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Jack

Jack

"A few years ago I was pulling pints behind a bar.  In the last year I have investigated, (amongst other things); where feminism and science fiction meet, how the internet might bring down society as we know it, what education is for and (literally) been asked what the meaning of life is."


I came to Cambridge in my mid-30s with a couple of GCSEs and an Access course qualification.   Returning to education at this age and with a modest academic past was daunting but has been hugely rewarding.  As a matured student the social side of university is different, but so is what you can bring to the academic experience.  It seems that sociology is a subject that is enhanced by your individual experience of life; I believe that being able to attach the theory to the real world is something that mature students can bring to sociological study in a different way than students who have moved seamlessly through educational institutions.    

I applied to the HSPS course with the intention of following the politics track.  I had a strong interest in the subject and I was hoping to make a career change into that world.  As the course developed I realised that my interest in politics was not due to the mechanics and soap opera quality of governments, but why people actually submitted to power in the first place.  I’ve come to think of politics as how power works and sociology as why power works.  Being the social sciences, that simple distinction between disciplines is not actually so clear cut, but I do believe that for anyone who wants to understand the mechanics of the human world at the most fundamental level, sociology offers the most satisfying (and often frustrating) explanation.  

I think that most students begin the HSPS course a little unsure about the merits of such a broad sweep of the social sciences when their interest probably lies in something specific.  However, I also think that most would agree that each specialist path that we went down was enhanced by understanding that actual human societies can’t be so easily divided into disciplines, and that a rich knowledge of any area of human study requires understanding the broad foundations of the social sciences as a whole. 

A few years ago I was pulling pints behind a bar.  In the last year I have investigated, (amongst other things); where feminism and science fiction meet, how the internet might bring down society as we know it, what education is for and (literally) been asked what the meaning of life is.

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