Three-Year Master's Program Review
When I graduated from college, I wrote a four-year review: Four-Year College Review. Now, in the blink of an eye, three years have passed. I have graduated from graduate school and am about to enter the workplace.
Although I went through half a year of delayed graduation, in the end I still graduated successfully without any real danger. Last week I completed my graduation trip to Wuhan, and over the weekend I returned to Beijing to move and prepare for onboarding. With bright expectations for the future, I feel full of ambition.
Three Years of Graduate School
Three years ago, because my undergraduate grades were excellent, I eventually took the seemingly glamorous path of guaranteed graduate-school admission.
Although I went through many twists, turns, and anxieties, I do not regret that choice.
For a small-town exam machine like me, this result and development path were indeed more stable, lower-risk, and relatively rewarding.
Looking back on these three years of graduate school, there were many things I failed to accomplish.
In the first semester of my first year, my advisor sent me to WeRide for an internship. The work was fairly hard and went fairly smoothly, but it ended unhappily. In fact, I did not want to go from the beginning, but I was pressured by Boss Niu’s authority. See my rant. In the short term I earned a salary of 3k per month; in the long term I wasted time.
In the second semester of my first year, I switched to a project with the China Institute of Water Resources. Because of client-side wrangling and insufficient technical reserves, it eventually became a deep pit and ended without resolution.
During my first year, besides doing work for Boss Niu, I also had to take classes and finish all credits required for graduation. Because my time and energy were scattered and the importance of grades had decreased, my grades were not as good as in college. But no one cared about those grades anyway.
From the second semester of my second year through my third year, I was writing the small paper and the thesis. The small paper was revised dozens of times, submitted three times, rejected twice, and withdrawn once because my advisor disliked the conference level. All attempts ended in failure. The thesis was repeatedly belittled by my advisor, scaring me into thinking I could not graduate. Yet during the defense, after comparing with other students, I found that my work was actually pretty good.
I also accomplished some things I had wanted to do.
In the first semester of my second year, I went to Belgium as an exchange student, experienced studying abroad, and traveled through almost all of Europe. In hindsight, this was truly lucky, because the next year the global COVID-19 pandemic broke out. Travel became an impossible activity, especially international travel.
During the exchange, I met my girlfriend, got to know her, and eventually fell in love. That also counts as a wonderful fate.
During the summer after my second year, I passed Amazon’s remote internship and then smoothly received an Amazon offer. This slightly made up for the regret of being unable to go to Google because of the sudden pandemic.
Looking Toward the Future
I am about to enter the workplace and become a glorious worker.
A few pieces of career-planning advice for myself:
Be a reliable person.
After starting work, I can no longer be as free and undisciplined as I was while studying. Many times I merely dealt with Teacher Niu perfunctorily and did not actually listen to him. Yet this indeed brought more benefits than harm. First, I do not love research. Reading papers and writing papers feel to me like visiting a grave. Second, the extra time I gained by slacking was not wasted; I used it to do things I liked, such as solving algorithm problems and learning C++. These things also helped me better achieve my own goal: finding a good job. Listening to Teacher Niu would have benefited him more and me less. Third, we had no paper requirement for graduation. Although under Teacher Niu’s intimidation I tried submitting the small paper three times, it was rejected twice, and once my teacher thought the conference was not good enough and withdrew it. In the end, I barely managed to get a patent. During the graduation defense, I finally discovered that many other students’ graduation projects were much worse than mine, roughly equivalent to my undergraduate level. All the earlier daily worries about being unable to graduate were Boss Niu scaring us and us scaring ourselves; we almost scared ourselves to death. In reality, the graduation requirements were not as high as imagined. This is understandable too. Although there are many excellent students in BUAA School 6 and our lab is also very competitive, our level is still above average overall. In the final year of graduate school, after my knowledge and experience became more mature, I finally realized that I might have been PUA’d. Only by making students panic and feel that they are not good enough can Teacher Niu better hold on to his power.
However, after work, the situation is completely different. After all, you are paid to do work, and your manager, as your boss, will not indulge you like parents or teachers. Reliability is what I consider the most important quality at work. It lets your manager feel comfortable assigning tasks to you, and makes colleagues more comfortable collaborating with you. It is very beneficial for career growth and development.
Learn to save money and invest.
I start work next week, but I found that I had almost spent all my savings before onboarding and had to ask my father for money. The biggest expense was renting, followed by the graduation trip, and then buying daily necessities, including furniture, seasonings, and cookware. Many of these costs exceeded my expectations. When I realized the danger, my credit card already had 33k in debt. Although I had previously saved 40k, because I underestimated expenses, 12k was placed in wealth-management products and could not be withdrawn immediately. So before the credit-card bill comes out on the 10th next month, there will probably be a 6k gap, and I can only ask Dad for money. He did not even have my bank card number. I have not directly asked for money for many years and have been living on my own, saving through internships and school subsidies. I had expected that graduation would require quite a bit of money, so I saved 40k, but I did not expect to be this short of money. Adult life is truly hard.
I previously tried buying funds, but basically lost money and became a leek. But because of that I also grew a lot, and it counts as getting started with investing and personal finance.
Because I plan to develop in Europe or North America afterward and do not want to keep grinding in China, when I first go there I will definitely still need to spend a large amount of money for turnover.
Buying a house, buying a car, marrying a wife, and raising children in the future all require money, so I need to start preparing early.
Focus on career development.
After 19 years of schooling, I am now formally joining the ranks of workers. By comparison, the time spent working may be even longer, likely 40 years. Therefore, I need to plan properly, have a good start, keep accumulating, and generate compounding effects.
My current career plan is: keep working as an SDE, reach SDE3 or above, work at big tech companies, and live in Europe or the United States.
Based on my career plan, there are mainly three things to do now: 1. Improve my SDE qualities, for both work and interviews; 2. Spoken English; 3. Exercise and build physical health.
Time Is a Butcher’s Knife
Finally, I attach two photos of myself before and after graduate school, once again sighing that time is a butcher’s knife. Three years have passed. The photos are me at 22 and 25, respectively.
