The 7 Students You’ll Meet During Your Masters

#1 The straight-from-employment Masters student

There are a couple of sub-types of this particular category of Masters student that you’ll need to be aware of. The first is the postgraduate who just couldn’t wait to get out of her boring job and back into education. A simple trip to the library on a Wednesday morning (followed up by a pleasant afternoon catching up on reading in a local café) is a transcendent experience for the former office worker traumatised by several years of KPIs, CRMs and EoP deadlines.

The other sub-type is the Masters student who hasn’t quite relinquished their former work routine. They’ll keep to a strict 9-5 study routine during the week and let their hair down at the weekend. You might also catch them glancing anxiously at an old Blackberry during lectures.

#2 The person who thinks they’re still an undergrad

Warning: this type of student is surprisingly common. You’ll probably know the type: they’ve never quite learned to let go of the fluorescent quad vods that fueled their mid-week nights out as a fresher.

Despite their advancing years, they’ll insist on taking advantage of the stomach-curdling student drinks offers at the local pub (after all, they’ve still got a student card – why not make use of it?). The main issue is that the force of their hangovers has increased exponentially since that first sip of Jagermeister five or six years ago.

#3 The converter

One of the coolest things about Masters study is the ability to gain a conversion qualification in something completely different to what you studied at undergrad level.

This means you might come across some fairly unlikely combinations of subjects. How about the Software Engineer who does a Masters in Social Work? Or the physicist who ends up studying Psychology?

#4 The Football Manager addict

It’s true that you might find yourself with a little more free time than you’re used to during a Masters, but this is an illusion. That free time isn’t really ‘free’ – you’re meant to use it to get on top of your seminar readings or to get stuck into your research.

Academic research, that is – not sitting on Football Manager 2016 scouting some obscure German wunderkind who plies his trade for Arminia Bielefeld, poring over his metrics and assessing his suitability for your swashbuckling West Bromwich Albion side rather than doing a bibliography.*

*For legal reasons, this is a joke and has no resemblance to any actual person, living or dead.

#5 The student who becomes a bit too invested in their research

It’s no secret that the Masters dissertation is a hefty undertaking that requires a great deal of dedication. But you don’t want your pursuit of academic excellence to lead you down a dark path of obsession.

The same can’t be said of the gothic literature student who, rumour has it, was so consumed by her research into Dracula that she took a field trip to Transylvania and never returned, instead leading a nomadic lifestyle as a garlic farmer in the Carpathian mountains.

Similar hearsay surrounds the disappearance of a postgraduate microbiologist, driven to the brink of insanity by his attempts to cultivate a rare lichen. He was last seen muttering to himself about “algae rhythms” outside the laboratory, before appearing to make a beeline towards the nearby woods while humming the X Files theme tune.

#6 The student who’s doing a Masters to avoid getting a job

The world of work isn’t always a particularly appealing one (and we recognise that things are particularly tough at the moment on that front). But a Masters deserves to be much more than a stop gap.

Still, it’s likely that there will be someone on your programme who isn’t particularly passionate about the subject – for them, it’s a way to delay the onslaught of full adulthood and to extend (what they perceive as) the blissful carefree nature of student life. In fact, these guys often behave as though they’re still undergrads (see above).

And, in a way, there’s nothing wrong with that. There are certainly less productive ways to spend a year of your life.

#7 The part-timer

Masters programmes can be very flexible, which makes them a popular choice for part-time students balancing their education with family and professional commitments.

You may well end up in a seminar with someone who has to duck out at short notice to deal with a messy incident at his child’s nursery, which is completely fine. The same goes for the perma-frazzled businesswoman who is juggling an MBA with a job that requires her to be available to appease angry shareholders at the drop of a hat.