Official

I am now officially a university student. Test my new email address (r.leow AT warwick DOT ac DOT uk), if you are so inclined.

Currently, I am occupying myself with being summarily terrified by my module syllabi. Not only is there a total of 15-20 texts to be read for each seminar (of which there are TEN per term), but the cumulative end effect of said seminars - so it is claimed - is that I will apparently be able to answer questions like these:

  1. Is history a social science or a literary genre?
  2. ‘Historical questions of importance can never provide certain solutions, only probable ones.’ Discuss.
  3. ‘Now that all the grand narratives of history have been abandoned, historians can only find interest in microhistory.’ Do you agree?
  4. Can a historian be a structuralist?
  5. ‘All history returns to the political.’ Discuss.

Sample examination questions

Some extremely thought-provoking and fear-evoking questions. Rarely have I ever felt more academically inadequate than at this very moment.

Sometimes I am struck by a feeling that I am physically incapable of learning any more than I have learnt so far in my life. I feel as though I could not write a better essay, or understand anything more, or learn anything more; not out of arrogance, but simply out of lack of capacity. Perhaps it is the languidity of summer that is dulling my academic inclination.

In short, therefore, I am Extremely Intimidated.