Working during your Masters

Butterface

I'm a few weeks into an IT MSc with many group assignments and a major group project. At the same time I'm working 12 hour shifts on both Saturday and Sunday which leaves me no free time from Friday evening until Monday morning, as I'm usually way to wrecked when I get home from work to do anything.

I'm feeling overwhelmed by the course workload already, but mainly because so much of the coursework is group work so I can't get on with much of the work until the other group members are ready. I need my job to survive, but I'm worried about the impact it will have on my postgrad result. I'm debating whether to continue working until the end of this semester and then applying for a loan to cover most of the second semester.

Anybody want to share their experience of working during a Masters? I know I'm whinging but none of my friends are in full-time study at the moment so I have nobody to rant with about the lack of days in the week!!

Stheno

Don't know if this is any help but I'm now into final year of a Masters part time while working full time.

It too involved multiple group projects/interactions, and one thing we found was using online resources to help us.
Is that something you can suggest?

Sugar Free

OP I did a two year part-time masters while working full time (averaging 50+ hours weekly when you include time spent on flights) and spending half that time travelling to various international locations due to my job.

You have to plan out things properly and be realistic. E.g. saying you're going to sit down on a given afternoon and write 2000 words of a lit review is generally overly ambitious. It certainly was in my case - when I realised that I averaged about 200 words an hour between formatting, reference checking, reviewing notes etc, it made my planning way more realistic and as a result I found it far easier to cope.

Treat every assignment like a project. Draw up a timeline, assign work packages to people if it's a group assignment, agree checkpoint meetings etc. It's easy to let the sheer volume overwhelm you but if you break assignments down to more manageable pieces and hold yourself and others to the deadlines, things work far better.

Second thing is discipline/desire. Even when I was wrecked and stuck in a hotel room I would try to do something. Again I was realistic, I knew I wasn't up to writing much so I'd least read a couple of papers or lecture notes, anything to progress my workload.

Finally, Stheno's advice is very important. I used Google Hangouts / Skype and Dropbox / Drive loads to get stuff done with the group. There wasn't even any discussion about it bar which platform to use, it was a necessity in our case.

Finally x 2! The most valuable part of my course was actually not the formal content save for one or two parts but the determination I learned to have from the workload, my ability to problem solve, influence and direct others. So make the most of the group work.

Best of luck.

izzyflusky

I'm working full time (around 48hrs a week) and doing an officially full time Msc over 2 years. I say officially because the denomination it's based on credits But I only have lectures once a week. The course work it's actually very intense and the hours of independent learning would match those of a full time course so juggling work, a toddler and college is proving challenging.

So far I've been trying to work on one thing at the time, setting small goals as previous poster said. If I'm too tired I know I won't write much, but I try to at least read a paper or two...get something done basically. Analyse your studying methods, see what works best for you and PLAN ahead.

Also try to take time off. I've noticed that since I've started doing that I'm much more productive..I don't feel so overwhelmed or burn out as I have something to look forward to, not just work or college.

Lockstep

I worked two jobs during my masters (around 20 hours a week between them)

It's not easy but it is very manageable.