5 Great Things about Being a Postgraduate

Postgraduate study may be a step up from undergraduate study, it may be challenging and it may seem a bit daunting.

But it's also brilliant, fulfilling and fun.

You'll retain much of the freedom you've always had as a student (and yes, you can still go to the union bar). But you'll also be developing some great new skills and subject knowledge whilst having your eyes opened to new professional and academic opportunities.

So, if you're getting ready to start a Masters or PhD, here's some of what you've got to look forward to:

You may feel you’d gotten this pretty much down when you were doing your undergraduate degree.

But the more likely reality is that you still partied as hard as ever and just about managed to write that essay the night before it was due.

Though you definitely can’t get away with that as a postgraduate, it doesn’t mean your party days are over, or that you’ll be more ‘boring’ and do less.

It simply means you’re becoming more responsible for your own learning.

You’ll begin to recognise that having slightly more responsibility doesn’t have to weigh you down - you can still do many of the student-y things you did before.

However, opting for relaxed evenings of getting through some niggly emails accompanied by a glass of wine is more likely than heading out to your nearest watering hole.

And, in all honestly, the prospect of ‘adulting’ will begin to feel nicer than the thought of standing outside a bar at 4am trying to hail a taxi home.

Part of adulting 101. Except nobody actually teaches you how to do this. You are just automatically awesome at it.

Truly, your postgraduate schedule will impress the most organised and opportunistic of people.

In between networking, researching, studying, and holding-down a part-time job in most cases, you’ll be amazed at the number of things you can achieve in one day – and by 6pm, might I add.

5 meetings, 3 books, and a conference? Sure thing. Oh, and checklists will become your new best friends.

And if you’re really organised, days off become A THING. Honestly, I’m not lying.

Get good with your schedule and you could now enjoy that elusive entity called ‘weekend’ - which up until now was never actually an end to the week, but in a fact a blind messy panic that somehow rolled Sunday, Monday and Tuesday all into one.

Thanks to your new-found juggling capabilities and precise schedule, you’ll notice that finding time to take part in extracurricular activities is a lot easier than it was during your undergraduate degree.

And what better time than now to do something you never had the chance to before?

You could begin your own academic blog, join that committee you never got round to participating in, or even take on an internship which will benefit your studies.

You’ll also likely find that academic opportunities crop up more and more, too.

Now that you’re taken more seriously as a postgraduate student, you’ll have excellent chances to start up your own projects, and receive funding for doing so.

It will also likely be a lot easier to find somebody to collaborate with on your research missions as you build academic relationships through your ongoing networks.

There’s nothing like really getting into the nitty gritty of your academic subject.

In learning how to make better use of the resources around you, you’ll become inspired and motivated by the nuances of the topic you are researching.

Defining a new take on an academic theory, disproving a piece of evidence, or finding a solution to an age-old problem really is an enthralling aspect of postgraduate study.

As opposed to simply regurgitating somebody else’s work, you learn to refine your own, and contribute to your field in an engaging way.

You can expect to be regularly impressed at your ability to discover new things and pass this information on to your superiors – the people you always assumed knew everything about anything.

Understanding that your lecturers are just as human as you, and seeing how they progressed from where you are now is all the more rewarding when you become the teacher and they become the student.

There are many things which postgraduate study can teach you about yourself.

And as your academic ambitions won’t always go your way, failing is definitely one of them.

Since becoming slightly obsessed with his work as an undergraduate, there is a quote from Samuel Beckett which has always stuck with me:

‘Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.’

This is a mantra which postgraduates quickly learn and one which I’ve definitely focused on when studies were challenging.

It’s okay to find things difficult, to not always know the answer, and to sometimes need help.

After all, no one is expecting you to be a total expert in your subject. And if you get something wrong, at least you know for next time.

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