This is a question I wished Google had answered for me one year ago, when I embarked upon this very endeavour.
For the past 12 months, I have been working three days a week at Sticky while completing an MA in Urban History “at” the University of Leicester.
The “at” is in quotation marks because, naturally, I haven’t spent much time in Leicester over the past year. Due to the pandemic, all of my classes except a few took place online.
Furthermore, all of my learning resources were accessed online too. This included seminar reading, accessed via online journals; software, which could be downloaded; and the university library, who mailed books straight to my front door. The only thing that wasn’t online was the research material I accessed through the Berkshire Record Office in Reading, which required lots of COVID-safe planning to navigate around.
The Berkshire Record Office in lockdown. Not pictured: the hellish nightmare of organising a trip (visitors were allowed to visit once per week, for a maximum of 5 hours, so long as they booked a week in advance, and had to wear masks the entire time).
The reason I chose to study “at” Leicester was that it is the only university in the UK that offers the degree I wanted to pursue, but if I’d opted for a more generic degree, I could have chosen any university in the country, perhaps even the world, without having to attend campus.
The upshot of doing a degree remotely was that I got to stay living in London. Although I did consider moving to Leicester, a combination of the winter lockdown and the fact that I don’t really like Leicester convinced me not to do this. Being in London also meant I was closer to Bracknell, the town I focused on for my dissertation, which made it easier to access the Berkshire Record Office and Bracknell Library. Plus, of course, it meant staying closer to my work office. Having classes online also meant that I achieved a near-perfect attendance record.
The downside was that I feel like I missed out on the whole student experience. Having already done an undergraduate degree, I tried to convince myself that this was not terribly important, and besides, the quality of the teaching was not diminished by classes being online. But I will admit, after two semesters, and finding myself done in by too many online seminars, I wished that I could have hung out with some of my fellow students like I had during my undergrad. The absence of a library and other learning environments also became difficult. My living room is not the most stimulating place on earth.
All in all, the positives of having online classes outweighed the negatives, although if I were to do it again I would definitely opt to have at least a proportion of my classes in person.
Going part-time while studying
Okay, so back to the question at hand. How did I find going part-time while studying full-time?
Let’s start with the basics about me: I am a senior editor at Sticky, a division of PA Media. This is a fast-moving editorial consultancy with about 30 members of staff and an even greater number of clients. My job is to write, produce and project manage content for Sticky’s clients, everything from articles to eBooks. The intensity of this job goes through peaks and troughs, but when it’s at its peak, I could sometimes expect (when I was full-time) to work 50+ hours per week. My level of seniority also made me highly accountable in front of clients, and I was expected to manage several of my own client relationships.
This workload only increased during the pandemic. Now that we are working from home, not only do editors work in isolation much more than we used to, we are also expected to be available for a greater number of meetings. As such, part of my agreement with Sticky was that I would make myself flexible (even on my 'days off’) to attend client meetings as and when I was needed.
This agreement, made in August 2020, was that I would go from five days a week (40 hours) to three days a week (24 hours). My days ‘in work’ would be flexible, so that I could fit them around deadlines. Most weeks, I worked Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, since my lectures and seminars tended to fall on Tuesdays and Fridays. I had about 15 days of annual leave over the year, which I used around key essay deadlines.
Was this enough time? Well, the University of Leicester recommends that full-time MA students should dedicate at least 30 hours a week to their studies. At least is the operative word here. Most modules provide a reading list with compulsory and optional reading options, which needed to be read and annotated in advance of each week’s seminar. Compulsory reading was typically 2–4 chapters or articles, while lists of optional reading could stretch on for another 10–20 chapters.
Even the most dedicated student would have struggled to read everything on the list, and most people (I believe) stuck to the compulsory reading anyway. But there was a lot of interesting material on these reading lists, some of which I was gutted to miss out on.
Assuming each module required one lecture and four pieces of reading per week (with the lecture taking 2 hours and each article/chapter needing 3 hours to read), and considering we did two modules per semester (it would have been one module per semester if I’d done part-time), this added up to around 28 hours of reading and lecture time per week. So, the University’s estimates were fairly accurate.
Thus, I found myself working a total of around 54 hours a week. This wasn’t so bad when you take into account the fact I am used to working long hours in my job anyway, plus the fact I had nothing else to do during lockdown. It was actually quite nice to finish work on a Monday, then spend a few hours reading some history passages. But I do wonder whether I would have been able to do this had I not been in lockdown. I was on fine enough margins as it was – adding in factors like a commute might have tipped me over the edge.
In the end, my typical weekly routine went something like this (each module represents roughly four hours):
| Morning | Afternoon | Evening | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | |||
| Tuesday | |||
| Wednesday | |||
| Thursday | |||
| Friday | |||
| Saturday | |||
| Sunday |
As you can see, so long as I squeezed in a bit of work in the evenings and weekends, I was perfectly able to keep up with my university work, and even found time for my weekly Spanish lesson, a few beers on a Friday night and a cycle ride on Saturday. During periods of higher pressure – such as when I had an essay to work on – I may have ended up working Saturdays and Sundays too.
What about the dissertation?
My degree required a dissertation of 15,000 words, to be written between May and September 2021. My first thought when I saw this was: “Five months to write 15,000 words? I write that every week! This will be a doss.” Haha. I was so young and naïve…
For it is not the writing itself that is so time-consuming, but the research. For my dissertation, I needed to complete the following:
A 20-minute oral presentation (worth 10% of the final grade) outlining my research questions, which required a Powerpoint presentation plus a Q&A, delivered to the faculty in May.
Interviews with no fewer than 10 people. This also required a submission to the board of ethics to conduct research on human participants, a period of recruitment, time to host all of the interviews, and time to write up the transcripts.
Notes on over 30 reports from the Berkshire Record Office. These were not digitised, meaning I needed to visit the BRO once per week in order to make handwritten notes.
Reading the entire historiography of the new town movement, which meant both tracking down the books I needed (some in libraries, some on Amazon) and, of course, reading and making notes on them. By the end, I had read about 30 books and reports.
Only then did I get to the writing phase. This required no fewer than three drafts, with each stage requiring fairly substantial re-writes. The irony is that 15,000 words was actually too few in the end. When you’ve spent months reading and researching a topic, you come to the writing stage with a lot to say. But, by the end of the first or second draft, you realise that most of it is not adding to your argument and needs to go. Writing a dissertation was easier than I thought it would be; editing the damn thing was the most substantial task (and that’s coming from a professional editor). And hey, don’t get me started on footnotes and formatting…
Spending a year in lockdown does not make for good slice-of-life content. This is, sadly, about as aesthetic as studying got.
Ultimately, the dissertation was, without a doubt, the most intense stage of the degree. It required me to be constantly switched on. What’s next on my reading list? Have I typed up that interview? Have I made a connection between that obscure source in chapter 2 and that conclusion in chapter 4? Could I have missed that one ‘smoking gun’ journal article that could blow my discussion wide open? During the last few months, almost every spare minute I had in the day was dedicated to my dissertation. It was at this stage that I started to forego social events and Spanish lessons in order to keep up with the rigorous workload.
Which leads me onto my next point. What did all of this juggling and pressure do to me, mentally?
The big challenge: mental workloads
If only my life had looked anything like the schedule above, I think everything would have been fine. Sadly, it didn’t, because the one thing I didn’t take into account was creep factor. By this I mean, work creeping into my university life, and vice versa.
It could be hard (nay even impossible) to get to 5.30pm after a stressful day at work, then simply down tools and dive head-first into a complex journal text about how neo-gothic architecture helped the British to consolidate the legitimacy of their regime in India, or something like that. My mind doesn’t switch tracks that fast.
About halfway through the second semester – which, coincidentally, was also three months into the intense winter lockdown – I encountered burnout like never before. My job was relentless. So too was my degree. The oppressive darkness of late February, the constant cycle of online meetings, the same lap I would walk around the park every day… it all got a bit too much.
The University of Leicester was quite humble about the fact students were under a lot of pressure during lockdown. Unlike my alma mater (Manchester), which seemed to demand higher and higher excellence at any cost, Leicester was quite happy to let students learn at their own pace. Feedback on essays was honest and forthcoming and help with assignments was easy to reach. As a case in point, when I experienced technical difficulties during a module that involved using geospatial mapping software, the lecturer was very happy to offer me a one-to-one catch-up class after hours. That kind of service really made a huge difference.
Lectures were also recorded, so if I couldn’t make the exact time for whatever reason, I could catch up in my own time. I only needed to do this once, but it was a great option to have.
In the end, I couldn’t fault the pace of learning nor the quality of teaching. The same could not be said, I’m afraid, of Sticky.
Yes, despite the lockdown, the wheels of capitalism kept a’turnin’, and Sticky got busier than ever. That meant greater responsibility, which meant more work, which meant overtime, which meant lots and lots of stress.
I am afraid the situation was not helped by some uncommunicative clients and colleagues who often waited until I was well into my designated working hours to send briefs. The difference between sending me a brief at 9am on a Monday versus 1pm is that it gave me four fewer hours to get stuff done – or, meant that I had to work four hours overtime.
Ultimately, it was not the university’s fault my workload got too much. In my budget of workable hours each week, all university work was accounted for. No, instead, it was work. And therein lies the problem with doing a Master’s degree while working a corporate job: the expectation that you will give yourself, heart and soul, to the demands of your workplace are still there. Your personal passion for academia means very little to your clients, or to your boss, or to your team members. They still expect you to be there, and to be ready, when the situation calls for you.
Was it worth it?
But anyway. Here I am at the end, and this is the question that looms over everything. Did I make the right choice?
My answer is an emphatic yes. Spending a year pursuing my own interests has been ambrosia for my soul. Taking time away from the pressure of copywriting (well, not fully away), especially in the midst of the pandemic, has helped me to keep a sense of perspective over my life. I’ve produced some good copy this year, but I am far prouder of the essays I’ve written for my MA.
Has it improved my job prospects? Maybe, but I haven’t figured that out yet. I’ve returned to full-time work at the same level I was at before. I’ve found no extra freelance clients as a direct result of my studies. I have definitely improved my writing and research skills (I got a Distinction in my writing and research module), which has undoubtedly made me a better copywriter… but I haven’t learned anything I didn’t already know about web technologies, SEO, direct response, or any of the other stuff my clients need and want from me.
But that doesn’t matter, because the greatest benefit I’ve derived from completing this degree is the sense of satisfaction. It was a year of my life that I managed to fill with purpose and meaning beyond the narrow purview of my career (which hasn’t suffered a jot).
If you have come to this blog post seeking justification for pursuing your own full-time Master’s degree while working part-time, you may also struggle with the same self-criticism I levied on myself a year ago. That it’s self-indulgent, will have no benefits, or that it’s a waste of money. With the power of hindsight, I can now say… these are all absolutely true. Doing a Master’s, especially in an academic subject like I did, is an exercise in self-fulfilment. If you approach it as anything but, prepare for disappointment.
So then, why do it? Because maybe, between the torment of lockdown, the anxiety passed down by your parents, the ever-increasing expectations of the corporate world, and your own fickle lust for life, you – like I did – need this. Maybe it’s a chance to go back and continue reading from the book of life you put down several years ago? Maybe it’s a chance to expand your cultural or career horizons in order to force a new career path? Maybe it’s just something to add to your Hinge profile, I ain’t judging.
In conclusion, doing a Master’s while working part-time in a corporate job is definitely possible and I, personally, would recommend it. Although, if I were to try it again, I would like to try studying part-time while continuing to work full-time, just to see how the two methods compared.