Life Decisions

When I previously returned from University, having completed my BA in History, the next step was seemingly obvious. Get a job and save up to do an MA at some point in the future, depending on the rate at which I could save and the prospective course fees. Thankfully I was able to do this relatively quickly and that goal has been completed.

So now, I am in a situation that is both similar but also quite distinct. What do I do now? What is the next goal? There are several options that present themselves but, sadly, I am not as young as I once was and it is no longer realistically feasible to contemplate them all. Nonetheless, I feel it useful to have something in life to strive towards so as to provide focus and motivation.


So, in no particular order, are several possible career/life choices:

1. Read another Masters. I am not quite sure what to make of this potential option. It almost seems like a step backwards, aiming to repeat something that I already possess. It's also fairly unusual, very few people do a second masters. But why should that stop me? I've always wanted to study at St. Andrews, maybe this would be the perfect oppertunity. Perhaps I could read a Masters in a related but slightly different discipline, such as political science.
2. Read another degree in an different discipline. If doing another masters seems almost like stagnation, this option really does seem like a step back, at least initially. But I love the idea of broadening my horizons and combining my history with something else. History and Sociology? History and Economics? I would be able to do genuine economic history! Career wise this option is unlikely to lead anywhere and is really just for my own personal gratification. But is that a problem?
3. Get a job and just live a little. This is what most normal people do after all. There is no reason I cannot now secure a position with a decent salary and do all the usual things involving consumer spending on shit like holidays and wanking monkeys etc. Yet, this also seems like it has the potential for stagnation, full-time employment and intellectual stimulation so rarely go hand in hand, you are usually too shattered at the end of a working day to start slogging through some wordy tome. A normal long term job would enable me to do things like saving for a flat or a car or retirement.
4. Do a doctorate. This is by far the most obvious next step on from a masters and one that I have been encouraged to do. However, it also has the potential to become a rather large white elephant, as I don't particularly want to work in higher education upon completion. In addition, I have little motivation for such an endeavor right now, the thought of having to write an entire thesis is just too much to contemplate! Many, many people embark on a doctoral program for all the wrong reasons and live to rue their decision. It's bloody expensive and time consuming and given that I have no desire to teach/research in higher education it seems to be a bad idea. Then again, if I am able to find a topic that would sustain my historical curiosity for three years then it might be worth doing for the sheer bloody sake of it. This is also the only option that has the potential to involve external funding sources.
5. Obtain alternative professional qualifications. Why not do a law conversion? Admittedly, it would have been preferable to do it before now but that's not say to say its too late (yet). Perhaps there are other professional qualifications out there worth doing, I really don't know.

So, what to do? I don't bloody know and I wish I did. This is undoubtedly one of life's cross roads but I have no idea which path to start down. In the short term, I guess I don't have to decide quite yet. Without money from employment I cannot truly contemplate any of these options (except for the doctorate, although even that can be self funded) so I guess that's the first step.

On Returning From Exile

I have just returned from about 5 days back home in the small town/large village of High Bentham in West Yorkshire. Bentham's biggest attraction is a giant stone in a field, which bears a depressing similarity to certain episodes of Father Ted at times.


I often come across those who grew up in cities and large towns who believe quite firmly in the rural idyll. On one level it is still true that the countryside is nice and quiet and full of green fields, but this is also the big problem! After a very short period of time it becomes unremittingly tedious for those of us who live there. The feeling of isolation and boredom becomes bone-numbing at times. Privatised public transport has little incentive to provide a decent service to rural based locals, the bus service to Bentham ends at about 5pm! 


There is one saving grace born of more recent times: broadband. And I say broadband rather than the 'internet' more generally because prior to broadband the internet was shit. Dialing up on even a 56k modem was a horrifically slow experience, and you could pretty much forget about most online games if you wanted to be competitive. It is true that outside of the main urban areas the quality and speed of broadband service is significantly poorer but its a damn sight better than nothing.


In just over 5 weeks time I will be returning there for an indefinite period. It will probably drive me mad, but until I can find work it will have to do. There is no chance of me finding work in Bentham, which, to be honest, I should be thankful for!

Game of Thrones

Game of Thrones is a truly amazing show. I have just watched the penultimate episode of series 2 and feel almost as if I lived through every sword blow and show off every arrow into the hordes of Stannis Baratheon. When Tywin Lannister (brilliant portrayed by Charles Dance) strode through into the antechamber of the Iron Throne I nearly soiled myself! To wait a week for the final episode seems more than I can take right now, but needs must.


I once read an excellent book called 'Everything Bad is Good for You: How Popular Culture is Making Us Smarter' which concerned the general improvement of popular entertainment. The book was designed to counter the popular misconception that popular entertainment has been getting steadily more and more 'stupid' and crude, and instead argued that very often popular entertainment is growing more complex and rewarding. This is not to say that a great deal of what passes for popular entertainment is pure shit (it truly is) but that the best of what we have to offer now truly surpasses much of what we had in the past. Game of Thrones is a fantastic piece of evidence that goes someway to proving that thesis, with a huge range of characters and an intricate storyline. The best thing about the program is that it maintains just the right level of complexity. Some say it has too many characters but this I feel is one of its strengths. It may perhaps require some repeat viewing to take it all in, but this is by no means a bad thing.

Although the show is based on a series of books by R.R. Martin (A Song of Ice and Fire), in many ways the TV show is the superior end product. This surprises me, but it should not. The only downside so far has been the premature death of one of my favourite actors, Sean Bean, although to keep Ned Stark alive just so I could see more of him on screen would destroy the story somewhat.


The show takes place in a bastardised medieval land with recnognisable historical tropes for Kingdoms. The Dothraki led by a Khal are clearly a stand in for the Mongol horde led by a Khan, the Greyjoys of the Iron Islands are some kind of Viking warrior force. Westeros itself seems to be primarily made up of dynasties from the Latin West with the lands to the east made up of Oreintalist style Middle Eastern/Islamic themed city states. This grounds the show and makes it recognisable to anyone with a sense of the past, whilst at the same time allowing for a completely new departure from established historical knowledge. Where it differs from a fictional medieval land is the inclusion of fantasy elements, particularly dragons and and ominous White Walkers from north of the wall.

The Beginning of the End

Next Monday at 10am will be my last ever University seminar. This is quite a sad occasion for me, after this there is no more taught education! I suppose I could do another taught MA, but I doubt I will. We will be spending two hours in total, firstly going over another student essay line by line on the British responsibility for the First World War (if he bothers to turn up!), before turning to the famous July crisis of 1914. It will be a strange feeling coming out of that room, in some ways the taught learning process started with my first day in primary school and in a week it all ends D: fuck me.


After that all I have to do afterwards is write my dissertation of 12,000 words (same de facto length as my BA undergrad dissertation), and I have already completed a fairly comprehensive 4,000 word research proposal to get the process underway. I know what I need to do in terms of reading so am not too worried. I have an excellent supervisor too (a true master of his field) so I couldn't really be in much of a better position. It does not have to be submitted until September, so looking for work before then will be tricky. Graduation isn't even till December! Yikes. 



Guess I need to start thinking about my future then! Although I'm going to put off wading through horribly written and confusing job applications for as long as possible, as there are few things so depressing. HR speak is like fucking martian sometimes! My supervisor really feels I should be looking to do a PhD but there are so few job opportunities in modern historical academia for military historians. This means that funding will be almost impossible to get as any research proposal I do submit will be despised, and even if I did somehow manage to fund and complete the course there would be no employment waiting for me at the end. These days its all about culture and gender! I'm sure this trend will alter in future, but I do not know when nor how long it will take so cannot afford to wait around. I still have every intention of going on with my education, I just doubt I can turn it into a career. If only I had been born 40 years earlier!

Nelson

Nelson is the biggest urban area in the north of the South Island, although by UK standards its really just a medium sized town with a population under 70,000. Its a great jumping off point for tramping in both Mount Richmond Forest Park and the Abel Tasman National Park. I spent a great deal of time camping there in a tiny campsite, taking advantage of the amazing weather. I must have spent about 20 nights there and every day was clear blue sky!



From Nelson I set off for Mount Richmond Forest Park and ended up spending my first night in a backcountry hut in NZ. It was a medium/large sized one, capable of sleeping upto 20 people although both nights I spent there alone. Richmond Forest Park is amazingly rugged and beautiful but it is also (for some reason) one of the least popular tramping trials in the country. As a result I spent a whole week there completely by myself, which did begin to grate towards the end. I remember my first night in the Rocks Hut, there was either a giant rat or a possum trying to claw its way in through the roof and I kept shining my headlight up to see if I could spot the bugger. A lot of the huts often contain a random selection of books/magazines/documents left behind by park wardens or fellow trampers. In the evenings (or during the afternoon if you arrive at a hut early) you often end up reading through all sorts of crap just left there, some of it dates from decades ago!



The whole system of NZ backcountry huts is simply amazing. A lot of them are assembled onsite by teams of dedicated wardens/builders but some of the smaller ones are built offsite and then bought in by helicopter. These huts allow for some really amazing week long walks, of the sort that just don't happen in the UK. Many of the smaller huts were originally built just as night stops for park rangers back in the 1960s and 1970s but now many of the bigger huts can accommodate up to 60 people. Virtually all huts have simple rubber mattresses and a stove, along with an axe for chopping wood. Summer is when the huts see most usage, and the more popular tramping trials require booking in advance in order to stay there, sometimes over a year in advance. This booking is not cheap, costing between $40 and $60 a night, but most of them are free during the winter so I never paid a penny. 


In Richmond Forest Park I once made the mistake of draining a tin of tuna I bought with me outside of a small hut late in the afternoon and the saltwater very quickly attracted a swarm of wasps, so I had to shut myself inside and close all the windows. As this was my first major tramping expedition I underestimated the amount of food I needed (something I consistently seemed to do) so was forced to turn back before reaching Mount Richmond itself, and exit the park the way I'd come in. Getting back to Nelson I spend a few days recuperating, and then booked some bus tickets for Motueka to the north west in preparation for the Abel Tasman.

Hacked off

I've lost something so special and I don't know what to do to get it back. I'm really very upset about it all, life all feels very aimless at the moment. Why do things have to change? I guess it was inevitable, but after a while you like to kid yourself. I'm going to try and fling myself into my work, perhaps it will help. Just wish I didn't feel so emotional all the time now. You can never appreciate a Golden Age until its over!
On top of this my time in Leeds is starting to come to an end, the specter of unemployment looms, waiting to draw me close in its cloying grip. Moving back home would be a real pain, my home town/village isn't exactly employment friendly and can be so, so dull.





I have booked myself in for an eye exam, I really hope my eyesight has not decline as badly as last time. I cannot afford new glasses at the moment either way! I've always wanted to get my eyes lasered, but as my prescription keeps changing it wouldn't be advisable. Guess some things aren't meant to be, besides everyone associates me with glasses by now. Perhaps suddenly shedding them would not be a smart move. 

Arrving at the South Island

New Zealand is divided into two main island, called simply North Island and South Island (not very original!). The North Island is the smaller of the two but is where most people live (and Auckland gets the lion's share of those) with the South having just over a million people there. You can fly to the South Island directly but as this is more expensive I flew into Auckland, and so the only way to get there now was to take a ferry via Wellington.



I took an overnight boat with BlueBridge ferries (there are only two companies) and arrived in Picton at around 5:30am. This for me, was when New Zealand really started to come alive. The North Island seems so much more flat and dull compared to the South, Picton really is very striking. I found a campsite and went to sample the local fish and chips (average at best). While at Picon I decided to walk the Queen Charlotte track, which took me about 5 days. It was here that I first suffered from sandfly bites, I was so ill informed that I simply didn't know that they bit! As a result I had horrible itchy lumps on my legs, and wasn't able to get rid of them until I got back to Picton.


It was also on the trek that I first encountered the huge number of wasps that inhabit certain areas of NZ. Apparently they didn't exist there until 1942 when they were accidentally bought over from a shipment of timber originating in Europe. Now they thrive in any area with beach trees, they can't get enough of the rich tree sap. There are so many more than in the UK, I must have personally seen over a million wasps whilst I was there and yet, amazingly, did not get stung once. Compared to wasps in the UK they are much less aggressive and tend to fly low along the ground. The NZ Department of Conservation Rangers have been experimenting with with a protein based poison called Xterminate that is excellent for obliterating wasps nests, so hopefully this can be deployed and the problem eradicated in future years.


The Queen Charlotte track (http://www.qctrack.co.nz/) was one of the most beautiful walks I went on in NZ, beautiful weather and amazing views! There were no huts on the route, so I camped overnight and met some great people. Unlike most of the routes I went on, the QCT is also open to mountain bikers which sounds like a great idea should I ever return. It's not a particularly demanding walk, but as I was just starting out I still found it hard going in places. A good way to find your tramping legs!


Once back in Picton I booked a bus at the local tourist office and set off for Nelson, the second largest urban area in the South Island, although probably not all that much larger than Kettering and Corby combined. I would eventually return to Picton on the way back to the airport about 4 months later.