I gave up on the idea to pursue a master’s degree in cognitive science after my first day at work.
Before the idea to study cognitive science invaded my mind, I had applied for different positions, such as project officer, project assistant, and much more. After so many trial and errors, even my future boss asking me if I was applying for the wrong position 😓 – I finally became a
Junior Research Assistant.
My first day at work was nothing unusual. My director supervisor introduced his colleagues and the project they had been working on to me.
To my surprise, the research project was directly related to computational linguistics, a field I wanted to enter after getting a master’s degree in cognitive science.
I then opened the file and read the codes on the monitor.
I could only understand 20% of the meaning of the algorithm. They were created by my colleague, a veteran programmer and computer engineer.
At that moment, I realized that I needed to upskill to reach my goal.
I had to work EXTREMELY HARD to catch up with the current trend.
Considering the time and effort it took to become good at programming, data structures, advanced Maths (not mentioning the challenge from AI), I soon realized it was not a wise idea to become a computational linguist in this AI-driven era with my education background
Although it meant I would need to look for a new direction, I was very grateful for having the opportunity to try things out before wasting my time and money.
What’s more, in my team, all of my colleagues had completed their postgraduate studies, and I was the only one without a master’s degree under my belt.
From this experience, I learned a valuable lesson: without practical working experience, we wouldn’t know whether our investment in education is worth it.
Sometimes, discussions on the necessity of obtaining a master’s degree mainly focuses on the cost of the program, but the risk is more apparent-can it ensure students achieve their goals upon the completion of their programs?
This should be another issue we should look up to.
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