Doing a masters while working in Spain
jan-herlyn.com77 points by MHard 4 days ago
77 points by MHard 4 days ago
> 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?
I have never heard of a professor at any level helping a student debug code past maybe CS1.
I believe it comes down to the difference between master‘s and bachelor’s as well as the size of the university.
After showing the article to one of my friends who‘s doing the thesis right now, he told me that his experience with his supervisor is very different from mine. In my case I might have gotten very lucky.
Every school, branch, class, hell - even year at the same school with same profs is different
Doing my thesis in The Netherlands I got guidance on my thesis three times. Once during the start to get an initial baseline of what is expected of me, once halfway through as a quick call to see if everything was going according to schedule and once when I had the concept ready.
If you need someone to hold your hand every other week perhaps you shouldn’t go into academics. You should be operating autonomous at that point.
This is a weird viewpoint. Most academic work in STEM fields is collaborative with 2-100 other scientists or engineers. This is because it is well realized that 2 people talking can do many times better work than two people working alone.
Your supervisor should at different times, as appropriate, wear the collaborator cap or the examiner cap. During the course of your project, he should be your collaborative advisor who helps you flesh out ideas and improve them. At the start and end, he should be your formal examiner.
This is how I have seen most Masters (and PhD) projects proceed in Physics in North America.
A Master's thesis is not for somebody aiming for academia. It is a requirement for graduation. Rather different from a PhD.
In The Netherlands all Masters at a university are to prepare you for an academic career.
This comment is little abrasive but there is truth to it.
I've seen many people who are quite competent under close supervision but completely clueless on their own.
We could debate if academia would be better off with different approach though.
> I've seen many people who are quite competent under close supervision but completely clueless on their own.
Being able to work on complicated research topics on your own is what universities are centrally preparing for.
If you really need close supervision, you likely are not made for academia or often not even for a course of studies at a university.
Yes, this is a harsh truth, but academia is really a brutal game of sink or swim.
A Master's degree is hardly academia, is it? A PhD is the starting point for a career in research, and even that does not necessarily imply academia, either.
> A Master's degree is hardly academia, is it?
In Germany, the master degree is considered as such. Basically the final test before you decide for or against "the whole brutal game of joining a doctoral study program".
A professor that I know clearly said: "In a master's thesis I expect something scientifically novel. It does not have to be something deep, but if you want 'a 1 before the comma' (in Germany, the grading at a uninversity goes from 1,0 to 5,0 where 5,0 means 'failed'), it has to be something scientifically novel. The number after the mark is to distinguish whether it is really a deep discovery or not."
Be also culturally aware that in practice, for a final thesis
- 1.0 means "good",
- 1.3 means "average",
- 1.7 means "bad",
- everything below (from 2.0 on) basically means "failure" (you get a degree, but are marked as failure).
So, the professor clearly stated that every grade for a master thesis that "is not in practice a failure grade" means "some novel scientific discovery". And every grade that is better than "in practice 'bad'" means "some very non-trivial scientific discovery".
I know that many professors think this way, though most of them would phrase this more diplomatically.
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 unrelated to anything you have currently done - is actually not easy.
I chose Geology. I have BS/BA in Comp Eng and Chemistry and an MS in Comp Eng. So this was personal interest.
Revisiting math I hadn't used in awhile was the easy part. Making the time, while working, reminded my why I also ended up ABD (all but dissertation - toward PHD) post masters. Sometimes your brain needs to relax.
Glad it worked for you. And the European Universities are significantly cheaper than Universities in the states (this was a state univerisity which is - per state - considered a step above a state school. For instance a UC vs a CSU in california).
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 worse, don't even care about anything and are there because of societal expectations) do not make good learning companions. professors who are very dispassionate about the subject don't want you taking up their time with fancy questions and administer dumb tests such that studying for the test is useless beyond passing the course.
(to be clear i'm not criticizing these people directly. obviously, i understand that bills have to be paid -- after all, i took some fun electives, not a degree in fun)
personally, during my time in university i did try a lot of elective courses "for the joy". it forced me a schedule, which was good, because it's something i struggled with self-studying. a few times, professors offered some real gems of knowledge which i wouldn't have found otherwise. and obviously, in practical classes, i got to play stuff i otherwise wouldn't. but the battle against the bullshit took up most of my time and energy.
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.
> 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.
Physics is applying math to Model phenomena. Finance is already numbers so it’s a good fit. If you are insinuating the money corrupts it, they’re paid for the skills they developed. Are medical doctors less noble because they make massive salaries?
we were explicitly talking about people who went to university "for the joy of learning", instead of, as was cited as one of the examples, to prepare themselves for a good career, and how the latter can detract from the experience of the former.
physics students were cited as examples of people who went to university "for the joy of learning". i mentioned the existence of a path from a physics education to a very well-paying career which is moreover not generally considered intellectually stimulating, which suggests (though certainly not proves) the existence of (some -- though certainly not necessarily all) physics students who are not really there "for the joy of learning" -- which again, was one of the concerns i originally cited.
if you are or know a physics grad who studied physics "for the joy of learning" and then worked on finance and you think i'm not correct (say, because finance is actually intellectually stimulating, or that you were really into learning when in school but now are more focused on your career (i actually know a bunch of people for whom this is one is true, now that i think of it), or...), then by all means feel free to share your story, as this is literally what my question was about.
certainly questions can be raised about "corruption" and "nobility", as you did, but i did not intend to do that.
> Are medical doctors less noble because they make massive salaries?
Aren’t they? Would you say a doctor who works for no money is more noble? I would.
Here's an article where a physics grad himself is calling being a quant as "the dark side", it's from last year but the expression is much older.
https://www.colorado.edu/physics/2025/09/22/quantum-physics-...
At the end of the day part of what makes (theoretical) physics "scholarly" is the poor job prospects outside of academia, but there simply aren't enough positions for everyone graduating with a masters and they have to find some job eventually. Being a quant certainly beats becoming weapon designers.
In my country studies are free, which means humanities (like "world literature") are full of young people who had no idea what to do with themselves, so they chose a major in something vaguely interesting and not very demanding, mostly so that they get to extend their youth by a couple of years (as parents will often support them while they get their degree, which means not having to work).
Geology is a great choice. I sometimes think the best subjects to study are the ones that have nothing to do with your job, but they're also the hardest to justify when your brain is already tired from work
> Work will not be the motivator, but we both have options.
Which work visa did you apply for? Or do you have an EU passport?
I studied in The Netherlands about ten years ago and it was very cheap. Around €10k a year total for tuition, room and board. Most of my peers graduated with only €30k in debt as they worked evenings and weekends during their education. Meanwhile I read online about Americans going in debt for $200k
Great job! A few months ago I was kicked out of university for failing my Real Analysis course a second time (4 years of CS suddenly gone, thesis was half done) and had to get a full time job. Now I got accepted to a different public university to study on a weekend basis. This article makes me less anxious about my upcoming studies.
You can reapply as a new student and get your finished classes accepted as finished in the new study.
My friend was in a similar situation as you, the same school, possibly, except it was "Electric Circuits 2".
On Wednesday he failed the last exam, Thursday he applied as new student, on Monday he was 1st year student and by Friday he was 3rd year student with all classes accepted. Still had to do the Electric Circuits 2 of course.
That sounds incredibly harsh. What kind of university was it? Is there more to the story?
Kicking someone out and effectively voiding all progress just for failing one challenging final year class twice is completely mad.
Was it rather that you lost a scholarship and couldn’t afford to finish or something like that?
Sorry to dwell, I’m sure it must be painful, I wish you the best luck.
Essentially all Czech universities have a rule where you can only twice enroll in the same course - failing to do so will lead to termination. Nevertheless I still have my credits so I'll try to get them accepted at the new university.
It was mostly painful to see people I had courses with graduate just this month, however I do have a good software engineering job so all is well?
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.
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 enough reason for them to let you try.
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 <100 people actually graduate.
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.
You miss every shot you don't take. Don't be ashamed or afraid to appeal. At worst, nothing changes.
Sorry, that strikes me as the norm. Graduation is predicated on passing certain courses, and obviously you can't take it an arbitrary number of times. So fail an exam twice, and you're out. (Some universities offer a final oral exam after failing a written exam twice.)
Very sorry to hear that. Glad you're still going on, that's the right mindset!
I did study for my undergraduate degree( design & business) full time whilst also working full time. Graduated when I was almost 30. It took me 10 years until I wanted to study anything again.
Now I'm studying part time for my masters degree( cybersec) whilst also working full time, only this time the job is very mentally draining.
Respect for going back after 10 years, honestly. Cybersec while working full time sounds useful but definitely not light
I am 31(still fell 20) studying Electrical Engineering, while working full time as a Software Engineer, its tough, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
It feels like the real reason many people go back to school: not some grand career optimization plan, but being bored, stuck and wanting life to move again
Super grateful to read stories like these.
I'm studying part-time to complete a BA in political science while working full-time as a software developer. I love learning the subject, but the workload can be tough. Happy to hear it's not just me.
Thank you for sharing!
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 that public university at all (older people).
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).
I think it’s worth a try. Being a bit older than the rest (almost thirties) when I started also gave me pause at first. But I felt that people were very welcoming regardless of your situation.
First and foremost, congrats!
In Argentina doing a bachelor + master while working is called a Monday. It's partially unfortunate since it "delays" the finish date of the degree and even makes a lot of people drop out because they found a cushy enough job.
But coming out with a degree along with years of professional experience makes up for the "delay" in getting the degree at least tenfold.
I've been considering doing the same (going back to uni, not moving to Barcelona). But I find the choices are overwhelming, and the time investment is no joke.
What about language was used in the masters program? Spanish? I'm guessing that German is your first language.
Now we just need the pics of beaches, bars, and your presentations!
Being now in my late 30s I worry that the ship has sailed on being able to do a masters degree while juggling adult life as well.
I wouldn’t let that discourage you. During my time there I did meet people well in their mid thirties juggling work, kids and the masters. Depending on your country, universities can do a lot of accommodations to parents if that’s in the picture.
yeah, what I feel happens is that priorities get a lot harder. I'm two courses and a project away from a master in robotics, but when you have a steady, well-paying job already and a spouse and kid, it's gets really hard to motivate exactly _why_ you want that degree.
>work >spain
the conclusion was as expected
edit> Spain is one of my fav countries and I may even be half spanish, Im just saying if I was going to focus on work Id move to the nordics or the US
We get CSN :) You have to be native though hehe