I just got accepted to do a Master's degree!
I'm dead excited, and I just wanted to share somewhere!
Since graduating from my Bachelor's I've been working in IT support, and it's slowly killing me. Progression is slow, the work is boring, and at the end of the day all I have to show for my efforts is (hopefully) a slightly lower number of open tickets than at the start. It all feels incredibly pointless, and like I'm not making a difference in peoples' lives.
I decided earlier this year to start looking into possible Master's degree programs, to help me enter a different field, and I'm happy to say that from next September I'll be returning to my alma mater to study Linguistics and English Language Teaching. From there, I'm hoping to go into teaching English as a foreign language, first abroad, and then to immigrants and refugees back here in the UK.
I'm super excited, and also a little nervous. I coasted through my Bachelor's and the past few years of my working life, so it'll be a shock to the system to have a proper workload again. I've got to get through the next 8 months or so first, but that will be easier knowing that I have something different and exciting waiting for me at the end of this particular career path. I'm desperately saving up as much money as I can to cover my living expenses for the year (I don't intend to work during my degree), which is another thing to feel nervous about.
But right now, I'm mostly just ecstatic, and wanted to share! In the interest of discussion, I'd love to hear about your experiences studying a Master's degree, and whether or not it helped you in your life after graduation.
Congratulations! I finished my Master's earlier this year (yay for a virtual graduation) and went straight into a PhD program in the same lab. My MS years were fantastic, and very satisfying. I think an MS at least allows you to shape it the way you want, we have the option of just taking slightly more advanced classes than a Bachelor's, all the way up to not taking many classes at all and instead spending time on research. No two people really had the same experience, IMO. I unfortunately have no idea what things are like in UK, nor your chosen field. But exciting!
Good luck!
Congratulations!
My wife earned her Masters degree a few years ago (mostly because it's required to advance as a librarian) and it was a tough process but she has said multiple times that it was worthwhile. She did her entire degree online since our local university is one of the best in the US but doesn't offer a course in library science. Within a few months of graduating, she was offered a higher up position that paid 50% more.
I hope you find it as fulfilling (emotionally and financially) as my wife did!
Congratulations!
Kudos to you for branching out and doing the work to get accepted. I think I ended up being prouder that I was accepted than I was when I finally graduated two years later. It can be incredibly tough to get into the program of your choice especially if the prerequisites are extensive.
What I tell everyone who goes into a Masters program is to have a frank conversation with your significant other on what to expect. It is a big change of pace and the best thing for you is to be in is a supportive environment where you can feel safe to be stressed and to have someone pick up the slack around the house when needed. My significant other just finished her Master's this month and one of the things she appreciated the most was me handling things that she wasn't in any capacity to do, like take care of the dog more frequently or prepare the meals for the day.
I completed my Master's degree back in 2015 in Industrial Organizational Psychology (I-O Psychology). I got a lot out of it, but I was pretty unhappy by the time that I got out. I-O Psychologists look at the interaction between the workplace and people and try to understand it in a way that helps with hiring, performance management, training, compensation, etc... It can be extremely interesting to learn about all the different ways to implement these practices and what results you can expect.
But I have a cynical, radical mind so I saw it as the study and practice of making people work harder, with less pay, and be happy about doing it. By the end of the program, I was at the point where if I read another scientific article that included in its conclusion, "By implementing these practices, organizations can expect a higher ROI on their investment in human resources..." I was going to scream. I think the therapist I saw at the end of my graduate program said I was, "disillusioned".
But there is no doubt that it has helped me a lot. I don't necessarily do traditional HR work, I am more like IT in HR. Because I have a larger depth of knowledge of trends and practices in HR technology, and how they relate to an organization's needs, I have gotten opportunities that others haven't. However, because I haven't gone "whole hog" into the field and practice, I have definitely stunted my career. Many members of my cohort are now managers or consultants, while I am in a senior analyst role. I can't complain too much though. I have a good job, making great money, and I don't work more than 40 hours a week.
This is great advice. I lived with my ex while she did her Master's degree, and we ended up arguing a lot about this kind of stuff because we didn't talk about it in advance, or even communicate it properly while she was deep into it. I don't yet live with my current SO, but I fully intend to have a good chat to sort out expectations ahead of my return to uni.
This is good advice. My wife and I talked about her schedule at the beginning of each semester and since I worked a regular, stable schedule and I made sure that on the evenings she had class, dinner was ready before her classes started and that I took care of our dogs if they needed to go out while she was in class.
Congratulations! Seems like a better path than I took. I went directly into my masters after doing my bachelor. In hindsight I think it would have been smarter to go work for a while and figure out a bit more what I liked and would want to focus on. I didn't find my masters to be particularly challenging or educational to be honest. Some nice courses, but I didn't learn nearly as much as I did during my bachelor. This was likely mostly due to poor program management from the professor in charge of the program and a fairly low bar for passing courses. So all in all a bit of a waste of time... Hopefully your experience will be different (mine was CS related, but linguistics seems much more focused than what I did).
As an aside I have over the years since finishing my master's taken a few entry level courses in different subjects (philosophy, microbiology, law, ecomics so far). The goal is to do ALL the entry level courses, though this is clearly not achievable :) This spring I'm studying modern physics which I think will be the most challenging course yet! We'll see how it goes.