Masters, What an Intimidating Word

Masters, what an intimidating word. I mean He-man was a Master of the Universe and here am I, trying to be a ‘Master’ too.

Honestly speaking I am still trying to come to grips with what that means, Masters, where do I fit in within the overall scheme of things. Wait, I should probably introduce myself, I’m Aaron and I will be bombarding you with randomness for the remainder of the year. Anyway, back to ramble number 1.

If you look at universities they are made up four main types of people.

Of course you have all the bold young undergrads who are either a. In first year and revelling in the freedom that university life has given them or b. Past first year and counting down the hours until they can leave.

Secondly you have your true out-and-out Postgrads, your Research students, the ones who spend the entire day in the lab, occasionally coming up for a coffee. I say true postgrads because these are the people who get access to all of the postgrad areas and resources, get paid and make the university lots of money through grants and suchlike.

Thirdly you have the Academic staff, your jolly lecturers who may or may not like teaching, in fact they may or may not like people, but definitely like their topics.

Finally you have your non-academic staff, these are the ones who run the university in every way, but probably go home every night and pray that students would disappear. So where does that leave me a Masters Student? Haven’t quite figured that one out yet but I will let you know as soon as I do.

Southampton is a great university, if you don’t believe that when you first get here you will have it hammered into your head by the end of the second week with the help of the uber-efficient indoctrination system.

I personally chose this place over Imperial, because I knew that it would make me competitive in a much nicer environment than the aforementioned university. Since coming here I have had no regrets, lecturers have been approachable and have tried their hardest to make sure they do what they can do to help you with the material they are delivering.

Another pleasant surprise is the diversity of my class. It is a wonderful thing, when you know that every person in your classs has taken such a wonderfully unique journey to the same place.

I think that’s all I want to say for right now, I suppose I could tell you about the difficulty of the work or the amount of assignments I have to start, but all of that stuff is rather boring and isn’t what really matters.

What matters is that even though you don’t know where you fit in, in the overall scheme of things, it still feels right, you know this is somewhere you can build your future and progress towards whatever you want to do, without restrictions.