Just the Beginning, or / #_

“And what are you going to do when you’re done with uni?” people often ask me. Though I am well aware that part of what they’re asking is how I am ever going to make a living, seeing that I am not studying management, medicine or engineering, I choose to interpret the question purely as a reaction, neutral in tone, to the fact that I have now entered the part of my studies that many would call the home straight.

Yet that could not be further from the truth: for me, “done with uni” is a milestone I will only likely reach at the end of my PhD. And so I reply, without any shame, that I don’t have a clear idea yet – for better or for worse, I am not the kind of person who makes plans commencing in 6 years at the age of 23. But that shouldn’t be taken to mean that I don’t see the end of my undergraduate study as a milestone nevertheless, or that the idea is not making me somewhat nervous: I merely try to take things one step at a time and keep myself restrained in regards to my dissertation. I’ve simply been perusing the data I’m working with, drawing dialectological maps and noting down phenomena I would like to focus on. I shan’t go into detail here as not to bore the reader – dissertation-unrelated aspects of my academic life have been much more interesting.

To start with, the course I have been looking forward to since Year 2: Linguistic Fieldwork and Language Description. By a stroke of luck, all three sessions do not take place at 9 AM like I said previously, just one of them. The content of the course is exactly what I had hoped for, and constitutes what I personally consider the very cornerstone of linguistic enquiry: before each session, we prepare questions for our informant – a native speaker of the Luo language, spoken by over 4 million people in Kenya and Tanzania –, elicit data from her and gradually build up a description of the phonology, morphology and syntax of the language. I don’t have to sit an exam for Linguistic Fieldwork, but the two papers of 2000 and 4000 words respectively are in themselves an examination of everything I have learnt in linguistics over the three previous years – more so, I would say, than my narrow-focused dissertation! As such, I consider the course one of the most valuable experiences of my time at university so far, and am shocked that it doesn’t enjoy much higher student interest.

On the Celtic side of things, then, I have also reached the hard core of the subject, i.e. Old Irish, which is perhaps better not talked about any further, although so far there is no indication that I need to be worried. What is more interesting is the three-day study trip to Dublin that the department sent me on as part of an exchange programme with An Coláiste Ollscoile, Baile Átha Cliath (University College Dublin). This gave me and my fellow travellers the chance to meet students involved in Irish language activism. Unlike here in Edinburgh, these are people studying a whole array of programmes – after all, Irish is more widespread and taught in all schools. We had a tour of Teach na Gaeilge (“The Irish House”) – an accommodation block for two dozen students that functions as an Irish-only community –, examined the similarities and differences of our languages, and exchanged experiences with dealing with and campaigning to the university, the student union, and the public. Right after I got back I penned and sent off, as The Highland Society’s Gaelic Officer, a bilingual letter to our student association, asking them to participate more intensely in University-led activities promoting the status of Gaelic, particularly in regards to corporate identity and communication. I have been informed that the association is looking into the matter, and I expect a more detailed reply soon.

In the meantime, I will keep on phonetically transcribing recordings, conjugating verbs, drawing dialectological maps, and teaching Czech to kids; I will keep on moving, step by step, towards successfully completing phase one of my university studies.

 

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