As you start, or continue on your educational journey, I am wrapping mine up. Well for the next few months anyways, because no matter what lies ahead, I’m pretty sure you can bet more tests, assignments and reading are in it… oh joy! I’m being a bit sarcastic, but really it is a sort of joy, otherwise I won’t be doing it.
But let me first recap how I spent the last two months-after experiencing the unique exhilaration of producing a piece a research that had never existed before I came along, I had to set upon formatting it for grading submission. Then came the unique pain of cutting down a document that was over 1,400 words over the set limit (yes, apparently I’m very verbose), without losing essential information. After five days of painstaking work I realised I could in fact be very concise if needed and voila! one day before the submission deadline, my research project was within word limits and sent off into the ether for assessment.
I know I waxed lyrical about the merits of doing the project option in previous posts, but again I saw so many advantages – pride in authoring 10,000 words, exploring untapped depths of sentence reconstructions in an effort at brevity, having a piece of work that will hopefully be published in the near future and probably most importantly – experience in all the steps of executing a successful research topic. In fact, I’m currently trying to start a project in Guyana which is very similar to what I just completed, and that experience is proving invaluable!
There were some acknowledgements in said project, but since the people thanked therein are unlikely to read that version any time soon, I thought I’d thank them here too – the professor who wrote such a lovely recommendation that enabled my acceptance into LSHTM, and then continued to give me access to online journals; the GP and epidemiologist (and LSHTM alum!) who was so supportive and helpful for the last year; my mom who helped fund this endeavor (hooray for mothers!); my husband for his infinite patience (even when he had no clue what my project was really about :); my best friend who was always curious, helpful and that encouraging push I so needed sometimes; and of course my project supervisor, who was just ace!
So. Happy start of a new academic year and for those of you (hopefully) leaving, like me, maybe we’ll see each other at graduation next year 🙂
Cheers!
Nastassia has just completed the MSc Public Health offered by distance learning through the University of London International Programmes, with academic direction from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM).
Congrats nastassia!!! Great to see that your journey is ending! I’m starting next year and hope to be as excited as you. Is there a graduation ceremony on campus yearly?
Congratulations Nastassia!!! I still have a year to wrap up mine. All the best in your future endeavors.
thanks so much Rukevwe!! Congrats to you on starting your journey – I hope it’ll be immensely successful and satisfying!
Yes, there is a graduation ceremony every March 🙂
Thanks so much Ifiok!! All the best to you in your year ahead!