Thesis is still trundling along at an embarrassingly slow rate, I just don’t seem to have time to work on it. I have managed to finish another draft of a technical report and email it to my supervisors, but chapters 4 and 5 are still dragging their feet into the ground. Fortunately I think the next few weekends are free for me to make some further progress.
The other thing which I have been thinking about is what to do once I have finished my thesis (it will happen eventually—either that or the deadline will pass!). I still want to carry on learning new things and gaining qualifications, because I genuinely enjoy doing this when it’s a subject of interest (my MA year was by far the most enjoyable of all my time in academia). There are two possibilities: further academic study at a distance learning institution like the Open University or evening classes at a Manchester university, or professional qualifications from bodies such as the British Computer Society, Institution of Engineering and Technology or the Chartered Insurance Institute. Academic study would probably be more enjoyable, but professional qualifications might be more beneficial in terms of work…
Personally, I think you should take six months off doing any qualification to give yourself some breathing space and work what what you want to do. I then think you should look at your day job – I’m learning a lot with mine at the moment, in fact I wish I had more spare time so that I can follow-up on a lot of things – what you can do to make your job more interesting?
I agree with Lucy. Take some time to reflect on where you stand and where your trying to go. At the end of the day professional qualifications in an area of work that you want to follow or even link indirectly to an area of work you want to follow are better than an academic qualification now I would say.
However if you want to go in a completly different direction again then go academic. But take a breather for the time being.
Hmm, I think I agree on the waiting point, although I might get bored. 🙂 Apart from anything else I don’t know what I’d want to study or where, and whether it would be worth the cost.