On being a Master’s Student

Short version: a week ago, on Friday, August 18th, I was accepted to start my Masters program in Computer Science at UNL (University of Nebraska-Lincoln) and on Monday I had the first class! Talk about last minute!

Long version: As I wrote in one of my first posts, since February I was working 20 hours (and up to 40 hours during the summer) in my area, that is, developing software in Java (in short). And about 2 months ago, my boss tried to fill the paperwork to hire me as a full-time employee (and change my visa to a work visa), but, again, as I much described in the mentioned post, the cap was reached before we had a chance to submit the documents.

After that, my boss and I talked and, since he is also a university professor, he said he could offer me an assistantship towards a Masters program and I could still be doing the same thing I was doing, except this time, through the university. That sounded great!

A master’s degree was never really one of my aspirations, but since becoming a full-time here is incredibly difficult (if you don’t have the right connections at the right time), the idea started growing in me.

This was beginning of July, and Fall semester would start after two months, so I would have enough time to gather all the required documents. Although the deadline to Fall registration was already past due, my boss/advisor said that there were ways for me to start right away.

After two months of sheer agony, and after I've already given up, on the last business day before classes, I was accepted to start my Masters Program. But don't get me wrong, I submitted my documents in no time, but I also needed three letters of recommendation, but they took all that time to arrive. Lesson learned, when three letters of recommendation are needed, ask five people to write one for you.

But all is well that ends well, so here I am, a Master’s student at UNL, one of the most prestigious computer science colleges in Software Engineering (the most, as I've heard) and ready to roll.

Oh, I'm still planning to finish my studies in Business Administration at SCC as well. For another 4 weeks, I'll be having classes at UNL (Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays) and at SCC (mostly online work, but also some Tuesdays and Thursdays). After these four weeks, I only have four more classes (one class per quarter, which adds up to another year) to graduate from SCC and get my Associates Degree in Business.

So I'm still going to be pretty busy for at least a couple of years (next four weeks will be hell), but I'll survive, I think! Come here again in four weeks to double check that! ;)

Andre

"…learn as if you were going to live forever."