Why Masters @ 37

Is 37 too old to study? Is it going to be useful for my career? What am I even thinking? These are some questions that I answer in this blog. Partly it is my attempt to justify my own decisions.

My desire to pursue formal post graduation degree has been lingering ever since I graduated in 2010. I am currently looking forward to beginning this journey. It has been interesting so far. I would like to share it with the world so others can read it. I am hoping that this and the upcoming blogs about this journey will help someone else who is planning to study.

Currently, I have an admit from FAU Erlangen. My Visa and Flight tickets are ready. I plan to write about how I reached this point and the key arguments behind my decisions. So lets start!

Why study after so many years?

If you have not read my intro page then I should tell you that I am 36 years old and I completed my bachelors in 2010. That’s 15 years since I last studies in a classroom or wrote an exam. Also I have stable job so I need a strong reason beyond just “I always had a desire to study”.

I feel the only thing that I am marginally good at is studying. Still I am not good enough to even read a technical paper conveniently. Every time I try to read one I get caught up with so many fundamental doubts that I struggle to finish reading it. I would like to be at a level where I can understand the basics so well that I can read technical literature without any trouble. Also, I wish to continue in a technical career so having an arsenal of tools in the form of a strong foundation would help me in the career. So the desire to improve on the only possible skill I have drives me to study now.

I am always torn between the need of getting a formal post graduation degree or utilizing my time (which I don’t do) to study the subjects on my own. Now, you should know that all the above things were written by the Good part of me. The mature me is patient and focused. But the other part of me never allowed me to focus in the last 16 years. So as a way to force myself into studying I have decided to take a break and enroll into a full time course. I also see that having a formal degree might also open some research roles for me. Still, a lot of this depends on me being able to tame myself to force myself to be disciplined. I should be studying to gather knowledge and not just for passing exams.

Why Germany?

Now that decision comes more easily. I don’t have to answer GATE! Now that’s a reason that springs to my head sometimes. I sometimes doubt whether I am good enough to get into a good IIT or IISc. Maybe I can.. Maybe I can’t… I can’t find that out anyways. I am not sure if I am happy or sad about it.

But I convince myself with a different narrative. Germany is the cheapest place outside India where I can afford a quality education. The education here is FREE. Yes.. You read it right.. It is free in most public universities. Some universities have some fees. And very few universities have a lot of fees. So, I left out the last category. I kept the ‘some fees’ category as an option and I tried real hard to get into the free ones.

Now that the main motivation for German university is out of the way, I can list a couple of other considerations that I considered. First, it gives me an international exposure. I get to see why German engineers are respected first hand. Second, I hope that having a degree from a developed country would open up some opportunities outside. So, this increases my job market. Finally, it gives me an opportunity to experience something different.

With all these reasons I made up my mind to study. This turned out to be the easiest step of all. There were more challenges starting from choosing an institute. I will write about it in my next post…