The dilemma on my part, I suppose, is minimal. Having been told I can’t continue to the PhD but can do an MPhil, I have paid the registration fees for this year, I am intending to complete the 50,000 words to the same standard of the PhD and have given up questioning why an extra year and an extra 30,000 are not permitted. Given that I already have 30,000 after the first year, I don’t foresee there being a problem.

However, I am not willing to go further into debt for a degree I didn’t sign up for and, though enjoyable and fascinating, will get me nowhere in a future career. A PhD would have been a different matter and I had in fact already obtained a career development loan to enable me to not work in the third year and cut back in the second. Clearly, I haven’t taken this up any more. I have a second job, Research Secretary at the University, which will be two days a week starting mid-November. This fits perfectly with my current job at the Young People’s Support Foundation, and leaves me a day for research/writing, plus the weekend to use as I will. It means I can complete the MPhil, and save some money to make things a bit easier when studying for a PGCE. I am very happy with this arrangement.

My supervisors do not feel the same way. I am trying to rearrange a supervision that was scheduled before I got the new job, and now will be on a work day. They’re not keen on this idea and, I suspect, not keen on me working more anyway. Both employers are very very happy for me to split my time. I get the impression my supervisors think this degree should be my sole focus, hang the expense. I’m not entirely clear where they think I’m going to get the money from.

It’s just one more annoyance in this postgraduate department which is such a disappointment. I was promised as an undergraduate that the ‘academic conversation’ would happen as a postgraduate. That was the university experience I wanted, which I suspect doesn’t exist any more in English departments now 40% of people must have a degree, whether they’re capable or not. Ironically, I found that discussion not in the English department but in MUGSS, just one more thing that I have to be grateful to that society for. They’re starting to mount up alarmingly If I ever have a decent amount of money, that society will be getting a hefty chunk of it after everything they’ve done for me.