in session which is basically an informal student-staff forum really and I'm expecting my coursemates to raise the issue of feedback turnaround times for departments and harsh marking in some instances for the Autumn assessments that we did.
As for non-academic related stuff, I've been feeling sorry for myself I guess as I've not been up to much, but it was nice to get out of the house in a number of weeks just for some fresh air really - everywhere is relatively quiet given that England is still in a national lockdown. For the Lib Dem society, we have a webinar about liberties and lockdown tomorrow which I won't be able to attend as tomorrow afternoon/early evening will be quite rough as I have a really packed schedule. The society is also due an AGM next Thursday and I'm currently finding myself contemplating whether I should re-run for my current role, go for a different role or stay on as a Non-Portfolio Officer (NPO) as I'll probably have to step down later if I'm off to do a placement year. The reason I find myself contemplating over whether to say on the society's committee is primarily down to how I feel about a really tiny minority on the current committee who make me feel uneasy - I don't wish to elaborate on that. I'll probably stay on as a Non-Portfolio Officer (NPO) tbh unless I change my mind which I very much doubt. Finally, it's student union elections in York (again?!) which feels like we're still back in February/March 2020 all over again lol. Someone nominated me to potentially re-run as Working-Class and Social Mobility Officer or as Social Sciences Faculty Rep and they gave me quite a nice compliment, especially in my current role as a Department Rep which is just sweet. But, I'm not interested in either role really and since I'm looking to do a placement year, that would be a barrier if I did consider running for something.
Just wanted to send you my support with everything 
I am still reading every update, just struggling to find time for anything other than uni work atm so replies aren't happening 
I am still reading every update, just struggling to find time for anything other than uni work atm so replies aren't happening Original post by Lemur14
Just wanted to send you my support with everything I am still reading every update, just struggling to find time for anything other than uni work atm so replies aren't happening
I am still reading every update, just struggling to find time for anything other than uni work atm so replies aren't happening Thanks, Lemur! I hope everything is going well on your end. Uni workload is definitely ridiculous on my side and a bit overwhelming at times.
Monday 22nd February 2021
It's now Week 7 of Spring Term and honestly, I'm eager for the term to come to an end because I really need a break. Since last week, things have been getting more hectic in the form of a 'Recreating Government' workshop for my Policy Process module - it reminds me of Model House of Commons (MHoC) in a way, but the format is very different. I also have a workshop for my Social Research Methods module which is incredibly dull and starting quantitative research methods is already making me feel a bit anxious - we're making a start on SPSS and the workshop tasks we need to do is due in late April (Week 1 of Summer Term).
Academic Update...
Politics in the UK
We're looking at British foreign policy this week which is quite topical, especially when the UK has started a new chapter in a post-Brexit world and it gives an overview of British foreign policy in the past, present, and what the future holds for Britain. Atm, I still need to make a start on the lectures for tomorrow, but that isn't too much of a problem.
Last week, our seminar tutor informed us that we have a formative 24-hour open exam in 3 weeks which is good news because I have never done a uni exam, especially in an open exam format due to Covid restrictions and I'm hoping it'll go well. I also got my mark and feedback for my Autumn assessment back and I was a little disappointed with the mark, I got a low 2.1 which isn't terrible by all means, but I was hoping to do a little better. Moving forward, I'm going to make an appointment with the Academic Writing Centre for some advice as the feedback was constructive and generally positive - it just said that I need to be more analytical.
The Policy Process
The 'Recreating Government' Workshop has been interesting as we're replicating a Conservative government albeit Johnson has resigned post-Brexit and post-Covid and all the talk is about 'levelling-up' the North and Midlands and a post-Covid economic recovery. I've been made a minister in the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government (we've renamed and expanded the department from irl to make it more manageable) and have already submitted initial policy ideas to the Prime Minister and the Chancellor (to our lecturers basically) to review for tomorrow's departmental meetings/press interviews (we have a PhD student who acts as the fictional press lol).
First impressions of this workshop is that it's definitely weird, but I think it's a good way to help us to understand how the policy process works in the real world which we need to reflect on in our workshop report. There are obviously differences in views although our fictional government could be described as 'one nation Conservative' or just a government which a broad church of views, i.e. centrists.
Social Research Methods
We've finished doing qualitative research methods without having actual workshop groups which isn't ideal, but I still have some stuff I need to catch up on. We're now doing quantitative research methods and have actual workshop groups, but I need to make a start on the content which is just dull and looks rather intimidating lol.
Victimisation and Social Harm
Not a lot to say for this module except that we're looking at a broad range of case studies in preparation for our Summer assessment task which is worth a stupid 70% of the module grade - scary that! There's a video about the assessment which I'll watch at some point and I have a few lectures that I need to catch up on - a few from last term and some from this term.
Outside of academia, I'm still waiting to hear back from Northern Trains regarding their Year in Industry opportunity whenever that may be and I definitely need to apply to more placement opportunities. Not an awful lot has happened during lockdown aha, but I'm going to a webinar about Universal Basic Income (UBI) tomorrow which will be really interesting and there's a range of panellists including UBI Lab York.
This afternoon, I've attended another Zoom coffee and chat with one of my favourite lecturers from the Sociology department in which another person joined and we shared some Netflix recommendations and generally had an informal chat really about life. Just a good way to start the week/it's good to talk to someone different really. I've also listened to the Prime Minister talking about England's roadmap out of lockdown on LBC which is more cautious than before, but there is light at the end of a very long tunnel. Starmer is right to highlight that need for business certainty and additional support to weather the economic implications of Covid - at least give clarity that furlough will continue until social contact limits are lifted in late June.
It's now Week 7 of Spring Term and honestly, I'm eager for the term to come to an end because I really need a break. Since last week, things have been getting more hectic in the form of a 'Recreating Government' workshop for my Policy Process module - it reminds me of Model House of Commons (MHoC) in a way, but the format is very different. I also have a workshop for my Social Research Methods module which is incredibly dull and starting quantitative research methods is already making me feel a bit anxious - we're making a start on SPSS and the workshop tasks we need to do is due in late April (Week 1 of Summer Term).
Academic Update...
Politics in the UK
We're looking at British foreign policy this week which is quite topical, especially when the UK has started a new chapter in a post-Brexit world and it gives an overview of British foreign policy in the past, present, and what the future holds for Britain. Atm, I still need to make a start on the lectures for tomorrow, but that isn't too much of a problem.
Last week, our seminar tutor informed us that we have a formative 24-hour open exam in 3 weeks which is good news because I have never done a uni exam, especially in an open exam format due to Covid restrictions and I'm hoping it'll go well. I also got my mark and feedback for my Autumn assessment back and I was a little disappointed with the mark, I got a low 2.1 which isn't terrible by all means, but I was hoping to do a little better. Moving forward, I'm going to make an appointment with the Academic Writing Centre for some advice as the feedback was constructive and generally positive - it just said that I need to be more analytical.
The Policy Process
The 'Recreating Government' Workshop has been interesting as we're replicating a Conservative government albeit Johnson has resigned post-Brexit and post-Covid and all the talk is about 'levelling-up' the North and Midlands and a post-Covid economic recovery. I've been made a minister in the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government (we've renamed and expanded the department from irl to make it more manageable) and have already submitted initial policy ideas to the Prime Minister and the Chancellor (to our lecturers basically) to review for tomorrow's departmental meetings/press interviews (we have a PhD student who acts as the fictional press lol).
First impressions of this workshop is that it's definitely weird, but I think it's a good way to help us to understand how the policy process works in the real world which we need to reflect on in our workshop report. There are obviously differences in views although our fictional government could be described as 'one nation Conservative' or just a government which a broad church of views, i.e. centrists.
Social Research Methods
We've finished doing qualitative research methods without having actual workshop groups which isn't ideal, but I still have some stuff I need to catch up on. We're now doing quantitative research methods and have actual workshop groups, but I need to make a start on the content which is just dull and looks rather intimidating lol.
Victimisation and Social Harm
Not a lot to say for this module except that we're looking at a broad range of case studies in preparation for our Summer assessment task which is worth a stupid 70% of the module grade - scary that! There's a video about the assessment which I'll watch at some point and I have a few lectures that I need to catch up on - a few from last term and some from this term.
Outside of academia, I'm still waiting to hear back from Northern Trains regarding their Year in Industry opportunity whenever that may be and I definitely need to apply to more placement opportunities. Not an awful lot has happened during lockdown aha, but I'm going to a webinar about Universal Basic Income (UBI) tomorrow which will be really interesting and there's a range of panellists including UBI Lab York.
This afternoon, I've attended another Zoom coffee and chat with one of my favourite lecturers from the Sociology department in which another person joined and we shared some Netflix recommendations and generally had an informal chat really about life. Just a good way to start the week/it's good to talk to someone different really. I've also listened to the Prime Minister talking about England's roadmap out of lockdown on LBC which is more cautious than before, but there is light at the end of a very long tunnel. Starmer is right to highlight that need for business certainty and additional support to weather the economic implications of Covid - at least give clarity that furlough will continue until social contact limits are lifted in late June.
Monday 1st March 2021
Two more weeks to go until the end of Spring term at York which is surreal as I would've pretty much finish Year 2 teaching by then. In Summer term, it's just revision classes to prepare us for our assessments and I only have one 24 hours open-book exam this year which is for my 'Politics in the UK' module - I have a formative for this in the final week of term which will help ease my anxiety a bit with uni exams as I've never done one before.
Academic Update...
Politics in the UK
We're looking at voting behaviour in the UK this week with a particular focus on the 2017 General Election and whether there has been continuity or change in British electoral politics over time in our seminar tomorrow afternoon. Atm, I need to make a start on the lectures and the seminar readings.
The Policy Process
The 'Recreating Government' Workshop has been a mixed experience IMO as some people aren't putting the work in and are leaving important stuff last minute which ruins the experience of the workshop, but either way, I do have something to write in my 1,000 words workshop report which is to be complemented by a series of short ministerial diaries which I'll attach as an appendix - we need to demonstrate that we understand the theories we were taught by reflecting on the workshop and what we've learnt from it.
Later this afternoon, I'm helping another minister in my department on a pretty complex policy to do with how we can revitalise the high streets for the future - I did a bit of research yesterday and there are various articles, etc. suggesting that business rates should be overhauled at the least and there are other practical things we can do to without necessarily committing to government expenditure. I also need to fill in the revised, costed policy proposal form and copy and paste that over to our department's work drive.
Social Research Methods
I don't know where to begin with this core module... On Friday evening, I received an email from the Social Policy department that they have finally received my mark and feedback for my Autumn assignment which was a reflective journal and suffice to say, I was disappointed with the mark, but it's not the end of the world as I didn't completely wreck it - I got a low 2.2. What annoyed me more was the shoddy feedback I got back which was very short and vague and this seems to be a pattern with of my coursemates so a Course Rep has sent off an email to the module convenor on our behalf. Despite the mark, I can still turn things around in this module as the reflective journal is only worth 20% of the module mark (thankfully), but it's making me worried about my next assessment for this module and the Policy Process as I have to do something quite similar.
Outside of academia, I've finally heard back from Northern Trains regarding their Year in Industry opportunity and I've been invited to a virtual assessment day for 2 weeks time which is good news. Having said that, I'm naturally a bit nervous about the virtual assessment day, but I'll do some research about that and how to prep for it - tbh, I should be alright. Just need to brush up on my numerical skills which is a bit rusty lmao. Other than that, not a lot has happened, but I really enjoyed the Universal Basic Income (UBI) webinar that we hosted which was fascinating as I asked about the difference between a Negative Income Tax (NIT) and Universal Basic Income (UBI) which broadly speaking is the same, but why the latter is favoured more. On Thursday evening, I was also elected Secretary of the Lib Dem Society which is a huge promotion, but tbh, I can't see myself sticking around with the committee for long as I'll probably have to step down in early September if I'm off to do a placement year and if not, I'll probably quit anyways - it would be nice to have a break from working behind the scenes for societies.
Two more weeks to go until the end of Spring term at York which is surreal as I would've pretty much finish Year 2 teaching by then. In Summer term, it's just revision classes to prepare us for our assessments and I only have one 24 hours open-book exam this year which is for my 'Politics in the UK' module - I have a formative for this in the final week of term which will help ease my anxiety a bit with uni exams as I've never done one before.
Academic Update...
Politics in the UK
We're looking at voting behaviour in the UK this week with a particular focus on the 2017 General Election and whether there has been continuity or change in British electoral politics over time in our seminar tomorrow afternoon. Atm, I need to make a start on the lectures and the seminar readings.
The Policy Process
The 'Recreating Government' Workshop has been a mixed experience IMO as some people aren't putting the work in and are leaving important stuff last minute which ruins the experience of the workshop, but either way, I do have something to write in my 1,000 words workshop report which is to be complemented by a series of short ministerial diaries which I'll attach as an appendix - we need to demonstrate that we understand the theories we were taught by reflecting on the workshop and what we've learnt from it.
Later this afternoon, I'm helping another minister in my department on a pretty complex policy to do with how we can revitalise the high streets for the future - I did a bit of research yesterday and there are various articles, etc. suggesting that business rates should be overhauled at the least and there are other practical things we can do to without necessarily committing to government expenditure. I also need to fill in the revised, costed policy proposal form and copy and paste that over to our department's work drive.
Social Research Methods
I don't know where to begin with this core module... On Friday evening, I received an email from the Social Policy department that they have finally received my mark and feedback for my Autumn assignment which was a reflective journal and suffice to say, I was disappointed with the mark, but it's not the end of the world as I didn't completely wreck it - I got a low 2.2.
What annoyed me more was the shoddy feedback I got back which was very short and vague and this seems to be a pattern with of my coursemates so a Course Rep has sent off an email to the module convenor on our behalf. Despite the mark, I can still turn things around in this module as the reflective journal is only worth 20% of the module mark (thankfully), but it's making me worried about my next assessment for this module and the Policy Process as I have to do something quite similar. Outside of academia, I've finally heard back from Northern Trains regarding their Year in Industry opportunity and I've been invited to a virtual assessment day for 2 weeks time which is good news. Having said that, I'm naturally a bit nervous about the virtual assessment day, but I'll do some research about that and how to prep for it - tbh, I should be alright. Just need to brush up on my numerical skills which is a bit rusty lmao. Other than that, not a lot has happened, but I really enjoyed the Universal Basic Income (UBI) webinar that we hosted which was fascinating as I asked about the difference between a Negative Income Tax (NIT) and Universal Basic Income (UBI) which broadly speaking is the same, but why the latter is favoured more. On Thursday evening, I was also elected Secretary of the Lib Dem Society which is a huge promotion, but tbh, I can't see myself sticking around with the committee for long as I'll probably have to step down in early September if I'm off to do a placement year and if not, I'll probably quit anyways - it would be nice to have a break from working behind the scenes for societies.
You only have one exam in the summer term? I am so jealous! Waiting for my exam timetable but I think I'm likely to have 1 this term and 7 next term rip
Keep going, nearly there now
Keep going, nearly there now
Original post by Lemur14
You only have one exam in the summer term? I am so jealous! Waiting for my exam timetable but I think I'm likely to have 1 this term and 7 next term rip
Keep going, nearly there now
Keep going, nearly there now
It's weird but based on my module selections, I only have one exam in the Summer term, the rest is assessed via coursework over the year. I have 2 assignments to do over the Easter break (I'll probably ask for an extension) and I have another 3 during the Summer + the exam for my Politics module.
Good luck with your exams this term and next term!
Yh, we're almost there now, we just need to keep going - same to you too!
Monday 8th March 2021
One more week to go until the end of Spring term which is surreal, but I can't wait to have a well-deserved break as this has been a long term.
Academic update...
Politics in the UK
This week, we're looking at the Power of the Media in British Politics and this marks the end of Year 2 teaching for this module which is quite sad because I thoroughly enjoyed the module and the way that the Politics department has structured online learning this year - it has been really smooth throughout with little problems.
Over the weekend, I've watched the pre-recorded lectures and made notes which will give me much needed time this week to catch up on other modules, especially Social Research Methods as I'm quite behind atm and I need to do the practice activities to prepare for my Spring assessment which is due in after the Easter break. I still need to prepare for the seminar tomorrow though and start revising for the formative open exam next week (we have a whole week to do it which is bizarre) which will mostly consist of planning potential questions and structuring arguments + compiling sources I can use.
The Policy Process
We're in the final week of our 'Recreating Government' workshop which has been a mixed experience suffice to say, but nonetheless, I've already learnt a lot from the workshop which I can definitely mention in my CV or in some other form - I've started making rough drafts of my ministerial diaries which will not count towards my grade, but I can attach these in the appendix of my workshop report and they'll be taken into consideration should I have a borderline mark so there's nothing to lose.
This week, government departments are in the process of finalising their policy proposals by revising the policy content and costs for submission to the Treasury on Thursday evening and next week we'll have a seminar reflecting on the workshop - what we thought about it and some discussions about our Spring assignment.
Social Research Methods
Where to begin?! Well... For the qualitative part of the asynchronous workshop, I thought that went alright although we didn't have weekly seminars/tutorials as the tasks we need to do for our Spring assignment are relatively straightforward and I just need to complete them and tidy up the relevant folders saved on my laptop. As for the quantitative part of the asynchronous workshop which we started in Week 6 (3 weeks ago), I'm feeling rather uneasy about it and it's probably my natural response to dealing with numbers as it reminds me of GCSE Maths and my experience with my Year 11 Maths teacher who was awful btw - he was strict and would literally roast the class if we didn't understand something considered relatively 'basic' which is off-putting. Anyways, I just need to watch the pre-recorded lectures and make notes, and the relevant videos guiding us on the practice activities so we know what we're doing for our Spring assignment hopefully.
Outside of academia, I've almost forgotten that in England, we're in the first stage of the roadmap out of lockdown as we're now allowed to meet with one person outdoors to socialise and schools, colleges, and universities are open, but the latter is only for practical courses. I'm not expected to be back until after the Easter break at the earliest and even then, I'm not sure if it's worth going back to York. It will literally depend on whether I have any in-person sessions timetabled which are basically revision sessions in preparation for Summer assignments and my open exam for Politics in mid-Summer (around May/June). In terms of how I'm doing atm, I'm actually doing alright, but I'm definitely missing the 'social' element of my university experience as I can only see my coursemates and friends over Zoom.
In general, I've not been up to much, but I'm feeling slightly anxious about my virtual assessment day with Northern Trains which is natural as I've never been to an assessment day before, let alone know what it is like. But, I've done quite a bit of preparation by watching videos explaining what it is like and doing some preparations for next Friday. The Careers and Placements Team actually emailed me today with some information for next Friday's assessment day which is helpful, but the information is still a bit vague - I should be alright and hopefully, I will be successful in securing the placement opportunity.
One more week to go until the end of Spring term which is surreal, but I can't wait to have a well-deserved break as this has been a long term.
Academic update...
Politics in the UK
This week, we're looking at the Power of the Media in British Politics and this marks the end of Year 2 teaching for this module which is quite sad because I thoroughly enjoyed the module and the way that the Politics department has structured online learning this year - it has been really smooth throughout with little problems.
Over the weekend, I've watched the pre-recorded lectures and made notes which will give me much needed time this week to catch up on other modules, especially Social Research Methods as I'm quite behind atm and I need to do the practice activities to prepare for my Spring assessment which is due in after the Easter break. I still need to prepare for the seminar tomorrow though and start revising for the formative open exam next week (we have a whole week to do it which is bizarre) which will mostly consist of planning potential questions and structuring arguments + compiling sources I can use.
The Policy Process
We're in the final week of our 'Recreating Government' workshop which has been a mixed experience suffice to say, but nonetheless, I've already learnt a lot from the workshop which I can definitely mention in my CV or in some other form - I've started making rough drafts of my ministerial diaries which will not count towards my grade, but I can attach these in the appendix of my workshop report and they'll be taken into consideration should I have a borderline mark so there's nothing to lose.
This week, government departments are in the process of finalising their policy proposals by revising the policy content and costs for submission to the Treasury on Thursday evening and next week we'll have a seminar reflecting on the workshop - what we thought about it and some discussions about our Spring assignment.
Social Research Methods
Where to begin?! Well... For the qualitative part of the asynchronous workshop, I thought that went alright although we didn't have weekly seminars/tutorials as the tasks we need to do for our Spring assignment are relatively straightforward and I just need to complete them and tidy up the relevant folders saved on my laptop. As for the quantitative part of the asynchronous workshop which we started in Week 6 (3 weeks ago), I'm feeling rather uneasy about it and it's probably my natural response to dealing with numbers as it reminds me of GCSE Maths and my experience with my Year 11 Maths teacher who was awful btw - he was strict and would literally roast the class if we didn't understand something considered relatively 'basic' which is off-putting. Anyways, I just need to watch the pre-recorded lectures and make notes, and the relevant videos guiding us on the practice activities so we know what we're doing for our Spring assignment hopefully.
Outside of academia, I've almost forgotten that in England, we're in the first stage of the roadmap out of lockdown as we're now allowed to meet with one person outdoors to socialise and schools, colleges, and universities are open, but the latter is only for practical courses. I'm not expected to be back until after the Easter break at the earliest and even then, I'm not sure if it's worth going back to York. It will literally depend on whether I have any in-person sessions timetabled which are basically revision sessions in preparation for Summer assignments and my open exam for Politics in mid-Summer (around May/June). In terms of how I'm doing atm, I'm actually doing alright, but I'm definitely missing the 'social' element of my university experience as I can only see my coursemates and friends over Zoom.
In general, I've not been up to much, but I'm feeling slightly anxious about my virtual assessment day with Northern Trains which is natural as I've never been to an assessment day before, let alone know what it is like. But, I've done quite a bit of preparation by watching videos explaining what it is like and doing some preparations for next Friday. The Careers and Placements Team actually emailed me today with some information for next Friday's assessment day which is helpful, but the information is still a bit vague - I should be alright and hopefully, I will be successful in securing the placement opportunity.
Monday 15th March 2021
Yay! We're now in the final week (Week 10) of Spring term and this week is very quiet, but I do have quite a bit of work I need to catch up on for Social Research Methods and I'm finding quantitative methods quite tricky atm. It's not as straightforward as qualitative methods and we're starting to make use of Qualtrics for surveys and learning how to use SPSS to deal with things like descriptive statistics and hypothesis testing in terms of association and difference in means, and correlation.
Academic update...
Politics in the UK
This week, we have a formative 24 hours open exam (technically we're suppose to spend 8 hours maximum) answering 2 questions (1,250 words each) and bizzarely, we have until the end of Friday to submit our essays to our essays to our seminar tutor via email. I'm going to aim to get this done before Friday under timed conditions as I have a virtual assessment day with Northern Trains and don't want this to be on my mind by then.
The formative questions are quite nice and the way the questions are structured will reflect what we'll get in the real 24 hours open exam in Summer term. I can't disclose how the questions are generally structured, but we're expected to draw on the theory we've learnt and apply this to various topics we've covered this year, e.g. UK Environmental Policy, Brexit, etc.
Social Research Methods
This week, we're looking at hypothesis testing in terms of correlation in SPSS as I've already eluded to and we've got practice activities to do to consolidate our understanding and to prepare us for our assessment which is due after the Easter break. Having said that, I might apply for a short deadline extension again, i.e. between 1-2 weeks maximum via an ECA claim as I've had some disruption to asychronised learning at home as a family member had to be hospitalised for few days due to being unwell (not Covid!) a few weeks back (they're doing alright now and are back home) and I've been finding it difficult to work from home due to distractions, but I've coped relatively well.
I think that's a fairly legitimate claim, especially for the former because although the uni has temporarily removed the need for evidence for an ECA claim, you still need to provide a legitimate claim and even then, there's still the minimal risk that some students may choose to abuse the ECA system.
The Policy Process
We have finished our 'Recreating Government' workshop last Friday which has been an interesting workshop as it makes you realise how policymaking works in the real word and what challenges you could face - whether in the middle of a pandemic or not! Last Friday was our fictional Budget and it was a fisically responsible budget that put investment first funded by very minimal tax rises and shifting the tax burden to larger businesses and those who are the wealthiest.
Personally, I had two big wins from the Budget as I passed over my policy on 'Upskilling and Retraining Britain's Workforce' over to DWP and that became their flagship policy and I also won on my policy to 'Revitalise the High Street' as the Chancellor agreed with my idea to shift the tax burden to larger businesses and those who are the wealthiest, and the majority of the policy was a series of practical changes that didn't require any spending. Reflecting on the workshop on the whole, there were clearly winners and losers - my department was one of the winners, but fundamentally, it made me realise the level of complexity in designing and implementing a policy, e.g. our department's housing policy perhaps best illustrates the level of complexity in designing and implementing a policy because it was tricky to calculate the cost to build new affordable, eco friendly homes and how much we'll get back in revenue when it is sold on the private market.
This Wednesday, we have a final seminar which will reflect on the workshop and explain how we should structure our workshop report which is due after the Easter break. I think it's relatively straightforward tbh, but I just need guidance on how best to structure the workshop report.
Year 3 Option Modules
Even though I'm planning to do a placement year in 2021/22, I have to confirm my option module choices for Year 3 after the Easter Break (there's a short window for this) and we have a virtual session about how we should select our option modules on Wednesday at 14:00. Atm, I'm pretty much set on what option modules I want to do in Year 3 and I'm disappointed with the range of modules in Social Policy - it seems heavily Criminology focused which is off-putting, but I would definitely consider doing Housing Policy and maybe Welfare Imaginaries: Past, Present, and Future. The former only runs in the Autumn term which is really annoying as it messes up my option choices.
Option 1
Autumn term: The Racial State (Sociology) and Development Paradigms (Politics)
Spring term: Regionalism in World Politics (Politics) and Global Sustainability and Energy Policy (Politics)
Option 2
Autumn term: The Racial State (Sociology) and Housing Policy (Social Policy)
Spring term: Regionalism in World Politics (Politics) and Welfare Imaginaries: Past, Present, and Future (Social Policy)
Option 3:
Autumn term: The Racial State (Sociology) and Development Paradigms (Politics)
Spring term: Regionalism in World Politics (Politics) and Welfare Imaginaries: Past, Present, and Future (Social Policy)
^ Those are the potential combinations I might choose, but a general rule, the department recommends choosing modules that links well with others and I feel that Option 3 fulfils that criteria the best. Option 2 could also work because Housing Policy can link into Welfare Imaginaries: Past, Present, and Future in terms of thinking about the welfare state and why people are living in poverty and/or are homeless.
What's giving me a bit of an headache is that I don't know what to do my dissertation on atm which is actually fine because it's still relatively early to think about that. I'll probably have a better idea closer to the time.
Outside of academia...
I've accidentally missed an important departmental meeting as a Department Rep which is really bad oversight on my end and I've apologised via email - my Head of Department was chill about it which is great. I better not do that for this Friday though!
I don't have much to say, but I spent some of the weekend preparing for my virtual assessment day with Northern Trains which I'm slightly nervous about, but hopefully it'll go well. I just need to brush up on my Maths skills as they haven't told us what psychometric tests we might face. Last night, I attended a virtual society quiz with the Lib Dem society and I actually did alright - I struggled with the geography round as clearly that is not my forte.
How's everyone doing?
Yay! We're now in the final week (Week 10) of Spring term and this week is very quiet, but I do have quite a bit of work I need to catch up on for Social Research Methods and I'm finding quantitative methods quite tricky atm. It's not as straightforward as qualitative methods and we're starting to make use of Qualtrics for surveys and learning how to use SPSS to deal with things like descriptive statistics and hypothesis testing in terms of association and difference in means, and correlation.
Academic update...
Politics in the UK
This week, we have a formative 24 hours open exam (technically we're suppose to spend 8 hours maximum) answering 2 questions (1,250 words each) and bizzarely, we have until the end of Friday to submit our essays to our essays to our seminar tutor via email. I'm going to aim to get this done before Friday under timed conditions as I have a virtual assessment day with Northern Trains and don't want this to be on my mind by then.
The formative questions are quite nice and the way the questions are structured will reflect what we'll get in the real 24 hours open exam in Summer term. I can't disclose how the questions are generally structured, but we're expected to draw on the theory we've learnt and apply this to various topics we've covered this year, e.g. UK Environmental Policy, Brexit, etc.
Social Research Methods
This week, we're looking at hypothesis testing in terms of correlation in SPSS as I've already eluded to and we've got practice activities to do to consolidate our understanding and to prepare us for our assessment which is due after the Easter break. Having said that, I might apply for a short deadline extension again, i.e. between 1-2 weeks maximum via an ECA claim as I've had some disruption to asychronised learning at home as a family member had to be hospitalised for few days due to being unwell (not Covid!) a few weeks back (they're doing alright now and are back home) and I've been finding it difficult to work from home due to distractions, but I've coped relatively well.
I think that's a fairly legitimate claim, especially for the former because although the uni has temporarily removed the need for evidence for an ECA claim, you still need to provide a legitimate claim and even then, there's still the minimal risk that some students may choose to abuse the ECA system.
The Policy Process
We have finished our 'Recreating Government' workshop last Friday which has been an interesting workshop as it makes you realise how policymaking works in the real word and what challenges you could face - whether in the middle of a pandemic or not! Last Friday was our fictional Budget and it was a fisically responsible budget that put investment first funded by very minimal tax rises and shifting the tax burden to larger businesses and those who are the wealthiest.
Personally, I had two big wins from the Budget as I passed over my policy on 'Upskilling and Retraining Britain's Workforce' over to DWP and that became their flagship policy and I also won on my policy to 'Revitalise the High Street' as the Chancellor agreed with my idea to shift the tax burden to larger businesses and those who are the wealthiest, and the majority of the policy was a series of practical changes that didn't require any spending. Reflecting on the workshop on the whole, there were clearly winners and losers - my department was one of the winners, but fundamentally, it made me realise the level of complexity in designing and implementing a policy, e.g. our department's housing policy perhaps best illustrates the level of complexity in designing and implementing a policy because it was tricky to calculate the cost to build new affordable, eco friendly homes and how much we'll get back in revenue when it is sold on the private market.
This Wednesday, we have a final seminar which will reflect on the workshop and explain how we should structure our workshop report which is due after the Easter break. I think it's relatively straightforward tbh, but I just need guidance on how best to structure the workshop report.
Year 3 Option Modules
Even though I'm planning to do a placement year in 2021/22, I have to confirm my option module choices for Year 3 after the Easter Break (there's a short window for this) and we have a virtual session about how we should select our option modules on Wednesday at 14:00. Atm, I'm pretty much set on what option modules I want to do in Year 3 and I'm disappointed with the range of modules in Social Policy - it seems heavily Criminology focused which is off-putting, but I would definitely consider doing Housing Policy and maybe Welfare Imaginaries: Past, Present, and Future. The former only runs in the Autumn term which is really annoying as it messes up my option choices.
Option 1
Autumn term: The Racial State (Sociology) and Development Paradigms (Politics)
Spring term: Regionalism in World Politics (Politics) and Global Sustainability and Energy Policy (Politics)
Option 2
Autumn term: The Racial State (Sociology) and Housing Policy (Social Policy)
Spring term: Regionalism in World Politics (Politics) and Welfare Imaginaries: Past, Present, and Future (Social Policy)
Option 3:
Autumn term: The Racial State (Sociology) and Development Paradigms (Politics)
Spring term: Regionalism in World Politics (Politics) and Welfare Imaginaries: Past, Present, and Future (Social Policy)
^ Those are the potential combinations I might choose, but a general rule, the department recommends choosing modules that links well with others and I feel that Option 3 fulfils that criteria the best. Option 2 could also work because Housing Policy can link into Welfare Imaginaries: Past, Present, and Future in terms of thinking about the welfare state and why people are living in poverty and/or are homeless.
What's giving me a bit of an headache is that I don't know what to do my dissertation on atm which is actually fine because it's still relatively early to think about that. I'll probably have a better idea closer to the time.
Outside of academia...
I've accidentally missed an important departmental meeting as a Department Rep which is really bad oversight on my end and I've apologised via email - my Head of Department was chill about it which is great. I better not do that for this Friday though!
I don't have much to say, but I spent some of the weekend preparing for my virtual assessment day with Northern Trains which I'm slightly nervous about, but hopefully it'll go well. I just need to brush up on my Maths skills as they haven't told us what psychometric tests we might face. Last night, I attended a virtual society quiz with the Lib Dem society and I actually did alright - I struggled with the geography round as clearly that is not my forte.
How's everyone doing?
Thursday 25th March 2021
I'm currently over half way through my first week of my Easter vacation from uni and tbh, I have managed to get a bit of work for my assignments done, but there's still a lot to do for Social Research Methods and everything is due for the start of Summer term (mid-April). Despite this, I've taken the entire weekend off by doing no work and yesterday, I went on a nice long walk around my local area and I've never seen it so quiet.
Academic update...
The Policy Process
I've spent some of this week editing my ministerial diaries for the 'Recreating Government' workshop that we did during the second half of this term which will be useful to include as appendexes for my workshop report, but will not count towards my assignment mark. It will make it easier to write the workshop report which is 1,000 words (I'll do this at some point) because I can talk about specific parts of the workshop and link them to the theory we've learnt and refer to my ministerial diaries where necessary.
Social Research Methods
There's quite a lot of work that I need to do (well, catch up on...) for this term's assignment and that's beginning to make me panic a little. Yesterday, I started to tidy up the qualitative workshop tasks that I need to do and made edits to the work I had started earlier this term - the only thing I haven't done yet is code my obeservation data and analyse visual data, but it's nothing mind-blowingly complex and hopefully I can get that all started by Saturday the latest. I'd like to make a start on the quantiative workshop tasks which I haven't had a chance to make a start during the second half of this term as things got rather hectic, but everything is and will be fine.
Year 3 Option Modules
I'm still confused about my option module choices for Year 3, but I don't have to start making my choices until after the Easter break. I'm probably going to choose The Racial State and Development Paradigms for Autumn term and Regionalism in World Politics and Welfare Imaginaries: Past, Present, and Future for Spring term, but for the latter, information about the module is a bit vague.
Outside of academia...
Last Friday, I attended a virtual assessment day with Northern Trains which went rather quick (it was around 3 hours in length), but I think I performed ok overall in the group activities that we had to do. It was tricky to get my input in a virtual environment, but I've tried and managed to make quite a few contributions across the group activities and demonstrated other skills as well, i.e. ability to listen and thinking critically, etc. I don't find out how I've performed until next Friday and I don't want to guess either because I honestly don't know, but do think I stand a chance.
If successful, I'll be invited to an interview and if that goes well, I'll have to go through some health check which is apparently used to ascertain if I'm fit to work and it all goes from there really.
In other news, I've been contacted by a Lib Dem Cllr in York about whether I'll be interested in interning for the local party on a part-time basis which I've said yes to, but I need to arrange another informal video call to discuss about it in detail because I was unable to make a video call yesterday. It's about 10 hours per week which is fine, but I'm not currently in a compacity to do more work (I'd love to) as I need to focus on assessments for this term and next term and ensure I get at least a 2.1 (I'm on track for that) for the year.
How's everyone doing?
I'm currently over half way through my first week of my Easter vacation from uni and tbh, I have managed to get a bit of work for my assignments done, but there's still a lot to do for Social Research Methods and everything is due for the start of Summer term (mid-April).
Despite this, I've taken the entire weekend off by doing no work and yesterday, I went on a nice long walk around my local area and I've never seen it so quiet. Academic update...
The Policy Process
I've spent some of this week editing my ministerial diaries for the 'Recreating Government' workshop that we did during the second half of this term which will be useful to include as appendexes for my workshop report, but will not count towards my assignment mark. It will make it easier to write the workshop report which is 1,000 words (I'll do this at some point) because I can talk about specific parts of the workshop and link them to the theory we've learnt and refer to my ministerial diaries where necessary.
Social Research Methods
There's quite a lot of work that I need to do (well, catch up on...) for this term's assignment and that's beginning to make me panic a little. Yesterday, I started to tidy up the qualitative workshop tasks that I need to do and made edits to the work I had started earlier this term - the only thing I haven't done yet is code my obeservation data and analyse visual data, but it's nothing mind-blowingly complex and hopefully I can get that all started by Saturday the latest. I'd like to make a start on the quantiative workshop tasks which I haven't had a chance to make a start during the second half of this term as things got rather hectic, but everything is and will be fine.
Year 3 Option Modules
I'm still confused about my option module choices for Year 3, but I don't have to start making my choices until after the Easter break. I'm probably going to choose The Racial State and Development Paradigms for Autumn term and Regionalism in World Politics and Welfare Imaginaries: Past, Present, and Future for Spring term, but for the latter, information about the module is a bit vague.
Outside of academia...
Last Friday, I attended a virtual assessment day with Northern Trains which went rather quick (it was around 3 hours in length), but I think I performed ok overall in the group activities that we had to do. It was tricky to get my input in a virtual environment, but I've tried and managed to make quite a few contributions across the group activities and demonstrated other skills as well, i.e. ability to listen and thinking critically, etc. I don't find out how I've performed until next Friday and I don't want to guess either because I honestly don't know, but do think I stand a chance.
If successful, I'll be invited to an interview and if that goes well, I'll have to go through some health check which is apparently used to ascertain if I'm fit to work and it all goes from there really.
In other news, I've been contacted by a Lib Dem Cllr in York about whether I'll be interested in interning for the local party on a part-time basis which I've said yes to, but I need to arrange another informal video call to discuss about it in detail because I was unable to make a video call yesterday. It's about 10 hours per week which is fine, but I'm not currently in a compacity to do more work (I'd love to) as I need to focus on assessments for this term and next term and ensure I get at least a 2.1 (I'm on track for that) for the year.
How's everyone doing?
Tuesday 30th March 2021
I'm now in the second week of my Easter vacation from uni and I've fallen slightly behind schedule with my own target of getting the qualitiative part of my workshop tasks for Social Research Methods done. But, everything's fine - the final task is really straightforward and shouldn't take me too long.
Academic update...
Social Research Methods
Once the qualitiative part of my workshop tasks are done, I really need to make a start on the quantitative workshop tasks which will take longer to complete because there are different components to it and it isn't as straightforward.
Today, I'm aiming to make a start on creating a Qualtrics questionnaire on Student Employment, but I haven't decided whether it should focus on student employment from the student perspective, etc. Either way, I'm going to look use the UK's Data Service's Variable Question Bank (VQB) website to help guide me on what questions I should ask - it's actually good academic practice to use tried and tested questions. I may have to rephrase a few questions and/or come up with a few of my own which is fine. In short, the Qualtrics questionnaire is a bit technical as I need to include a Likert Scale (basically a scale from 1 to 10 measuring happiness or whatever, etc.), clear instructions, routing, variable names and coding for the responses to the questions which can be a little tricky, but my lecturers have done a step by step video explaining how to do that.
The Policy Process
I've not done more work on this module since I've updated last Thursday, but I should do a rough plan about how I'm going to structure my workshop report and what I'll include which will save me time later when I need to have it all typed up, etc.
Department Rep
My term has gone by rather quickly since I was appointed to the role, but I have a 30 minute meeting catch-up with the Student Voice Coordinator at some point during this Easter vacation to basically discuss what I've achieved, what's going well and not so well, etc. Prior to my appointment being made official, I set myself 5 clear goals, but one of them has become unfeasible in the current climate despite my best efforts which is to continue the department's Peer Assisted Learning (PAL) scheme. There seems to be a lot of complexity and problems with continuing this albeit virtually and I'm going to see if the Social Sciences faculty can do something about it. Finally, something I haven't quite managed to do yet is to get the department more engaged with the Careers Team because we didn't have a departmental newsletter until one was set up by the department's Community Coordinator so we only get emails from the department about important things and the odd few emails from Careers time to time.
P.S. I almost forgot about the uni's semesterisation proposal which I should really give me input on as the current proposal on paper just doesn't work and I can't see the benefits for both staff and students.
Outside of academia...
Placement Year?!?
Yesterday afternoon, I got an email from Northern Trains concerning my Virtual Assessment Day which I was surpised about in two ways: 1) I didn't expect them to get back to us until Friday the latest as they said we'll hear from them in a fortnight and 2) I was a quite shocked that I've passed the Virtual Assessment Day and will now proceed to the interview stage. Just to recap, the Virtual Assessment Day just went really quickly and I didn't honestly think I'll proceed to the next stage of the application process based on my performance. What I was particularly self-conscious about were the contributions I made, especially in the group activities as although we were in smaller groups, it was still tricky to get a word in at times and you don't want to be seen as too quiet or too dominating in the discussions. Despite this, I gave my best shot with all the tasks, including the icebreaker we did in a really large group (I wish they put us into our groups and do it that way, but hey ho!) and I think the debate activity best demonstrated my ability to communicate and interact with others - I gave some good input and rebutted points made by the proposition (I was on the opposition side) and we also brought some nuance to the debate as well which is nice.
Car Lessons?!?
TL;DR I started driving lessons back around June/July 2020, but the pandemic has literally caused havoc as I was in a position where I could do my practical before I started my second year in September yet I couldn't get a test booked for then. I did manage to get one booked in York for November, but iirc, I pushed this back further as I hadn't manage to find a new instructor and secured a test date for February - again cancelled due to lockdown restrictions aha. Currently, my new test date is early June in York and I need to start out a driving instructor quickly as otherwise it will be problematic. I've tried to see whether I could change my test location to London, but there are no available test slots anywhere near me which is annoying.
As things stand, I'm planning to return to York after the Easter vacation even if I'm doing online learning and it's just revision as I'd like to finally get my practical done (hopefully ace it!) and catch up with friends I haven't seen since before Christmas!
I'm now in the second week of my Easter vacation from uni and I've fallen slightly behind schedule with my own target of getting the qualitiative part of my workshop tasks for Social Research Methods done. But, everything's fine - the final task is really straightforward and shouldn't take me too long.
Academic update...
Social Research Methods
Once the qualitiative part of my workshop tasks are done, I really need to make a start on the quantitative workshop tasks which will take longer to complete because there are different components to it and it isn't as straightforward.
Today, I'm aiming to make a start on creating a Qualtrics questionnaire on Student Employment, but I haven't decided whether it should focus on student employment from the student perspective, etc. Either way, I'm going to look use the UK's Data Service's Variable Question Bank (VQB) website to help guide me on what questions I should ask - it's actually good academic practice to use tried and tested questions. I may have to rephrase a few questions and/or come up with a few of my own which is fine. In short, the Qualtrics questionnaire is a bit technical as I need to include a Likert Scale (basically a scale from 1 to 10 measuring happiness or whatever, etc.), clear instructions, routing, variable names and coding for the responses to the questions which can be a little tricky, but my lecturers have done a step by step video explaining how to do that.
The Policy Process
I've not done more work on this module since I've updated last Thursday, but I should do a rough plan about how I'm going to structure my workshop report and what I'll include which will save me time later when I need to have it all typed up, etc.
Department Rep
My term has gone by rather quickly since I was appointed to the role, but I have a 30 minute meeting catch-up with the Student Voice Coordinator at some point during this Easter vacation to basically discuss what I've achieved, what's going well and not so well, etc. Prior to my appointment being made official, I set myself 5 clear goals, but one of them has become unfeasible in the current climate despite my best efforts which is to continue the department's Peer Assisted Learning (PAL) scheme. There seems to be a lot of complexity and problems with continuing this albeit virtually and I'm going to see if the Social Sciences faculty can do something about it. Finally, something I haven't quite managed to do yet is to get the department more engaged with the Careers Team because we didn't have a departmental newsletter until one was set up by the department's Community Coordinator so we only get emails from the department about important things and the odd few emails from Careers time to time.
P.S. I almost forgot about the uni's semesterisation proposal which I should really give me input on as the current proposal on paper just doesn't work and I can't see the benefits for both staff and students.
Outside of academia...
Placement Year?!?
Yesterday afternoon, I got an email from Northern Trains concerning my Virtual Assessment Day which I was surpised about in two ways: 1) I didn't expect them to get back to us until Friday the latest as they said we'll hear from them in a fortnight and 2) I was a quite shocked that I've passed the Virtual Assessment Day and will now proceed to the interview stage. Just to recap, the Virtual Assessment Day just went really quickly and I didn't honestly think I'll proceed to the next stage of the application process based on my performance. What I was particularly self-conscious about were the contributions I made, especially in the group activities as although we were in smaller groups, it was still tricky to get a word in at times and you don't want to be seen as too quiet or too dominating in the discussions. Despite this, I gave my best shot with all the tasks, including the icebreaker we did in a really large group (I wish they put us into our groups and do it that way, but hey ho!) and I think the debate activity best demonstrated my ability to communicate and interact with others - I gave some good input and rebutted points made by the proposition (I was on the opposition side) and we also brought some nuance to the debate as well which is nice.
Car Lessons?!?
TL;DR I started driving lessons back around June/July 2020, but the pandemic has literally caused havoc as I was in a position where I could do my practical before I started my second year in September yet I couldn't get a test booked for then. I did manage to get one booked in York for November, but iirc, I pushed this back further as I hadn't manage to find a new instructor and secured a test date for February - again cancelled due to lockdown restrictions aha. Currently, my new test date is early June in York and I need to start out a driving instructor quickly as otherwise it will be problematic. I've tried to see whether I could change my test location to London, but there are no available test slots anywhere near me which is annoying.
As things stand, I'm planning to return to York after the Easter vacation even if I'm doing online learning and it's just revision as I'd like to finally get my practical done (hopefully ace it!) and catch up with friends I haven't seen since before Christmas!
Tuesday 20th April 2021
Sorry for the lack of updates for 3 weeks, I've been quite busy with getting my assignments done which I proofread and submitted yesterday afternoon in advance of today's 10:00 deadline. I've also had some time to actually unwind during the Easter break which is great because last term kinda felt like it was never going to end, especially with a lack of routine with online lessons in the meantime.
Academic Update...
Spring Assignments
TL;DR I was really worried that I wasn't going to be able to get everything all done before today's 10:00 deadline initially. I could've applied for an ECA claim as I have a legitimate claim (unfortunately I did have a close family member hospitalised for a few days back in March - they're ok now), but I didn't and had I done so, it would have eased the pressure of getting everything done on time.
Either way, I did finish the assignments and submit them before today's 10:00 deadline and hopefully I'll get decent marks for those as I've spent quite a lot of time and effort doing them. I'm a bit worried about Policy Process workshop report as it's 1,000 words and I tried my best to talk about 3 policies we've developed and link them to the Big Mac Models (Micro, Meso, and Macro) and I hope the inclusion of my ministerial diaries for the Recreating Government Workshop as appendices will work in my favour. The ministerial diaries itself won't be graded, but it could help me gain much needed marks. As for Social Research Methods, I don't quite know what to expect, but I think I've done alright with the workshop tasks which are a mixture of qualitiative and quantitative (we had to submit those separately) and I found the latter though, especially trying to understand things like Pearson's R-value without actually doing the maths if that makes any sense, i.e. SPSS does the calculations for me. All we need to do is interpret numerical data.
Politics in the UK
I've not done any revision for this module over the Easter break which isn't ideal, but I still have 6 weeks before my 24 hour open exam which is actually quite a long time. Next week, revision sessions will start in seminar groups which is great as there will be opportunities to ask questions and to go other topics/theories I don't understand as well - for me, I need to revisit some topics for sure such as UK Foreign Policy and perhaps plan a response to a sample/past question.
Social Research Methods
This term we have a research design brief on student employment which tbh isn't the most exciting of topics to do a research design brief on, but at least having a set topic should hopefully mean our lecturers can give us guidance on how to do well in our final assessment for this module. Having watched the lecture video explaining the Summmer assessment, it doesn't look too bad and seems pretty straightforward to do.
Victimisation and Social Harm
This term, we have a 4,000 word project for our Summer assessment (final assessment for the module) which I'm yet to make a proper start on. I've decided to look at child poverty and kind of made a start on researching the topic and how I might structure my project according to the assessment criteria we've been given. There's also a couple of pre-recorded lecture videos that have been made available to us to guide us for this assessment which I'll defo go through.
The Policy Process
There's very little information about the Summer assessment so far, but it's a 1,750 words policy report related to the field of social policy and I'm actually unsure what topic to focus on just yet. Given that teaching resumes properly next week, we should be getting more information about the assessment then?!
Outside of academia...
Accommodation for Next Year
Still no news from the uni yet regarding my accommodation offer for next year, but I should hear something during this term.
Northern Trains Placement Year Application
I have an interview on Friday afternoon for the one of the roles I've applied for (we had to rank top 3) which I'm feeling a bit nervous, but I should be fine. I just need to do some preparation in advance and take my time to answer any questions I could be asked, etc.
Car Lessons?!
TL;DR This has been causing me havoc as I've struggled to find a new instructor since the Covid-19 pandemic has wrecked my plans to do my practical in London instead of York. If it weren't for this, I could've passed my practical last year, but hey ho.
After this post, I'm going to send emails to two drivng instructors I've found and hopefully they have availability as DVSA has moved my practical to mid June as it my original date for mid February got cancelled due to the Covid restrictions. *Fingers crossed* I could finally find a new instructor who has availability soon.
Sorry for the lack of updates for 3 weeks, I've been quite busy with getting my assignments done which I proofread and submitted yesterday afternoon in advance of today's 10:00 deadline. I've also had some time to actually unwind during the Easter break which is great because last term kinda felt like it was never going to end, especially with a lack of routine with online lessons in the meantime.
Academic Update...
Spring Assignments
TL;DR I was really worried that I wasn't going to be able to get everything all done before today's 10:00 deadline initially. I could've applied for an ECA claim as I have a legitimate claim (unfortunately I did have a close family member hospitalised for a few days back in March - they're ok now), but I didn't and had I done so, it would have eased the pressure of getting everything done on time.
Either way, I did finish the assignments and submit them before today's 10:00 deadline and hopefully I'll get decent marks for those as I've spent quite a lot of time and effort doing them. I'm a bit worried about Policy Process workshop report as it's 1,000 words and I tried my best to talk about 3 policies we've developed and link them to the Big Mac Models (Micro, Meso, and Macro) and I hope the inclusion of my ministerial diaries for the Recreating Government Workshop as appendices will work in my favour. The ministerial diaries itself won't be graded, but it could help me gain much needed marks. As for Social Research Methods, I don't quite know what to expect, but I think I've done alright with the workshop tasks which are a mixture of qualitiative and quantitative (we had to submit those separately) and I found the latter though, especially trying to understand things like Pearson's R-value without actually doing the maths if that makes any sense, i.e. SPSS does the calculations for me. All we need to do is interpret numerical data.
Politics in the UK
I've not done any revision for this module over the Easter break which isn't ideal, but I still have 6 weeks before my 24 hour open exam which is actually quite a long time. Next week, revision sessions will start in seminar groups which is great as there will be opportunities to ask questions and to go other topics/theories I don't understand as well - for me, I need to revisit some topics for sure such as UK Foreign Policy and perhaps plan a response to a sample/past question.
Social Research Methods
This term we have a research design brief on student employment which tbh isn't the most exciting of topics to do a research design brief on, but at least having a set topic should hopefully mean our lecturers can give us guidance on how to do well in our final assessment for this module. Having watched the lecture video explaining the Summmer assessment, it doesn't look too bad and seems pretty straightforward to do.
Victimisation and Social Harm
This term, we have a 4,000 word project for our Summer assessment (final assessment for the module) which I'm yet to make a proper start on. I've decided to look at child poverty and kind of made a start on researching the topic and how I might structure my project according to the assessment criteria we've been given. There's also a couple of pre-recorded lecture videos that have been made available to us to guide us for this assessment which I'll defo go through.
The Policy Process
There's very little information about the Summer assessment so far, but it's a 1,750 words policy report related to the field of social policy and I'm actually unsure what topic to focus on just yet. Given that teaching resumes properly next week, we should be getting more information about the assessment then?!
Outside of academia...
Accommodation for Next Year
Still no news from the uni yet regarding my accommodation offer for next year, but I should hear something during this term.
Northern Trains Placement Year Application
I have an interview on Friday afternoon for the one of the roles I've applied for (we had to rank top 3) which I'm feeling a bit nervous, but I should be fine. I just need to do some preparation in advance and take my time to answer any questions I could be asked, etc.
Car Lessons?!
TL;DR This has been causing me havoc as I've struggled to find a new instructor since the Covid-19 pandemic has wrecked my plans to do my practical in London instead of York. If it weren't for this, I could've passed my practical last year, but hey ho.
After this post, I'm going to send emails to two drivng instructors I've found and hopefully they have availability as DVSA has moved my practical to mid June as it my original date for mid February got cancelled due to the Covid restrictions. *Fingers crossed* I could finally find a new instructor who has availability soon.
Tuesday 27th April 2021
I've not been up to much since I updated last Tuesday apart from the interview with Northern Trains on Friday afternoon which I thought went well. They made me feel at ease which helped calmed some nerves I had and it felt like I was just having a chat, except I'm mostly answering questions and asking a few questions myself at the end.
Also, I'm now back in York (yay!) for the first time this year as the coronavirus restrictions in England are beginning to ease gradually and it's a nice change of scenery. What's not so great is that I came back to my student house and the kitchen is a literal pigsty and I haven't had the chance to confront my housemates as they're either in the house or out and I have no idea where. Either way, I'm not up for an argument and I'm moving out anyways by the end of June.
I'll keep the rest of this update short and may do another update this week...
Politics in the UK
I have a revision seminar shortly with a new seminar tutor and a new group and I don't quite know what to expect. I didn't get a chance to do the formative open exam and we're planning exam questions today so this will be useful, especially on topics I'm feeling less confident on, e.g. foreign policy.
Plans for the week
I'm going to meet a friend later this afternoon for a coffee in the city centre and we'll probably go for a wander around the city centre. I got a few errands to do as well and I'm not too fussed about when to get those done.
I also need to collect some LFD tests for Covid-19 at some point this week from uni as it would be more convenient to do the test from home and given that my sibling has done them many times now for college, it seems straightforward. Only trouble is that I don't have a mirror in my room.
I've not been up to much since I updated last Tuesday apart from the interview with Northern Trains on Friday afternoon which I thought went well. They made me feel at ease which helped calmed some nerves I had and it felt like I was just having a chat, except I'm mostly answering questions and asking a few questions myself at the end.
Also, I'm now back in York (yay!) for the first time this year as the coronavirus restrictions in England are beginning to ease gradually and it's a nice change of scenery. What's not so great is that I came back to my student house and the kitchen is a literal pigsty and I haven't had the chance to confront my housemates as they're either in the house or out and I have no idea where. Either way, I'm not up for an argument and I'm moving out anyways by the end of June.
Spoiler
I'll keep the rest of this update short and may do another update this week...
Politics in the UK
I have a revision seminar shortly with a new seminar tutor and a new group and I don't quite know what to expect. I didn't get a chance to do the formative open exam and we're planning exam questions today so this will be useful, especially on topics I'm feeling less confident on, e.g. foreign policy.
Plans for the week
I'm going to meet a friend later this afternoon for a coffee in the city centre and we'll probably go for a wander around the city centre. I got a few errands to do as well and I'm not too fussed about when to get those done.
I also need to collect some LFD tests for Covid-19 at some point this week from uni as it would be more convenient to do the test from home and given that my sibling has done them many times now for college, it seems straightforward. Only trouble is that I don't have a mirror in my room.
Tuesday 4th May 2021
It's currently Week 3 of Summer term at York which is actually crazy and I'll be done for the academic year in just a number of weeks - though, I'll be applying for deadline extensions for my assignments (I'll explain later in this post). Also, the weather's been a bit of a hit and miss, but I'm hoping the weather's good by the end of the week as I intend to meet up with friends (in a group of 6 obviously) to have drinks and probably a meal outdoors in a pub near the uni.
Academic Update...
Politics in the UK
Today was my last seminar for politics for this academic year which is really sad because not only have I enjoyed the module, I thought that the Politics department has handled the teaching implications of the Covid-19 pandemic really well compared to other feeder departments related to my course. Despite the pandemic, I do genuinely think that my Politics seminar had a consistent structure to them as it was always clear what the seminar would set out to achieve and the seminar tutors were great in getting us to engage with our learning even if attendance does start to slip a bit for various reasons. With the other departments, it's just a hit and miss, and to have intermittent seminars is beyond a joke - though it does depend on what we're doing. For example, I did a Recreating Government Workshop for The Policy Process which didn't have many seminars because of the workshop itself, except for two which were basically information regarding our assignment - a workshop report.
Anyways, today's seminar got us to read past exam answers from last year's open exam and understand how the Politics marking matrix works. It was quite useful because it turns out that we were quite harsh markers as one of the sample essays I read wasn't great in terms of its structure, etc., but somehow it was graded a low/mid 2.1 which surprised me. The arguments made weren't bad, but they weren't well supported in terms of evidence and examples. I read another essay by a different candidate which I felt was vastly better albeit still not perfect (it got a low first) as the essay flowed quite well and the line of argument was quite clear from the get-go. However, I thought they could perhaps break down the themes into related points and avoid very lengthy paragraphs just to aid the reader, but it was well written, and honestly, I wish I could write like that.
Social Research Methods
We have a seminar on Thursday in which we will begin to think about our research design on student employment and I have a very vague idea of what I went to do, but I just need to spend some time referring back to my Spring assignment as there are some things I could re-use (the lecturer said it was fine).
Victimisation and Social Harm
Not a lot to say for this module, but there are a series of pre-recorded lectures to do with the assignment which I haven't started writing yet and I need to watch the lectures and take notes. I'm going to look at child poverty for my 4,000-word project which I've done some research on, but I just need to tie that with the theories I've been taught in this module which is taking some time - basically, I need to compile things that are relevant to my topic.
The Policy Process
Again, not a lot to say for this module, but I have to do a policy report, and given that I'm looking at child poverty from a social harm perspective for another module, it makes sense that I do so for this module to save some time as I don't have to do research on something vastly different. What's different for this module is that I need to discuss policy developments for child poverty over a period of time (I'll have to define that) and state whether there's been a policy development or not and why. I also have to come up with a realistic policy recommendation, but that's a relatively small part of my word count.
Non-academic update...
Placement Year?!
I'm still waiting to hear back from Northern Trains regarding how I performed in the interview and whether I've secured the placement on a provisional basis - I will have to undergo a safety-critical medical before I get made a formal offer. Given that a friend of mine has shared the news that he has secured a placement (I'm happy for him ofc), I'm feeling slightly more nervous than before, but I'm fairly confident that I've performed well throughout the application process. I should find out at some point this week so *fingers crossed* I get through the next stage.
Driving Lessons
I've had no luck with finding a new instructor as everyone appears to be fully booked for some time which is extremely frustrating, but it's out of their control. I'm going to cancel my slot or look to book a new test date for later in the year.
Meeting Up With Friends
I met up with a close friend of mine for bubble tea in the city centre on Sunday which was really nice and we're planning to go on a picnic with 2 other friends next weekend (hopefully the weekend is nice).
Yesterday, I also had plans to meet another group of friends (a group of 6, including me) at a local pub near the uni for a pint and possibly a meal, but the weather was miserable yesterday and that specific pub won't open during bad weather anyways. Atm, I was thinking of rescheduling this to Friday, but I don't think one of my friends has booked a table yet - I'll check what's up.
QOTD: How is everyone doing?
I'm going to crack on with more uni work and I'll probably go on a walk later if I feel like it.
It's currently Week 3 of Summer term at York which is actually crazy and I'll be done for the academic year in just a number of weeks - though, I'll be applying for deadline extensions for my assignments (I'll explain later in this post). Also, the weather's been a bit of a hit and miss, but I'm hoping the weather's good by the end of the week as I intend to meet up with friends (in a group of 6 obviously) to have drinks and probably a meal outdoors in a pub near the uni.
Academic Update...
Politics in the UK
Today was my last seminar for politics for this academic year which is really sad because not only have I enjoyed the module, I thought that the Politics department has handled the teaching implications of the Covid-19 pandemic really well compared to other feeder departments related to my course. Despite the pandemic, I do genuinely think that my Politics seminar had a consistent structure to them as it was always clear what the seminar would set out to achieve and the seminar tutors were great in getting us to engage with our learning even if attendance does start to slip a bit for various reasons. With the other departments, it's just a hit and miss, and to have intermittent seminars is beyond a joke - though it does depend on what we're doing. For example, I did a Recreating Government Workshop for The Policy Process which didn't have many seminars because of the workshop itself, except for two which were basically information regarding our assignment - a workshop report.
Anyways, today's seminar got us to read past exam answers from last year's open exam and understand how the Politics marking matrix works. It was quite useful because it turns out that we were quite harsh markers as one of the sample essays I read wasn't great in terms of its structure, etc., but somehow it was graded a low/mid 2.1 which surprised me. The arguments made weren't bad, but they weren't well supported in terms of evidence and examples. I read another essay by a different candidate which I felt was vastly better albeit still not perfect (it got a low first) as the essay flowed quite well and the line of argument was quite clear from the get-go. However, I thought they could perhaps break down the themes into related points and avoid very lengthy paragraphs just to aid the reader, but it was well written, and honestly, I wish I could write like that.
Social Research Methods
We have a seminar on Thursday in which we will begin to think about our research design on student employment and I have a very vague idea of what I went to do, but I just need to spend some time referring back to my Spring assignment as there are some things I could re-use (the lecturer said it was fine).
Victimisation and Social Harm
Not a lot to say for this module, but there are a series of pre-recorded lectures to do with the assignment which I haven't started writing yet and I need to watch the lectures and take notes. I'm going to look at child poverty for my 4,000-word project which I've done some research on, but I just need to tie that with the theories I've been taught in this module which is taking some time - basically, I need to compile things that are relevant to my topic.
The Policy Process
Again, not a lot to say for this module, but I have to do a policy report, and given that I'm looking at child poverty from a social harm perspective for another module, it makes sense that I do so for this module to save some time as I don't have to do research on something vastly different. What's different for this module is that I need to discuss policy developments for child poverty over a period of time (I'll have to define that) and state whether there's been a policy development or not and why. I also have to come up with a realistic policy recommendation, but that's a relatively small part of my word count.
Non-academic update...
Placement Year?!
I'm still waiting to hear back from Northern Trains regarding how I performed in the interview and whether I've secured the placement on a provisional basis - I will have to undergo a safety-critical medical before I get made a formal offer. Given that a friend of mine has shared the news that he has secured a placement (I'm happy for him ofc), I'm feeling slightly more nervous than before, but I'm fairly confident that I've performed well throughout the application process. I should find out at some point this week so *fingers crossed* I get through the next stage.
Driving Lessons
I've had no luck with finding a new instructor as everyone appears to be fully booked for some time which is extremely frustrating, but it's out of their control. I'm going to cancel my slot or look to book a new test date for later in the year.
Meeting Up With Friends
I met up with a close friend of mine for bubble tea in the city centre on Sunday which was really nice and we're planning to go on a picnic with 2 other friends next weekend (hopefully the weekend is nice).
Yesterday, I also had plans to meet another group of friends (a group of 6, including me) at a local pub near the uni for a pint and possibly a meal, but the weather was miserable yesterday and that specific pub won't open during bad weather anyways. Atm, I was thinking of rescheduling this to Friday, but I don't think one of my friends has booked a table yet - I'll check what's up.
QOTD: How is everyone doing?
I'm going to crack on with more uni work and I'll probably go on a walk later if I feel like it.
Monday 10th May 2021
It's currently Week 4 of Summer term here at York which is absolutely crazy and there's only 2 weeks to go until I have to hand in all of my assignments (1 each for Social Research Methods, Victimisation and Social Harm, and The Policy Process) and my 24 hours open exam for Politics in the UK. With regards to my assignments, I'm definitely going to apply for a deadline extension as I've been dealt a bad hand because all 3 assignments due are within the same department and that means they have the same due date and time. I'll do that tomorrow morning and hopefully I won't forget!
Academic Update...
The Policy Process
This week's seminar was the last one for this module and it was another Q&A session regarding our assignment as the one we had before was counterproductive as we some of us didn't have sufficient time to go through the assignment content and wrap our heads around it. In truth, a lot of my fellow coursemates and others doing similar courses were catching up on last term's assignments of which they had deadline extensions for. TL;DR I asked the lecturer an important question about the final section of our policy report which is the 250 words or so policy recommendation. This is because we were taught 'Analysis For Policy' and I was unsure how to approach it because of a restrictive word count and he said that our policy recommendation should be feasible, i.e. it is realistic in the current context. He also said around 1 - 2 references would suffice for this section. Overall, I'm feeling quite confident about this assignment as it's relatively straightforward and I'm going to be looking at the policy development of Child Poverty in the UK.
Social Research Methods
There's another Q&A seminar (a final one this week) which I probably won't attend because I don't have many questions to ask. Having said that, I'm going to make use of the journal entry on the VLE to check in with the lecturer about my research design to ensure I'm on the right track really. Aside from that, it's probably the most straightforward assignment piece that I've been assigned for this module and given that I've already looked at student employment for my previous assignment, I already have lots of references I could pretty much just roll with.
Victimisation and Social Harm
Not a lot to say for this module really except that I've finished making notes on the lectures that are specific to the assignment which is a 4,000 words project exploring victimisation and social harm in our chosen topic. To prevent making life difficult for myself, I decided to look at child poverty similar to The Policy Process, but the aim and focus of the project is of course very different. I have to do the following:
1. Establish the background of the event
2. Explain who are the victims
3. Applying theory: Christie's Ideal Victim theory and possibly Rock's theory on Achieving Victim Status
4. Explaining the impact on victims - harms and needs
5. Policy and practice implications
This is quite a lengthy assignment piece as we only have 2 for this module, the first one being a 1,000 word assignment whereby we applied Christie's Ideal Victim Theory to 2 case scenarios which are essentially mimicked to reflect the real-world.
Politics in the UK
I haven't started properly revising for the 24 hour open exam, but I have been closely following the local elections across the UK by following coverage on BBC News, Newsnight, and reading an interesting thread that Lewis Goodall, Policy Editor for Newsnight, wrote about the local election results. Personally, I think Goodall's thread about how we should interpret the local election results is excellent because he doesn't fall into the trap of overanalysing and overinterpretting them - after all they have poor predictive power, i.e. predicting what could happen if a general election were to be held tomorrow.
Before sunset this evening, I was at the library printing a bunch of articles off about how we should interpret the local election results and about the future of the union with indyref2 because it falls under the topic of voting behaviour and devolution respectively - both of which are topics I will be examined on. Honestly, I think a question concerning the future of the union and Scottish independence is increasingly likely because talks of indyref2 has pretty much began since the 2016 EU referendum whereby Sturgeon and the SNP frequently argue that the UK government invoked Article 50 against the will of the Scottish people (majority of Scots voted 'Remain'). I would also like a question on voting behaviour which looks at continuity and change in UK electoral politics because I have sufficient sources to draw upon in my argument and feel like I could answer such question well. I think that exact question or at least a question voting behaviour is likely - it just depends really.
Non-academic Update...
Placement Year?!
I'm still anxiously waiting for Northern Trains to get back to me regarding my performance in a panel interview for a Year in Industry role in their East Operations Team (basically the region surrounding the likes of Doncaster, Sheffield, Leeds, and York, etc.) because I was told that I should hear back within 14 days. I think what's causing the delay is that there's a large number of candidates including myself that they have to make a decision on, so I should find out relatively soon.
What's not so ideal is that the deadline of finalising my placement is the end of this month, but I suspect there's leeway on this given the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic with finding placement opportunities, etc. I'm going to drop the uni's Careers and Placements Team an email tomorrow just to update them on what's going on.
What have I been up to?
Honestly, I've not been up to much outside of academia since I got back to York 2 weeks ago, but I did meet up with a close friend of mine for bubble tea in the city centre and another close friend who I haven't seen since before Christmas. On Friday, I've booked a table at a local pub near the uni for myself and 5 other friends (group of 6), but I didn't know at the time that one of my friends had already booked a table. I'll probably end up cancelling my booking, but I just need to check what time he booked a table for.
Before I forget to mention, I've had quite a bit of spare time that I decided to head to the big Sainsbury's and M&S on a shopping park via the Park and Ride Bus to do some relatively light food shopping. It's actually pretty easy and quick to get to and only involves a change of bus - unfortunately because it's the North, everything goes into the centre before going back out which is annoying. Earlier this afternoon, I popped into Tesco via the Park and Ride Bus (again very easy and quick to get to) to get some food in for the week - mostly stocking up on fruit and veg and a bit of meat to last me for the week. I still have leftover chicken thigh fillets in the freezer which I'll use to make a curry tomorrow night and I also got a few cupboard snacks lol.
QOTD: How is everyone doing? If you're in England, are you looking forward to a further easing of restrictions from next Monday (17th May)? Why or why not?
It's currently Week 4 of Summer term here at York which is absolutely crazy and there's only 2 weeks to go until I have to hand in all of my assignments (1 each for Social Research Methods, Victimisation and Social Harm, and The Policy Process) and my 24 hours open exam for Politics in the UK. With regards to my assignments, I'm definitely going to apply for a deadline extension as I've been dealt a bad hand because all 3 assignments due are within the same department and that means they have the same due date and time. I'll do that tomorrow morning and hopefully I won't forget!
Academic Update...
The Policy Process
This week's seminar was the last one for this module and it was another Q&A session regarding our assignment as the one we had before was counterproductive as we some of us didn't have sufficient time to go through the assignment content and wrap our heads around it. In truth, a lot of my fellow coursemates and others doing similar courses were catching up on last term's assignments of which they had deadline extensions for. TL;DR I asked the lecturer an important question about the final section of our policy report which is the 250 words or so policy recommendation. This is because we were taught 'Analysis For Policy' and I was unsure how to approach it because of a restrictive word count and he said that our policy recommendation should be feasible, i.e. it is realistic in the current context. He also said around 1 - 2 references would suffice for this section. Overall, I'm feeling quite confident about this assignment as it's relatively straightforward and I'm going to be looking at the policy development of Child Poverty in the UK.
Social Research Methods
There's another Q&A seminar (a final one this week) which I probably won't attend because I don't have many questions to ask. Having said that, I'm going to make use of the journal entry on the VLE to check in with the lecturer about my research design to ensure I'm on the right track really. Aside from that, it's probably the most straightforward assignment piece that I've been assigned for this module and given that I've already looked at student employment for my previous assignment, I already have lots of references I could pretty much just roll with.
Victimisation and Social Harm
Not a lot to say for this module really except that I've finished making notes on the lectures that are specific to the assignment which is a 4,000 words project exploring victimisation and social harm in our chosen topic. To prevent making life difficult for myself, I decided to look at child poverty similar to The Policy Process, but the aim and focus of the project is of course very different. I have to do the following:
1. Establish the background of the event
2. Explain who are the victims
3. Applying theory: Christie's Ideal Victim theory and possibly Rock's theory on Achieving Victim Status
4. Explaining the impact on victims - harms and needs
5. Policy and practice implications
This is quite a lengthy assignment piece as we only have 2 for this module, the first one being a 1,000 word assignment whereby we applied Christie's Ideal Victim Theory to 2 case scenarios which are essentially mimicked to reflect the real-world.
Politics in the UK
I haven't started properly revising for the 24 hour open exam, but I have been closely following the local elections across the UK by following coverage on BBC News, Newsnight, and reading an interesting thread that Lewis Goodall, Policy Editor for Newsnight, wrote about the local election results. Personally, I think Goodall's thread about how we should interpret the local election results is excellent because he doesn't fall into the trap of overanalysing and overinterpretting them - after all they have poor predictive power, i.e. predicting what could happen if a general election were to be held tomorrow.
Before sunset this evening, I was at the library printing a bunch of articles off about how we should interpret the local election results and about the future of the union with indyref2 because it falls under the topic of voting behaviour and devolution respectively - both of which are topics I will be examined on. Honestly, I think a question concerning the future of the union and Scottish independence is increasingly likely because talks of indyref2 has pretty much began since the 2016 EU referendum whereby Sturgeon and the SNP frequently argue that the UK government invoked Article 50 against the will of the Scottish people (majority of Scots voted 'Remain'). I would also like a question on voting behaviour which looks at continuity and change in UK electoral politics because I have sufficient sources to draw upon in my argument and feel like I could answer such question well. I think that exact question or at least a question voting behaviour is likely - it just depends really.
Non-academic Update...
Placement Year?!
I'm still anxiously waiting for Northern Trains to get back to me regarding my performance in a panel interview for a Year in Industry role in their East Operations Team (basically the region surrounding the likes of Doncaster, Sheffield, Leeds, and York, etc.) because I was told that I should hear back within 14 days. I think what's causing the delay is that there's a large number of candidates including myself that they have to make a decision on, so I should find out relatively soon.
What's not so ideal is that the deadline of finalising my placement is the end of this month, but I suspect there's leeway on this given the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic with finding placement opportunities, etc. I'm going to drop the uni's Careers and Placements Team an email tomorrow just to update them on what's going on.
What have I been up to?
Honestly, I've not been up to much outside of academia since I got back to York 2 weeks ago, but I did meet up with a close friend of mine for bubble tea in the city centre and another close friend who I haven't seen since before Christmas. On Friday, I've booked a table at a local pub near the uni for myself and 5 other friends (group of 6), but I didn't know at the time that one of my friends had already booked a table. I'll probably end up cancelling my booking, but I just need to check what time he booked a table for.
Before I forget to mention, I've had quite a bit of spare time that I decided to head to the big Sainsbury's and M&S on a shopping park via the Park and Ride Bus to do some relatively light food shopping. It's actually pretty easy and quick to get to and only involves a change of bus - unfortunately because it's the North, everything goes into the centre before going back out which is annoying. Earlier this afternoon, I popped into Tesco via the Park and Ride Bus (again very easy and quick to get to) to get some food in for the week - mostly stocking up on fruit and veg and a bit of meat to last me for the week. I still have leftover chicken thigh fillets in the freezer which I'll use to make a curry tomorrow night and I also got a few cupboard snacks lol.
QOTD: How is everyone doing? If you're in England, are you looking forward to a further easing of restrictions from next Monday (17th May)? Why or why not?
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