Both editors of this fountain of knowledge have completed honours degrees in political science at Victoria University, arguably the best place to do it in New Zealand. Well, Shauny caned it in 2007 and Andy has, at the time of writing, suffered through the course work and is still struggling through the exam period.
Most people think being a student in New Zealand is great. All we do is drink like fish, fuck like rabbits, protest like Mintos and complain about being poor even though we live comfortably, the government pays for a bulk of our studies and the nonsense we study will make society worse off. I mean, some departments teach us about silly things like the negative impact of colonisation on indigenous cultures and the way neoliberal reforms proved disastrous for some groups, which just make it harder for us to understand the wonderful logic of Don Brash, a man sent to save us from political correctness gone mad with his timeless wisdom. \Thank goodness. No sarcasm here.\
Well let us tell you: PSIR (political science an international relations) honours students work freaking hard to develop extremely useful analytical and communication skills for questionable reward. At the end of our study year we need to submit around 40,000 words divided into four essays, either by writing about topics no one has ever written about or by making arguments no one has ever made. That's on top of the exams, readings, presentations and all the other shit we have to do, which often involves designing the content of the courses we’re taking! That stuff is formidable in itself but the essays are the killers of sanity, social lives and extra-curricular activities.
You might say "so what?" Students have to write essays at every level, right? Well, let me give you some perspective. 40,000 words is a lengthy masters thesis at a lot of universities. A masters degree is generally completed over a 12-24 month period. Honours is completed over 7 and a half months, March to mid-October. Furthermore, research proposals are generally submitted no earlier than April and sometimes as late as July. That means the masters length submission is really only completed over 3-6 months...on top of all the other course work! Our high level of education means we can reliably inform you that 3 is one eighth of 24! No wonder people say you do a masters to relax after honours!
Naturally, this means you have to work pretty bloody hard. Follow my flawless logic. If it takes 24 months of working 8 hours a day to write 40,000 words for a masters thesis, one would have to work 64 hours a day to write the same amount of words in 3 months. See how hard this is?! Pretty fucking hard! Pretty! Fucking! Hard! No wonder we give up all inessential activities including eating and sleeping. Only essential activities like Facebooking and drinking "study juice" are allowed.
The time commitment is just the start of the problem. The topics we write about are so niche it's very hard to get motivated to give a fuck. Does the woman in the suit give a flying rat’s ass about the benefits of using a neofunctionalist approach to analyse the integration dynamics in NAFTA? Don't bet on it. Does the man playing ukulele on Cuba Street wanna hear about the "vital contribution" (a cringe-inducing academic cliche) someone's research has made to our understanding of the fairness of categorising Rawls' theory of justice as being "end-state?" I don't think so.
The research is also likely to make one go crazy. Why is it so hard to write the questions we have to answer? Why am I trying to answer a question the greatest thinkers of all time have not yet answered (or even asked)? How can there be any truth in the world when all sides of every argument have been so well argued already? Did someone say existential crisis? Well, maybe I can fall back on the identity I created outside of academic research? Nope, no time for that - I haven't done my 64 hours of research and writing yet.
So why do we do it then? To advance our careers, for one. Well that makes sense, given the massive lay offs in the public sector. Some people do it cos they love being students. Fair enough. I mean, the university is laying off lecturers from our department, reorienting its focus without consultation and thereby creating a positive environment to work in for staff and students who unanimously approve of the changes.
Oh, a sarcasm detector, that’s a really useful invention. Maybe it's the awesome resources we get. The university is returning record profits which explains why we can't find a room in which we can study like those provided by other universities, not to mention power points in the library for our laptops.
Hmmm...so to recap, honours involves going crazy while working stupidly hard on an irrelevant topic in a poorly resourced environment for a job that won't exist while your student loan doesn’t get any smaller. Sounds like a reason to go without sleep.
On a serious note, we'd like to give special thanks to all our lecturers and everyone in our cohorts. It's been invariably wonderful suffering with you.
So, have you done honours? Do you think it's shit? Is it shit in ways that we've missed? Do you think we're shit for complaining about it? Do you wanna publicly give mad props to your lecturers or cohort? By all means, leave your thoughts in the comments.
Let's get something straight from the outset: at this blog we are firmly against cancer in all its forms. Really.
