From June to October 2018, I graduated from the university, found a job, entered a magistracy, decided that I already had a good job and a higher education and that I didn’t need to go in pairs, I was expelled from the university. And then I entered the magistracy again.In this article, I will explain why I made such decisions and what conclusions I came to in the process.
The article was long enough, so here I will write her plan:- As I did not go to the graduate school of HSE, but went to ITMO
- How did I get out of ITMO?
- How I spent the gap year and decided what to do next
- How I went to study again and felt the difference between graduate and undergraduate studies
- findings
As I did not go to the graduate school of HSE, but went to ITMO
My name is Olya Kunyavskaya. In the summer of 2018, I graduated from the SPbAU undergraduate degree in Bioinformatics. Our graduation came at a time when the administration, teachers and students moved from SPbAU to St. Petersburg HSE. The academic university was great for me in terms of getting an undergraduate education, but I didn’t go to the opened master's program in the St. Petersburg HSE campus. In the undergraduate program, I was engaged in bioinformatics and wanted to develop in this area, but Machine Learning, Software Engineering and Programming Languages moved to the St. Petersburg Master's program, but not Bioinformatics.At that moment I found out about the master's program “Bioinformatics and Systems Biology” at ITMO and decided to go there. The program included some courses that I had already studied, but there were a lot of new ones. I liked the idea that my classmates would be guys with a biological background. The biologists' thinking is very different from mine, and I thought that such an environment could greatly pump me into the mysterious field of biology and teach me to think in another way. I also liked that the training takes place in English: I wanted to believe that I know English enough to learn and work.I take an oral exam in biology at ITMO
How did I get out of ITMO?
September 2018 I entered the master's program “Bioinformatics and Systems Biology” at ITMO and got a full-time junior researcher at the Center for Bioinformatics and Algorithmic Bioinformatics at St. Petersburg State University (this laboratory is developing the genome collector SPAdes under the direction of Pavel Pevzner and was previously in St. Petersburg University).October 2018 I am expelled from the university. I can’t study at ITMO - and because of the details that I knew about before, but it never occurred to me that this would make me so upset.Accustomed to the chamber atmosphere of SPbAU, where less than 500 people studied, I felt uncomfortable at the university, where thousands of students can be on the same course. People walked past me, and I thought about seeing them for the first and last time in my life. In addition, it turned out that I was not ready to spend even minimal efforts on something that did not seem to me useful. When I went to this master's program, I knew that there would be courses that I had already taken. For example, in discrete mathematics. I was going to pass them quickly, and the rest of the time I would do important things for me. However, it turned out that such a model is not for me. He pursued the question of “why am I wasting my time”, and this feeling was intensified due to the fact that at the beginning of the year introductory information was told in pairs.In the first three weeks, I decided that since there is already a higher education, it makes no sense to go to university for a diploma. I want to do other things - more fun than visiting couples. I concluded that I did not need to receive a master's degree, and expelled.Gap year. And then what?
I stopped being a student and left to work in the laboratory full time. And then I had a natural crisis associated with graduation.It was important for me to get an education, and undergraduate education was accompanied by the feeling that the main thing now is to invest a lot of energy and energy into study, and you can deal with everything else later. And so I found myself in a situation that I have a higher education, I am arranged for a good job, even my personal life has already been established. And then what?I came across existential questions, which I began to look for answers to. I thought about how I would like to live in the future and how to arrange my daily life so that I would be happy. These are questions that you don’t think about as long as there are tons of tasks and deadlines.I will tell you thesis key thoughts, one way or another connected with the magistracy:- I want me to live well here and now, and not in the distant future. The realization has come that I need to understand how I want to live, and start living happily now. Enjoy life right from now on. If I constantly think that now I will suffer, but in the great “later” I will be happy, there is a danger that this “later” will never come.
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By January, I realized that I wanted to study Software Engineering at the graduate school of St. Petersburg. I knew that I really wanted it, and I understood why I needed it.In winter, I wrote to our dean and told about my intention to enter, in the summer I passed exams and entered. And in the fall of 2019, she switched to part-time and went to study.How I went to study again. The difference between graduate and undergraduate studies.
For me, studying in a magistracy is a new stage in my life, and not a direct continuation of my undergraduate studies. In the baccalaureate, getting education was my main priority: I boldly refused things that prevented me from studying, carefully prepared for exams, first passed homework and worked out theoretical material 2-3 times. By the time I entered the magistracy, I realized that life is multifaceted, and in addition to studying, I want to do other things: build strong social ties, a career, create a family, and realize my own ideas. Sometimes I prefer to meet my friend with my homework. Studying is no longer the main goal, but rather a pleasant addition that makes life happier.Here's what else has changed compared to undergraduate studies:- . : 20 , 10 . 6 , 2 3 . . : , . , , . , , .
- Reasons for deduction. In undergraduate studies, the main reason for expulsion was academic failure. There are also deductions in the magistracy (initially there were 6 people in our direction, 4 months later), but now the main reason for the deductions is that people went to the magistracy rather by inertia, without understanding why they needed it, and then did not want to spend it time. For the same reason, I expelled from ITMO.
findings
If I try to summarize my experience in several conclusions, I would say this:- Before going to graduate school, it is important to understand why you (and whether) want it.
- Listen to yourself. Pay attention to subjective psychological comfort.
- Changing your decisions is normal! There is nothing wrong with changing a university, expelling or entering a university after several years of work.
- You can take a gap year in order to understand where you want to move on.
- Only you can understand what you need. Your opinion may differ from the opinion of your parents, mentors, friends and teachers, and you do not have to explain your decisions to someone.
It turned out to be important for me to take a break for awareness, and from conscious actions I received much more inner satisfaction and much more return than if I were moving by inertia.*****April 30 at the faculty will be Open Day Online about master's programs.Come!