Reflections on Going Back to Uni

And how it's affected me in terms of money, work, and having to step outside of my comfort zone.

It’s three months tomorrow since the first teaching day of my Master’s degree (which I, erm, didn’t go to, because I was stuck in bed with Freshers’ Flu 🤒), and the first term is officially over. Eight years after finishing a Bachelor’s degree in Politics, and at 30, I am studying for an LLM in Climate Law¹ while on a year’s unpaid sabbatical from the corporate workplace where I’ve been since graduating.

I’m following

Kayla Kleinman

’s December journalling prompts; on Day 1 she asked me to choose a word to sum up 2024. I chose ‘leap’.

Stepping away from the company I’ve been at for almost a decade was a huge leap of faith and into the unknown. I have gone from an environment where I know how things work and have plenty of people I can call on for help if I hit a barrier to one where, at least at first, neither of those things were true. It was also a huge leap of faith to see if I could do this academic thing - typically you have to have a Bachelor’s degree in Law to do an LLM, so there was definitely some not-unfounded nervousness about the size of the task I was taking on.

But it’s also been a huge leap forward in my understanding of myself, and the world around me. I’ve been working in sustainable finance for the last five years (I don’t talk about the day job much here, for various reasons), and had got used to seeing the challenge of solving climate change through the point of view of what the individual company I’ve been working at can do, within the system of law and norms that currently exists. But for the last few months, I’ve had the time and space to absorb ideas that have nothing to do with that - to come at this era-defining challenge from a completely different starting point. Study really does broaden the mind (and I can tell I’ve been learning tonnes from the sheer amount of sleep I’ve needed!).

But beyond that obvious point of reflection, I wanted to share with you some of how going back to uni has affected my money situation, relationship with work, and leaving my comfort zone.

Money

Image from UKCBC

To put the obvious disclaimer out first - I’m incredibly lucky to be able to afford to do this, and on top of that, to spend a year as a non-earner while living alone and renting the same Bristol flat I moved into last summer (my rent is now well over 60% of my monthly budget, which is nuts). The main thing that’s allowed me to do this is that when my grandad died in 2018 and his house was sold, there was a chunk of cash for each of the grandchildren. I used mine as a deposit to buy a flat at the start of 2019 (one of the few things I did in my 20s that I would tell my younger self not to do), and then when I sold the flat to move back into rented last year I freed up that chunk of cash again. So what I would (maybe ‘should’?) be using as a mortgage deposit… I’m using to fund my Master’s degree (in combination with the government’s postgrad loan and the small Master’s Scholarship I’ve won from the university).

But that’s not what I really wanted to talk about - I wanted to tell you how completely my relationship with spending money has changed in the last few months. It took a while for the change to take effect, but I slowly realised that I wasn’t spending anywhere near as much as I had before. You might have heard of ‘revenge bedtime procrastination’? I think I was doing the same thing with spending money. It was a combination of spending to make me happy when work was frustrating, and (and this was maybe the larger part) the idea that I was earning a ‘very good’ salary, so I ought to be able to afford X, Y, or Z. As has been widely covered in the financial press, though, due to high marginal tax rates (especially when you include student loans) and - especially - high housing costs, a high salary doesn’t provide the lifestyle it used to.

Now I’m a student, though, I’m thinking ‘like a student’ when it comes to more of my spending. Inspired by reading

Cait Flanders

’s The Year Of Less (ad - affiliate link), I’ve started a shopping ban - and also stopped drinking, more on which at a later date - and it’s been remarkably… straightforward? There’s the massive caveat that I have been Christmas shopping over the last few weeks, so there’s been fairly regular reasons to get my card details out, but overall things are feeling… simpler. And I’m liking it that way.

Work

I’ve mostly been working [some variation of] standard working hours, bringing the habits with me that I’d built in eight years of office jobs - and that’s definitely stood me in good stead (even if in the last couple of weeks before deadlines that turned into working almost every hour I was awake…). One thing I was worried about regarding going back to uni was the feeling I had during undergrad that no-one except me and the marker would ever read my work. Although it took plenty of time to adjust to ‘socialising’ my work in a professional environment, I grew to really appreciate getting feedback at milestones along the way of a bigger piece.

And it’s true, the process of doing my work is much more solitary now. But the way in which academics give feedback now is lightyears ahead how it was when I was in undergrad; instead of a single piece of paper with some handwritten notes, we get access to a feedback portal with annotations throughout our submission and an overall summary of our feedback. On top of that, there’s a real norm to go for 1:1 feedback sessions in lecturers’ office hours, which I’ve really appreciated for learning what I could do to do better. And all that’s accompanied by a numeric grade, which I love getting. As an appreciator of systems and structures, it’s fantastic to have this black-and-white assessment of how I’m doing and how that compares to expectations. I hadn’t realised that was something I was missing from my work process, and it’s definitely something I’ll be looking to find a way to mimic when I move on from the Master’s programme.

Going Outside My Comfort Zone

I had no idea what the demographic range would be in my courses, or in the sports and societies activities I’ve picked up on the side (sailing and competitive quizzing… of course!). While in the classroom I’m generally not the oldest, or only by a year or two, it’s a completely different situation in those extra-curricular activities. But everyone has made me feel so welcome. On our team for a quiz tournament last month, we had an 11-year age gap between me and the youngest member of the team, and it was completely unremarkable.

The bigger step out of my comfort zone has been in joining sailing. I’ve been made to feel totally part of the club despite opting out of things like “freshers eating without cutlery” or drinking out of shoes (no thanks, gang). I’m there to have a good time out on the water, and that’s totally fine by everyone - which I love! Some of those rituals remind me of why I stayed away from ‘traditional sports’ clubs during undergrad. Even though they’re significantly tamer than what I used to hear about back then, I wasn’t keen to get involved with them - but I don’t have to to be part of the club. And that’s a massive change from the first time I was at university - and one that I’m very glad about.

Speak soon,

Lily

1. it has a longer title “Law, Environment, Sustainability, and Business” but ‘Climate Law’ is much less of a mouthful. And an ‘LLM’ is just the fancy acronym for a Master’s in Law.