Associate Professor seems to be roughly Reader in old money, and while Jason Arday was not at Durham long, I am told that he was well-liked by his peers even if they did resent the way that the great and the good hung on his every word, which was hardly his fault.
"If there is one thing of which you will never be accused," my MA supervisor at Durham told me, "then it is plagiarism." And I never have been. Therefore, I would be available to serve on any inquiry or what have you. Otherwise, every day of its existence would see the necessary resignation of yet another member, until there were none left.
What grade did you get? Was it a distinction?
ReplyDeleteWe do not have "grades" in Britain. Not at university, anyway.
DeleteAnd in our day you either got a Durham MA or you didn't.
DeleteOh, even Durham had acquiesced to Distinctions by my day, although I cannot remember one. But there are all sorts of gradations at certain places now. Overcompensating for something, I reckon. And what is the pass mark? You had to get 60 just to be allowed to make the corrections to a Durham MA around the turn of the century. How little can you get and still be awarded a Masters degree in the South these days?
DeleteDoes that mean you didn’t get a distinction?
ReplyDeleteGood God, no. Like a First or a Third, a Durham arts man would be positively ashamed of such a thing. Although more of a First than of a Third.
DeleteYou've never got over your 2:1 instead of a 2:2, "a gentleman's degree".
DeleteWhat can I say? You can take the boy out of the state school. We can never be completely deprogrammed out of taking exams seriously.
DeleteFirsts in the Theology Department used to look fairly numerous until you realised that they were all either reading for second or subsequent degrees with a view to ordination, or most of their third year was taken up with Biblical language papers that, to the disgust of Classicists, were seen translation exercises. They knew which passages they were going to be given to translate. That was their degree. Only at Durham, baby. Only at Durham.
You will remember the Good Third but nobody ever talked about a Good First. We do not approve of showing off.
DeleteIn between taking a First in History and writing a PhD that is still in print with OUP after 20 years, my friend did the same MA as I did, though not in the same year, and I do not think that even he got a Distinction. He also went on to read Theology at Oxford and got a 2:1 for his fourth degree after his first had been a First, so we consider him partially redeemed.
DeleteYou got the lowest possible pass mark at MA, so not even the equivalent of a third. It was lower than that, equivalent to a pass degree. That’s correct, isn’t it?
ReplyDeleteNo. Even if I had got "the lowest possible pass mark at MA," then that would have been 60, the equivalent of a 2:1. Things may have changed. But that was the deal in the good old days.
DeleteThe lowest possible pass mark is not a 2:1, it’s a pass degree which is lower than a third. If that’s what you got then you must be a dim bulb.
DeleteThe lowest possible pass mark for a Durham MA was 60 in my day. I knew a rather pretentious person who amused me and several others no end by failing it, the only case of which I have ever heard of handing in an MA but still failing, yet I doubt that even he got as little as 39. Times may have changed, though.
DeleteI knew the man who took the last ever Fourth at Oxford because the Classics department had forgotten or never known that they had been abolished the year before.
ReplyDeleteIf that was what appeared on the Pass List, then I trust that it was honoured.
DeleteChristopher Hitchens got a Third.
ReplyDeleteAnd only from Oxford. In America, anybody can make it.
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