The Easy Bit is Done, or [S[NP[Det][AP[A][N']]][VP[V][AP]]]

That is not to say that I was entirely unable to shape my studies according to my academic interests, despite still having to study English, which I do frankly find boring. But it was only the History and Structure of European Languages course that allowed me to choose an essay topic; I decided to conduct my first independent linguistic research into Czech – in fact my first independent linguistic research in general! This was quite risky, as students usually complete more traditional library-researched essays for this assignment, and although to my slight surprise both the topic and the format got the green light, I was still a touch apprehensive. Fortunately enough my expectations were highly exceeded when I got a mark of 85% and a note saying “Kudos.” for my paper, and was able to derive much motivation from this throughout the exam period.

Once my exams were over, it was once again time to do as much volunteering as possible, to make up for not being able to do hardly any during the semester. Like last year, I helped collect and sort donations from student residences to the SHRUB co-operative (you can see the sheer volume of these in the picture below, and that’s just a fraction!), and I also started volunteering at my local Cancer Research charity shop, steaming donated clothes and serving customers at the till, amongst other things. Probably more than half a dozen people I know have been affected by cancer in one way or another over the last couple of years alone, and I myself live under the threat of melanoma due to the high number of birthmarks and moles on my body. Due to this I find helping at least in this way to raise funds for research that could save a huge amount of lives very fulfilling. In order to be able to spend as much time as possible on these activities, I only came back to Czechia in mid-June.

I fortunately didn’t have to wait long for my final results, in fact I left Edinburgh feeling overjoyed at having attained four A’s and just one B. If I continue working this hard, I should be set to be awarded a first class degree, making it easier for me to embark on postgraduate studies and get funding for them. I also got a prize for the greatest progress in spoken Gaelic. It’s a shame that the Linguistics department don’t give out prizes of this sort, as I find them very motivating.

I’m hoping to safeguard this progress at the three-week summer school on the Isle of Lewis I am going to mid-August. All expenses, including food, are paid for by the university, and that’s the reason why I am surprised that only a few of my classmates are planning to take up the offer. I personally see it as an absolute necessity: students of other modern languages spend their third year abroad, while we have to make do with intense three weeks. I am a bit anxious but cannot wait.

In the first couple of paragraphs I praised the freedom I have in choosing my direction in Honours. However, it turns out that doing this is no easy task. While in Celtic Studies I merely had to filter out the literary courses and choose from the more language-focused ones, choosing my three Linguistics courses for next year has so far taken me two months. As I write this, I only have four short days left to ponder. But I think I have pretty much decided now: in Semester 1 I shall be doing Phonological Theory (not minute’s hesitation there), in addition to Gaelic Dialectology and Modern Irish Texts – so even with just one Linguistics course I will have plenty on my plate. In Semester 2, then, I have signed up for Historical Linguistics, which wasn’t originally even one of my candidates; but then I am torn between Current Issues in Morphology and Lexical Semantics. I hope to be able to go to both at first and only decide which one to officially take after a week or two.

The end of next year is also when I will have to choose the topic of my dissertation in Language Sciences. Apart from that, I intend to take Current Issues in Phonology and Linguistic Fieldwork in my fourth year. I will admit to being a bit jealous of my friends in the Single-Honours Linguistics programme who can take twice as many Language Sciences courses, while I have to relinquish so many interesting ones. I don’t have to think about all that yet though. Right now I want to focus myself on getting through the legendary third year stress.