c4countdown

As my daughter had just graduated with a 2:1 in Drama.
I was wondering what you boffins have all got.
I have barely 2 O levels and a City and Guilds in Air conditioning

I have a first in creative digital media.

Fuck all.

BSc Hons) in Pharmacy. Didn't really try very hard, so only got a Douglas. On a plus side I could identify any beer in Manchester and smoke a packet of 20 Marlboros by the time I left Uni (1983).

Paul Worsley wrote: ↑Mon Jul 16, 2018 12:24 pm ...smoke a packet of 20 Marlboros...

Only 1? Amateur

BA (pass only) Maths - subsequently paid fee to register as MA.

Peter Mabey wrote: ↑Mon Jul 16, 2018 7:04 pm BA (pass only) Maths - subsequently paid fee to register as MA.

Oxford/Cambridge? Or does anywhere else do this?

First in English [Lit]

Dropped out of uni after 2 years, which probably subconsciously contributes to why I (possibly harshly) largely disregard academic qualifications when I recruit people.

A fourth in astrophysics, and a stats masters.

Noel Mc wrote: ↑Sat Jul 21, 2018 6:54 pm

Peter Mabey wrote: ↑Mon Jul 16, 2018 7:04 pm BA (pass only) Maths - subsequently paid fee to register as MA.

Oxford/Cambridge? Or does anywhere else do this?

Cambridge

Martin Hurst wrote: ↑Sun Jul 22, 2018 7:32 am Dropped out of uni after 2 years, which probably subconsciously contributes to why I (possibly harshly) largely disregard academic qualifications when I recruit people.

What do you recruit for?

None, partly cos I have never been to university.

Noel Mc wrote: ↑Sat Jul 21, 2018 6:54 pm

Peter Mabey wrote: ↑Mon Jul 16, 2018 7:04 pm BA (pass only) Maths - subsequently paid fee to register as MA.

Oxford/Cambridge? Or does anywhere else do this?

I don't know anything about this, but it reads like "I got a BA and then I paid to upgrade it to an MA without doing any work". Is that what is meant? Is this common?

Maths degree

Marc Meakin wrote: ↑Sun Jul 15, 2018 10:39 am As my daughter had just graduated with a 2:1 in Drama.
I was wondering what you boffins have all got.
I have barely 2 O levels and a City and Guilds in Air conditioning

Congratulations to your daughter Mark

I went to university but I don't have a degree. It's a very long and convoluted story of a slow-motion fuck-up. I'm going to have a go at writing it all down, as it's quite an entertaining story, but not one for tonight. Maybe tomorrow.

[edit] Started to do this and got sidetracked into a story about going for an interview at UCL. I was 17 but looked about 13 or 14 (I was a very late developer) and was wandering around random streets in London, killing time before my train went. I know that London isn't more dangerous than anywhere else, in itself, but thinking about that still kind of gives me the shivers. There for the grace of god and all that.

Gavin Chipper wrote: ↑Tue Jul 24, 2018 1:04 pm

Martin Hurst wrote: ↑Sun Jul 22, 2018 7:32 am Dropped out of uni after 2 years, which probably subconsciously contributes to why I (possibly harshly) largely disregard academic qualifications when I recruit people.

What do you recruit for?

My cult - send me an aptomail to apply - Owen Carroll already signed up.

Martin Hurst wrote: ↑Wed Jul 25, 2018 11:56 am My cult - send me an aptomail to apply - Owen Carroll already signed up.

If Owen's signed up, that definitely evidences you disregarding academic qualification...

Matt Morrison wrote: ↑Tue Jul 24, 2018 8:36 pm

Noel Mc wrote: ↑Sat Jul 21, 2018 6:54 pm

Peter Mabey wrote: ↑Mon Jul 16, 2018 7:04 pm BA (pass only) Maths - subsequently paid fee to register as MA.

Oxford/Cambridge? Or does anywhere else do this?

I don't know anything about this, but it reads like "I got a BA and then I paid to upgrade it to an MA without doing any work". Is that what is meant? Is this common?

There's probably some historical reason for this, as I think it only applies to Cambridge and Oxford. I had been thinking of following my father and other family into teaching, and at that time there was an automatic pay increment for an MA. (The wartime government directed all graduates into jobs, so I was placed in the aircraft industry where I remained for 25 years - I had hoped to get into computing, but then they only needed first class mathematicians.)

Jennifer Steadman wrote: ↑Sat Jul 21, 2018 7:51 pm First in English [Lit]

Snap, and bang goes my theory/excuse that all the best Countdowners are mathematicians and scientists.

Phil H wrote: ↑Mon Aug 06, 2018 7:08 pm

Jennifer Steadman wrote: ↑Sat Jul 21, 2018 7:51 pm First in English [Lit]

Snap, and bang goes my theory/excuse that all the best Countdowners are mathematicians and scientists.

Thank you! If it aids your theory, my approach to reading books was somewhat mathematical. (Some of our more savage posters might have a different word for this.)

Basically: I realised 3 weeks into my degree that I didn't really enjoy reading, and the only way I could force myself to read the course material was by working out the number of pages in the book, and then constantly calculating the percentage of the book I'd read so I felt like I'd reached a 'goal'. So if I was floundering on 17% of the book completed, I would make myself read up to 20%, and if I'd stopped floundering then I could head for the next multiple of 5 or 10. By third year I was only reading about a third of the compulsory reading list for each module (anything over 400 pages was immediately dismissed), but it would have been even lower without doing that.

The by-product of this, and of my degree in general, is that - excluding Norwegian Wood, which I occasionally re-read when I can't sleep - I haven't read a book in the last 12 months, and haven't read a fiction novel since December 2015. I feel next to no loss from my life about it, but other people can have quite adverse reactions to it.

It's weird how haughty people get about reading books. Like it's sacrilege if one doesn't do it. It is A way to learn, and A way to think creatively, but by God we have other ways now and that's probably fine. People need to sneer less.

I'm sure I used to read books regularly as a child, but some time around Year 9 at school, the Reading Record was introduced, on which you were meant to record all the books you read, the details of them, what you thought of them, etc. I just ignored it. Then at some point my English teacher was puzzled that I didn't have a Reading Record or seem to know what one was, and explained that I had to fill it in every time I read a book. She seemed quite insistent. This turned what used to be an enjoyable diversion into a bureaucratic chore. "I could read a book, but... nah, I'll watch the TV. I don't have to fill in a form to do that."

The Reading Record faded into obscurity and was forgotten about by all concerned, but by then I'd just got out of the habit of reading books and had discovered the internet instead.

I guess back in the day ( using this sentence officially means I'm old ) Reading books was the only way to get information , and entertain yourself on long journeys.
I stopped reading books with the advent of the portable DVD player and the Audio book (on my Walkman ).

Now I only read a book if someone I like writes a biography or I watch a film or box set based on a book and want to research the source material.
I am currently , slowly, working my way through the Looming Tower, an excellent mini series on Al Qaeda

Maths degree, extremely boring and a waste of time, I should've been playing more snooker instead.

Film Studies sounds a fun subject.

Martin Hurst wrote: ↑Wed Jul 25, 2018 11:56 am

Gavin Chipper wrote: ↑Tue Jul 24, 2018 1:04 pm

Martin Hurst wrote: ↑Sun Jul 22, 2018 7:32 am Dropped out of uni after 2 years, which probably subconsciously contributes to why I (possibly harshly) largely disregard academic qualifications when I recruit people.

What do you recruit for?

My cult - send me an aptomail to apply - Owen Carroll already signed up.

I did?

Maths - but never really got into it, so only achieved a pass. (I'd have been happier in engineering, but I got to Uni on the strength of my school maths, so that wasn't an option.)

Noel Mc wrote: ↑Tue Jul 24, 2018 9:07 pm Pretty much what it reads like. I have a friend who went to Oxford. Did a bachelors degree. After like 3 years or something he paid to upgrade it to a Masters, 'MaOxon' or something. He said he'd been told they allow it because a bachelor's from Oxford should hold more merit than somewhere else

I laughed

This is a common belief (especially among people who have one!) but it's not true. Oxford and Cambridge were giving out this sort of Master's degree (i.e. for completing undergraduate study and then waiting a bit) for several hundred years before other universities started awarding them for further study. Oxbridge do offer proper Masters degrees (e.g. MPhil) so the name "MA" is more of a terminological confusion than any sort of bonus degree for studying there. There's an argument that it's now Oxbridge who should change the naming but I think they're probably within their rights to stick to the tradition. I have an MA (Cantab), which I received it only a few weeks before my PhD so I've never really had occasion to mention it, but I would never put it on anything official and I always think it's a bit traj when people do.

Wikipedia has the whole story which is quite interesting if you like that sort of thing.