We all successfully managed to submit our second piece of coursework before breaking up for the holidays, and we also received our marks for the first piece of coursework we handed in. Considering that it was the first piece of coursework I've written at masters level I was really happy with the mark I got. The feedback was incredibly useful (a huge plus about this course/department if you were ever planning to come to Royal Holloway to do geography). Frustratingly for me it all seemed to have been little things I needed to do to break over the grade boundary. Whilst frustrating though, at least I can take it all on board and try to apply it to the next piece of work to, hopefully, improve my grade.
For us on the MSc course 2015 is the year of optional modules, the Scotland field trip and finally the dissertation. I cannot wait to start the optional courses! I'll get to further what I know about topics I have already studied, but also learn some completely new things that sound super interesting to me! The topics I have chosen are:
Tephrochronology
Micromorphology
Optically Stimulated Luminescence dating
Microfossils
Glaciers in the climate system
I am a big fan of how this term is set up. Out of 10 weeks we are required to chose 5 modules. Each module runs for one week. Following this week, we are given three weeks to complete the coursework associated with that module. So, whilst we will be busy doing coursework during our weeks off, this also gives us a little break from being in lectures all day every day. Luckily for me, the modules I wanted to do were spaced apart very nicely across the term in order to give me good amounts of time between each module to work on coursework.
During Easter, we are all off on the Scotland field trip. I've heard great things about this trip and it will be really exciting to do some quaternary field work! On the down side, I'm sure it's gong to be very cold all the way up in the Scottish highlands. The things we do for science!
During the summer term we work on our dissertations. I don't yet know the details of the dissertation process, other than dates for certain deadlines such as the proposal, the submissiom and the oral presentations of results. I've not even thought about what I might want to do for my dissertation; in my mind, that's the idea of this term - to start to specialise in a few areas before specialising furthering for our dissertations depending on what we enjoy.
So that's a brief description of what's going to be happening this year for MSc Quaternary Science students. Will try to post updates as the term progresses!
