My transition from undergraduate to postgraduate study

Tom Williams

INVESTIGATIVE PSYCHOLOGY MSC

Hi, I'm Tom and I'm studying my Master's in Investigative Psychology. My hobbies involve running, playing guitar and watching Leeds play the losing team. I also have a passion for writing, reading and anything involving animals.

Transitioning from Undergraduate to Postgraduate, what’s different?

I’m currently three months into my postgraduate journey, studying a subject I adore and trying my hardest not to ask too many questions about how I got here in the first place. If you had told me two years ago, I’d be doing a Master's degree with the hopes of going onto a PhD, I’d have told the barman to cut you off and call a taxi. Yet here I am, looking back over the last three months and noticing how in some ways it’s the exact same as last year and in other ways completely different. Here’s what I’ve noticed;

Independence

Compared to undergraduate, this year is much more focused on you independently working through the course. That’s not me saying the lecturers leave to your own devices, quite the opposite really. Whenever I’ve frantically emailed a lecturer about something trivial or otherwise, they are always quick to reply and calm me down. What I really mean is, as opposed to undergradate, most of your time is spent reading and researching. Which, if you love your subject, isn’t as torturous as it may sound. Every week your lecturers send you some reading material and research to read over, which you then do in your own time, which is really helping me with my time management skills. I know a few people on the course are liking this aspect particularly, as they are full time carers or full time workers, and they can pick and choose when to read the assigned material.

Timetable

At undergraduate, my timetable usually controlled how I went about my day, with the times and locations varying weekly. At postgraduate, you are only timetabled into uni once a term. That may sound bonkers, which was the word I used when I first found out, but it actually works out pretty well. The teaching week (well for my course anyway) consisted of 9am - 5pm teaching from Monday to Friday, obviously with breaks in-between. Don’t think anyone is expecting you to sit there for eight hours straight. I personally really enjoyed the teaching week, maybe cause I’m a massive nerd for the subject, but also because it allowed us to touch upon numerous areas of the course in a short period of time, yet still going into high levels of detail. Then after the week is up, the rest of time can be evenly balanced between work, reading and assignments. Essentially, you get a terms worth of teaching in one week but given to you at a manageable pace.

And yet…

Despite these two massive differences in teaching, I could still quite easily forget I’m doing postgraduate study. Maybe because I carried straight on from undergraduate, but I think it’s mostly because of how comfortable the course has made me feel with bigger assignments and more work. My biggest fear of starting postgraduate study was that it would swallow me up and I’d not be able to manage the workload. But the course has managed to give me more work to do, in reasonable time frames and bitesize portions, so it feels like the same workload as undergraduate. For anyone worried about postgraduate being too much or too hard for them, the support from staff involved and the resources given to you make the whole experience a lot less scary and a lot more manageable. And if you’re doing something you truly enjoy, the workload is always halved anyway.

If you have any questions about postgraduate study, just want to chat about your course or how uni is going, I’m easily reachable on UniBuddy. I’m more than happy to talk about anything. Or, you can talk to any of our other lovely students, who are just as happy to help.

Interested in postgraduate study? Find out more and explore your options at our next Postgraduate Open Day.

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