The Final Push before Project Work

From speaking with friends who have graduated or are in the masters year, it seems fairly unanimous that this point in the degree brings the most stress.  Now engrossed in Maxwell’s equations and the theorems of Claude Shannon that make up the remainder of the current module, a host of deadlines fall at the end of next week in a number of core module deliverables, maths problem sets, lab write ups and more. Coupled to this is the dedicated project time that is about to begin, writing a paper a week for the journal club, and the sudden increase in the number of emails about possible graduate opportunities, giving the increasing realisation that you should be looking for a job, or a summer internship, or both! Not to mention the number of society events planned that must now be organised…

For me, one big change in doing a university degree is the need to put a lot of what you originally identified yourself with on hold. The guitar and keyboard I would play daily after school largely gather dust during term time, and the pile of planned books to read only gets higher as the years progress. Not that it shouldn’t be expected for a degree to take centre stage, but over a number of years it can be a strange feeling. Now, to get back to that lab script..