Masters of Arts and/or the PhD?

I think most of the students that already have Master's degrees just jump straight into the PhD here. For many people the idea is get here, get done and get on with your life. I totally understand what that is about as the cost of a PhD is much more than financial. However, there are a number of reasons why I personally decided to only apply for the Master's degree here. Most of them are due to the advice I received on comparing the US to British PhDs and the job prospects afterwards.

• Before I came I asked around about the British system. One of the things I was told is that it is very important to get to know your supervisor because they are your only lifeline. So I wanted to get to know Graham to see if a working relationship was feasible. (I met one professor who had a very hard time while studying in Britain because his supervisor was evidently quite horrible. This isn't really a problem any more here at Manchester because you can switch supervisors if you need to, but in my case there was no one else I wanted to study with at Manchester so I was really stuck if Graham wasn't going to work out).
• I really didn't know what I wanted to do in the PhD.  I just had a bunch of questions that I knew I needed to think through. My BA was mostly pastoral and what I found was that I wanted to take my academic work further. I couldn't really articulate after being at Fuller what I wanted to do a PhD on. All I knew was that I had questions about how Protestants think theology and culture, and that I was not finding answers at Fuller. I had read Graham's work and thought he might be able to help me.
• I wanted to get here and sort out funding, housing etc. and three years for a dissertation for many students is eaten into as they settle their first year.
• I had heard from some of the people I was talking to that the British PhD is looked down on by hiring committees in the US because of how narrow it is and how little coursework it entails. I wanted to sort of make my British PhD closer to the Continental and US PhD by doing my first year of coursework which in the MA here is very much like a PhD seminar in the US.
• I was very concerned about teaching experience. Many hiring committees expect that you have some experience with students. I was told that teaching assistants were rare in the UK, so I also wanted to get to know the people in the department in case any teaching assistant jobs might open up. I did this to an extent at Fuller by working and volunteering there, which allowed me to get to know a few Professors there who were very influential in my academic development. As it turns out Manchester has many teaching assistantships that it is promoting so this has been easier than I thought, but again it helps if the department knows you a little bit.

For the most part, I feel that most of my reasonings have paid off. The first year gave me a chance to get acquainted with Graham which led to him being able to give a much stronger recommendation for the ORS and PhD applications - at least that is my assumption because I honestly don't know why I received the ORS award. I was able therefore to secure funding by being here and learning what was really available. My first year as an MA student was great because I had more interaction with professors and the department which helped me settle into Mancunian life. Many of the essays I wrote in that year have been published or I used for conference presentations, and ultimately it was in the process of my MA dissertation that I realized that I was going to have to find a new and radically different orientation if I was going to move forward in thinking through my questions. I made some big steps in my understanding in that year and it really played a crucial role in where I am in my thinking to date.

Having said all that - a Masters of Arts is an extra cost and burden and my experience could have gone the other way. I could have found out Graham and I wouldn't have been able to help me think through my questions. I could have ended up without any funding. I could have wasted another year on irrelevant coursework. So my approach really could have backfired, but then again that was the point. I'd rather only lose one year rather than three or four if it was the wrong place for me to be.