Day Zero Project: Research Options for an MA

I’ve mentioned before that I’ve been in some form of education since I was four and a half years old. I think that the thought of not studying something kind of worries me. I’m never totally sure what I should be doing if I don’t have some sort of homework that I should be working on.

I always joked that I’d quite like to get a Ph.D. though it never used to be totally serious. I didn’t have any idea what I might possibly get a doctorate in. And then I started studying linguistics during my third OU course and suddenly I found something that I could actually love and take further.

So I’ve pretty much decided that I’d like to do an M.A., it seems like the next logical step after getting my second degree, and maybe it’ll be a stepping stone towards getting that Ph.D. that I always fancied.

I would love to do my M.A. with the Open University, since they’ve enabled me to have a life beyond just being a student (which is all that I could be when I was at ‘brick university’) but I’d also really like to do a Masters in some form of linguistics which isn’t an option on its own. Of course, regardless of who I do it with, I’ll need time to get money saved up for it because it’s too many points to get funded by the Scottish Government, so perhaps when I finally am ready to go for it I might get lucky and I’ll be able to continue to study with the OU.

From OU site.

What I have found through the OU is an M.A. in Education with Applied Linguistics. Which I think might work out well for me because it would tie together my two degrees; Education and English Language and Literature.

Of course, if I find somewhere else that'll let me just study Linguistics on its own then I would be very tempted to go for that. Either way I’ll need to save up for it, so I’m already planning a series of courses for an Open Degree to do in the meantime. I’m thinking it’ll be made up of language courses (like Latin) and social sciences courses, which I can put to good use if I do go on to study linguistics further.

As you can see, it is something that I’ve put a bit of thought into, but I’m hesitant to start looking too hard because by the time I do get to do it, there’s a strong chance that things will have changed. It’s definitely something that I’m keeping my eye on though. I quite like the idea of collecting degrees, I don’t think I want to stop studying any time soon, even if it would give me more time for knitting and reading. I just don’t know what to do with myself when I don’t have a deadline!