A Brief Insight into Semester 2, Third Year Life

This one goes out to the prospective students or those in the early years of their degree….

Back in the good old days when I was at that stage of my academic career I regularly felt intimidated and down-right terrified at the prospect of being in third year of university given that grades actually count towards your degree classification and the word around town was that the workload is lethal. Therefore, I thought I’d offer some insight into the reality of being a third-year anthropology student at the end of second semester to either demystify or reinforce the imaginary you may hold for third year (hopefully the former). I hope this breakdown of what I’m currently working on and what that entails is useful for making your academic future a little less abstract and mysterious, and perhaps help you prepare.

Currently I have two essays and a take-home exam (thank you Covid) to prepare for.

Due first, and thus the most pressing concern, is an essay for my kinship module. The question I am going to be tackling is ‘What makes a parent?’, a typically broad and mistakably simple essay prompt that gives rise to a diverse range of possible answers. My strategy for this essay is refining my answer as much as possible so that my argument is focused on demonstrating one way in which parenthood is constituted. For a 3000-word essay I suspect I will draw substantially on about 5 or 6 main texts and the rest of my resources will be supplementary, supporting information. I’m currently in the process of reading and analysing these foundational texts, to then formulate a strong plan and begin writing in the next few days. However, as I feel my line of argument is a little scattered I plan to meet with my tutor on Teams as soon as possible to discuss some of the readings further- something I always recommend doing!!

After finishing that essay I will move on to preparing for my take home exam which involves answering 2 questions from a list of 10 in 24 hours. My lecturers have recommended only spending 2 hours on the exam, but I know I’ll end up working for the majority of the time. This isn’t necessarily something I’d advocate for, but rather a testament of my character in that I wouldn’t be able to submit the assignment until I felt as though there was literally nothing more I could add to it. In preparation I plan to revise my lecture and tutorial notes, summarising and re-formulating them so that they are easy to draw from. I’ll also do the same for the readings I’ve already done throughout the semester and then get a few more under my belt so that I have lots of resources to rely on during the exam. As far as take-home exams go I’m somewhat unsure on what to expect but being prepared feels like the best strategy.

Finally, for my favourite module on the anthropology of contagion and infectious disease I have essay on the social and political implications of tracking a disease to its origins. I’m excited to be discussing Corona virus in this essay as some of the recent scholarship emerging on the topic has been very interesting. I also find the concept of origins very interesting as this process of tracking things to their source appears to me to be a very explicitly human enterprise when one thinks about the number of contexts in which it is applied. As this is another 3000 worder, there’s a lot of work to be done but having an enjoyable topic makes the process significantly less painful.