I made the grade

A year ago I made up my mind to quit pursuing a master's at Queen's for many many reasons.

1. I didn't understand or enjoy or learn from many of the readings, most of which were written in an impenetrable academic style.
2. I couldn't keep up with the readings.
3. I couldn't handle all the theory and all the arguments over what seemed like semantics--are human rights inherent? Are they universal? Are they indivisible? Do they exist?
4. Without an undergraduate law degree, I often felt out of my depth.
5. The thought of OSCOLA reference style gave me night sweats.
6. I couldn't see how the degree could translate into anything useful in the workforce--useful as in helping me be an effective advocate for justice.
7. My mind freezes when asked to go down the wormholes of treaties, protocols and legislation that are organised by numbered and lettered chapters, subsections and paragraphs.
8. I'm too old. I don't adopt technology easily. And everything I encountered at Queen's was nonintuitive and frustrating. The young people agree with me on this, but they seem more resilient in overcoming the many obstacles to registering, selecting courses, paying tuition, submitting blind papers for grading, etc.
9. It seemed like a waste of money.
10. I didn't know how to write a paper that would be acceptable at a UK university and at the master's level.

David convinced me, however, that I would regret it if I quit. I'd be haunted by not seeing through this goal of gaining a deeper understanding of the connections between business and human rights. And so I persevered.

Today I learned that I graduated "with distinction." David said that means I graduated at the top of my class. You don't get a class rank measure here, so I don't know how I compare to the rest of the LLM students. But I'm very very happy with the result. What I learned from the experience is that the young people have a lot of tricks that I don't have (how to glean information from scores of journal articles without reading them, for instance). But I got a lot of credit from professors for sharing what I've learned out in the real world and for analysing the material I was reading through that real-world lens. I got an 80% on my dissertation, which is unusual here. The scale here is that anything in the 60s is a good grade, anything in the 70s is above average, and anything in the 80s is rare.

So yay David for keeping me going, yay my fellow students for helping me understand that no one actually does the readings, yay my advisor, Dr. Ciara Hackett, who did wonders for my confidence, yay my mom for footing the bill (allowing me to shift my original tuition investment into the house), and yay me for sticking it out.

Graduation is December 10. I cannot wait. I will march in front of my favourite building with a lot of satisfaction for setting a goal and seeing it through. You can bet there will be photos.
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