Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Doing a masters while working in Spain

jan-herlyn.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 71 posts

Re: Doing a masters while working in Spain

#31

Post by drakonka »

mishellaneous wrote: post #29
jmspring wrote: post #3

We will be hopping over to Italy/France/or Croatia in the next year or so. Work will not be the motivator, but we both have options. In the states during late covid, I thought the downtime would be good to do a second masters in something unrelated to working in software. I chose a remote program with a univeristy here in the states, I did the first year, but it reminded me that studying - especially a program unrela…

so you go to university just for the joy of learning? to be clear, i think that's cool, and i might try it at some point. but how do you deal with the fact that university, in practice, is not "for the joy of learning"? for most people there, students and professors, it's more like "just a job". and this does have an effect. colleagues that only want to pass the test and are watching out for their careers (or even wo…

I started doing this after moving to a university town at the end of 2024. Just taking random evening courses that sounded interesting. Having never studied past high school, it's been excellent! My first ever course was on nuclear weapons and disarmament and it was fascinating - we had professors with such a huge amount of experience researching and working directly with disarmament negotiations, policies, inspection missions, etc. Then it was a biology course with the most passionate teacher I've ever met. Last term I took a cosmology course and learned a ton about cosmology from different perspectives. My professors have all been great in the few courses I've done so far, and I don't pay attention to other students so much aside from when necessary for group work.

Re: Doing a masters while working in Spain

#32

Post by emptyfile »

jmspring wrote: post #3

We will be hopping over to Italy/France/or Croatia in the next year or so. Work will not be the motivator, but we both have options. In the states during late covid, I thought the downtime would be good to do a second masters in something unrelated to working in software. I chose a remote program with a univeristy here in the states, I did the first year, but it reminded me that studying - especially a program unrela…

[dead]

Re: Doing a masters while working in Spain

#33

Post by cjd8 »

m12k wrote: post #30
cjd8 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is, however I didn't really have a valid reason for an appeal so I just went ahead with it and started applying for jobs.

I don't know about the rest of Europe, but in Denmark, universities get a part of their funding based on the number of graduates. So the university has an incentive to help student actually graduate instead of kicking them out. That may or may not matter to the bureaucrat responding to an appeal - but I'd certainly not just assume that "I'm close to graduation, just let me do this one more exam attempt" isn't a good…

Ah, well in the Czech Republic universities get funding based on the number of currently enrolled students, not graduates. Some places will therefore accept 1000 into a CS program, only to have As for the appeal - these usually aren't successful, even my thesis advisor said that he probably wouldn't go out of his way to talk to the analysis course examiner etc. etc.

Re: Doing a masters while working in Spain

#34

Post by SecretDreams »

cjd8 wrote: post #28
StefanBatory wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is there no way to appeal? It works the same in Polish uni I'm in, but uhh, there I was allowed to appeal and they stamped it by default And I'm very sorry to hear that either way :(

There is, however I didn't really have a valid reason for an appeal so I just went ahead with it and started applying for jobs.

You miss every shot you don't take. Don't be ashamed or afraid to appeal. At worst, nothing changes.

Re: Doing a masters while working in Spain

#35

Post by SiempreViernes »

mishellaneous wrote: post #29
jmspring wrote: post #3

We will be hopping over to Italy/France/or Croatia in the next year or so. Work will not be the motivator, but we both have options. In the states during late covid, I thought the downtime would be good to do a second masters in something unrelated to working in software. I chose a remote program with a univeristy here in the states, I did the first year, but it reminded me that studying - especially a program unrela…

so you go to university just for the joy of learning? to be clear, i think that's cool, and i might try it at some point. but how do you deal with the fact that university, in practice, is not "for the joy of learning"? for most people there, students and professors, it's more like "just a job". and this does have an effect. colleagues that only want to pass the test and are watching out for their careers (or even wo…

> but how do you deal with the fact that university, in practice, is not "for the joy of learning"?

I think this strongly depends on the subject you study, most people in mechanical engineering will have a very different attitude to people studying world literature or astrophysics.

Re: Doing a masters while working in Spain

#36

Post by SiempreViernes »

madprops wrote: post #4

Felicidades. Sometimes I think about returning to a public university to have something structured to do, especially since I've been in a way educating myself through AI and I appreciate the idea of an environment dedicated to people with a similar intellectual interest. I don't really care about academia, if I do it it would be an experimental change of environment. If there is even a place for people like me in tha…

I know of a pensioner who successfully did up to a Masters in astronomy, so there are definitely examples of older people as students in academia (not to mention many the professors are older, and especially the emeritus professors).

Re: Doing a masters while working in Spain

#37

Post by mishellaneous »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #35
mishellaneous wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so you go to university just for the joy of learning? to be clear, i think that's cool, and i might try it at some point. but how do you deal with the fact that university, in practice, is not "for the joy of learning"? for most people there, students and professors, it's more like "just a job". and this does have an effect. colleagues that only want to pass the test and are watching out for their careers (or even wo…

> but how do you deal with the fact that university, in practice, is not "for the joy of learning"? I think this strongly depends on the subject you study, most people in mechanical engineering will have a very different attitude to people studying world literature or astrophysics.

good to know, thanks. it does make sense.

there's still the professors though. the courses may not necessarily be different from their point of view.

also, what do you make of physics grads going to work on finance? doesn't strike as very "scholarly" of them, at first.

Re: Doing a masters while working in Spain

#40

Post by SiempreViernes »

> Culture-wise, the professors at the university were also very different than what I was used to in Germany. [...] My thesis advisor, Alicia Ageno, for instance, had a meeting with me about every two weeks and sent me relevant papers and advice on a subject that was not her current research topic anymore.

This makes german supervision sound pretty abysmal! Maybe that's why the thesis project I had with a German professor crashed and burned (I was to implement an simulation method, and he wouldn't help with debugging), they are just raised in a culture where you don't help students?

Post reply on HN