Everything you know if you’re a Masters student
You wish you’d never complained about money at undergrad
As an undergraduate you think your life could only got worse if you studied a masters. You vow in your final term to never let yourself fall into that trap.
But then, a semester in to your MA after being rejected from multiple grad schemes and not mature enough to face a reality without education, you realise the best part of postgraduate education is kept a secret to undergrads. Not only do you gain a Masters in academia but far more importantly you graduate with a MA in boozing, MSc in alcoholic analysis, MEng in liver regeneration.
Here are the things you’ll understand as a masters student.
You have a new found love for postgrad study rooms
If all your tuition payment went solely on lounges to keep the undergrads at bay, you’d be happy. With kettles, microwaves and cushions this is the perfect place to eat and sleep without the freshers realising that you’re not actually hard at work in labs.
Your lecturers are now your friends
You’ve done the undergrad thing and now your lecturers make an effort to like you. The first time you use their forenames to address them is an adrenaline rush, but once that’s done you’re often found skipping down corridors with module organisers hand in hand.
You’re a pro-budgeter
You wish you’d never complained about money at undergrad. Having no living loan as a postgrad sees you surviving on bread, tap water and discounted sushi when Itsu make everything half price. Water bills often force you to shower in the student gym, despite having never done any exercise all year.
You’ve finally found the perfect revision songs
Youtubing whale noises doesn’t quite do it for you like first year when learning stuff didn’t actually matter. The prospect of failing your entire degree through a set of exams stings a little more than a meagre 11 per cent, so the music needs to step up a notch too. A little DJ Khaled’s ‘All I do Is Win’ to get you up in the morning and some heavy metal in the week leading up to the exams.
The 40-fold shrink in course size
Undergrad is full of iconic cliques that you could think it isn’t possible for 12 people to take on all of those roles. Masters students rarely turn down a challenge though, not only taking up the cliché batons but adapting them so everyone actually gets on. A jock and a vegan could be lab partners and go for drinks at the end of the day instead of posting insulting Yaks about one another for the rest of the student population to jeer at.
Some classic characters in the ‘Masters phenomenon’ include:
The social secretary
Enjoys a frequent beverage and likes to organise opportunities to do so at regular intervals, around three times a week. Despite multiple friendship groups, the Masters gang is the go-to reliability to get blind drunk with. They’re also in charge of the group Snapchat documentation of a big night.
The borderline alcoholic
They back the social secretary in any way possible to make a night out happen, bringing copious bottles of £2.70 ‘Le Peri’ to start the night off. They’ve never missed a social, they’ve unless blacked out after a few hours of quad-vods.
The bubbly lunatic
Constantly smiling and jumping on the spot, your optic muscles need to be top-notch to track them when they’ve had a glass of wine. Don’t lose sight of them for too long during a night out or they’ll end up losing all their worldly possessions and running half way to York before calling you to ask what the fuck happened.
The whipped one
This number one lad was the life and soul of the party before they got a girlfriend two minutes before graduating. Whilst present at every lecture, frequently offering the best chat in the group WhatsApp, they are yet to be seen in any situation where alcohol is involved. Probably busy filling their Instagram with sickening pictures of themselves and their future wife.
The American
The token Yankee from across the Pond. As the resident make-up artist, their room is full of trays of eyeshadows and pills to make them feel better when they’re ill. Usually absent for course mini-breaks as they’re running back to Trump whilst the rest of the course prays they’ll be allowed across the borders before next semester.
The lean gainz-er
He constantly Snapchats to let everyone know they are, once again, in the gym. They fail to make it to lectures because “gainz is life”. Their time in the gym may have increased tolerance to weights but it certainly hasn’t increased their alcohol threshold. Lightweight alert.
The outspoken reality checker
They take no prisoners. What they say is what everyone is thinking. Their brutal methods are what’s needed to keep the group in check and make sure every coursework deadline isn’t missed due to liver sclerosis, even managing to remember their last train time and catch it despite consumption of 7,000 tequila shots.
The genius
The future lecturer who everyone runs to when they have no clue what is going on, but unfortunately for this poor soul, that’s very frequently.
The party host
Volunteers their house for study sessions or parties. They have decent speakers, sofas and a working fridge. There are even shot glasses rather than eggcups. This legend’s home is just like John Lewis; Never Knowingly Undersold.
The lost soul
The one who showed up for day one and was never seen again. If you’re reading this wherever you are, send us a telegram if you need our help. Masters students leave no man behind.
Finally, the message is simple. We have all been through undergraduate degrees and come out alive, making better friends in a few months than many of us made in three years. But no matter how you look at us, freshers, the most important secret is that we still know nothing.