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Undergraduate Research and Lament but not in that Order!

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Many undergraduates are asked to or given the option to complete a research project towards the end of their course. Having recently submitted my own I wanted to write about my experience and why this is something you should consider doing too. At my university the length of your project is determined by the course you are on, and for me it was 12,000 words and I was expected to take a whole academic year to complete it. This will change depending on the course and university but the longer sustained project aspect should be common to most undergraduates.  Starting any large project is intimidating, especially when the only outside rubric is the final submission date and approximate word count. I started thinking about potential topics about six months before the deadline to set a topic and suggest a supervisor. This may sound very organised but I went in about three different directions and changed my mind a lot before getting to my final topic which was gender and lament in Early Iri
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Scéla Arin Túathaib: The Present and Future of Public Outreach in Medieval Celtic Studies

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Emmet, using one of John Derrick's 16th century woodcuts as they panic and grasp at straws for images of public history in the field. In every field, students serve as often unsung intermediaries between the public and academia, disseminating  what  they learn in the classrooms to family dinner tables, to pub nights with friends, and to interested online communities. They transform what might have originally required a high level of baseline knowledge to understand into something that will be enjoyed and appreciated by their audiences, widely disseminating scholarship to reach greater audiences than almost any journal article or conference proceeding could dream of. This 'front line' of students in conversation with the public is augmented by public-facing scholarly works. Books such as The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking) by Katie Mack or the upcoming If Nietzsche Were a Narwhal by Justin Gregg bring the public into academic conversations, fostering curiosi
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Bho Gàidhilg go Gaeilge: Having one helps the other, sort of

Bho Gàidhilg go Gaeilge: Having one helps the other, sort of Jeff W. Justice Department of Celtic and Scottish Studies The University of Edinburgh While the Celtic languages are my passion and current research priority, they are not the first that I learned. I took Castilian Spanish for several years during my secondary education, and I became fairly fluent in it. Then the Internet became generally accessible, and I found myself scouring Spanish-language news sources, but also occasionally reading items in Portuguese and finding that – with a modicum of help from a dictionary – that I could read it as well, despite having never had any formal coursework in it. I still pick up only bits here and there when I hear European or Brazilian Portuguese, but I have still have few problems reading it. (I became fluent in French later on, and that also helped, but that’s a story for another day.)   Having prior experience learning any new language made easier for me the task of learning
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Four Tips for Learning Celtic Languages with Dyslexia

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Hi! My name is Freya and I'm a Celtic student and I am dyslexic. I want to share some tips and software that I have found helpful while learning different Celtic languages. In my degree I've been able to take courses in modern Scottish Gaelic and Old Irish but I think my coping strategies should work just as well in any language. I've been learning languages since I was very wee so some of this advice is more about attitudes to language learning than things you can do, and of course it should go without saying that this is what has worked for me so it might not work for everyone! Hopefully these tips will be useful to everyone not just disabled students. My first bit of advice is nothing particularly new: use the language you are learning as much as possible. For me this means finding ways to speak Gaelic as much as possible because I find speaking the easiest way to use language (when I don't have brain-fog!). Try to find a way of using language that is low resistance
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Searching for Motivation: Some Tips and Reassurance for Students

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            I am writing this article as a way to procrastinate many things: editing a chapter draft of my PhD, working on a conference paper, writing an abstract for yet another Call for Papers, learning new vocabulary, doing homework for various classes, reading articles. And that’s just the academic things! The main reason why I am procrastinating today is that I am honestly not motivated. I am tired just thinking about everything coming up this year, and since I think I am not the only one feeling that way, I thought I would list some things that I use to make myself feel more confident, less anxious, and more enthusiastic about doing some work. Whether you are doing a PhD, Masters or undergraduate degree, I hope this list helps. If not, at least you’ll have wasted a few minutes of your day procrastinating: you’re welcome.       First things first. You will hear and read it everywhere, which makes it annoying, but it is true: you will have so much more energy for everything if yo
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