My first exam in the second year of the (part-time) MSc is tomorrow and I guess I am writing this blog partly as a way of avoiding more revision, but partly also because if last year’s experience is any guide, that exam will knock the stuffing out of any optimism I have, so I shall write something now while I still have some hope.
The exams are not the end of the degree if I pass them then technically I can claim a post-graduate diploma, but I already have one of them, in Journalism Studies from Westminster and as was said to me at the time “it’s just about worth the paper it is printed on”: I learnt a lot but nobody much else is impressed.
To get the degree I need to complete my project on memory management in the Linux kernel – it’s an ambitious project and time will be short so it may get frantic.
But when it’s over, what will I do? I don’t plan to work in IT: 45 seems quite an age to go from reasonable success and some prospects in one career to starting at the bottom in any case.
But nor do I want to abandon science for a second time. A part-time PhD? That really is a long term commitment, though.
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cartesian product ... stuff about computing mostly 
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