Finished, But Not Quite

There is a very strange point after completing a Master's degree that I really don't think I was prepared for.

You finish the coursework; you even submit the dissertation.

Then what?

You reach the end of months of deadlines, research, development, second-guessing and planning to be more organised.

But then, nothing - there is nothing left to submit. Nothing left to rewrite. No references to fix at the last minute and no assignment brief sitting quietly in the background reminding you that you should probably be doing something productive.

All you can do is wait.

For the longest time, the master's work has existed as a constant lingering thought. Even when I wasn't actively working on an assignment, there was something: reading, lectures, planning for the next assignment, research, more reading, the dissertation. An impending deadline that could be several weeks away that would slowly creep up and eventually become a more real and more terrifying deadline.

I almost expected that finishing and submitting everything would be freeing.

It almost is.

There is a huge amount of relief knowing I've completed everything I could. Whatever the final result turns out to be, there isn't another chapter to read, or another assignment to somehow squeeze in around work and everything else that has had to wait until now.

Unfortunately, that relief comes with anxiety.

Completing the assignment and actually completing the degree isn't quite the same thing.

Technically, I've done my part. I've had the individual marks for every assignment, including the dissertation, returned, but emotionally I'm waiting for someone to confirm what I have actually achieved.

Throughout the degree, there has always been something else I could do when I was worried.

If I wasn't confident about an assignment, I could work on it.

If part of my dissertation wasn't quite right, I could rewrite it.

If I didn't understand something, I could research it.

There was always an action attached to any uncertainty.

Waiting for final grades is completely different - There is no action.

The work has been submitted. The decisions are now being made elsewhere, and no amount of opening the student portal is going to make those decisions happen any faster.

Which, naturally, has not stopped me opening the student portal or checking my emails, just in case.

There is something oddly uncomfortable about handing over control after spending so long being responsible for every deadline and every piece of work yourself.

For months, the question has been: "What do I need to do next?"

Now the answer is: "Nothing."

And to no one's surprise, I am not very good at that.

I think patience is one of those things that sounds considerably easier when you're talking about it hypothetically.

Of course I can wait. I've totally waited for things before. But there is a particular kind of uncertainty attached to waiting for the result of something you've invested such a huge amount of time into.

I can replay submissions in my head; I can remember things I would change; I can convince myself that something was either much better or dramatically worse than it probably actually was, but none of that changes what was submitted. Even after getting the individual scores, there is an element of "What if?".

There is probably a lesson in there somewhere about accepting uncertainty rather than trying to solve it.

I spent the MSc learning how to research problems, analyse information and work towards answers.

Perhaps the final lesson is accepting that sometimes there isn't anything left to analyse.

You just have to wait.

The strangest part is that I haven't quite decided whether I feel like I've finished my Master's. From a workload perspective, I absolutely have. My evenings and weekends are suddenly mine again, which is still slightly confusing, and I have endless projects and renovations ready to fill that gap.

But there's a little mental asterisk next to the whole thing.

Completed, pending results.

Maybe that is why this stage feels slightly anticlimactic.

There isn't one big moment where everything suddenly stops and you think, "That's it. I've done a Master's degree."

There is a final submission button, followed by a gradual realisation that nobody is expecting anything else from you, then there is the wait for somebody, somewhere, to turn all of that work into a final grade.

One thing the waiting period has given me is a little bit of distance.

When you're in the middle of deadlines, it's very easy to measure the entire experience by whatever is currently going wrong.

The assignment that's taking longer than expected.

The dissertation software issue that refuses to behave.

The evening where your brain has completely given up but your to-do list hasn't.

When everything is done, you can finally look backwards instead.

Regardless of the final grade, I completed the coursework. I completed the dissertation. I made it through all of the difficult bits that felt considerably bigger when I was standing directly in front of them.

Of course the result matters to me; I'd be lying if I pretended otherwise. However, I'm starting to realise that the result and the experience aren't quite the same thing.

The grade will summarise the academic outcome.

It won't summarise everything it took to get there.

For now, I wait.

I'm trying to enjoy having fewer deadlines and remind myself that constantly thinking about the result won't make it arrive any sooner.

There are plenty of things I want to work on next, and I'm looking forward to having time for projects that haven't been accompanied by an academic submission date. My chimney has been in a state of mid-renovation for a while, so now I can take the time to finish that and all of my other home projects.

But there is still inevitably a small part of my brain waiting for that final notification.

After spending so much of this degree learning how to tackle difficult problems, perhaps patience and uncertainty are an appropriate way for it to end.

At least until the grades are released...

Once they are, I'll probably write another blog post.