By Samuel Volpe, MSc Marketing Management Practice
The idea of a Master’s degree didn’t really cross my mind until the start of my final undergraduate year. It doesn’t always have to be your plan from the beginning, things change throughout your time at university and the horizon of its end comes all too quickly into view. In my situation I was studying a BA in English Language and Linguistics and scratching my head in terms of what to do with it and how particularly to go about it. One thing I was certain about was what route I didn’t want to go be going up, and that was back home to the north with no plan.
With English being such a broad subject I started to do some research into what career options were on offer. The buzzword that I kept being drawn to was ‘communication’. From doing this, I learned that buzzwords are helpful across all stages of job hunting; from the initial search to the interviews. From this point, I did as much research into careers in ‘communication’ as I could, reading around the area and searching through LinkedIn to see what other people were doing. Then it clicked; sitting back and thinking about it I realised what I want to do is create messages. I had been studying messages all through my undergraduate, I had been watching messages on TV, the internet, on everything really. Fitting this idea to a profession led me to marketing and advertising, the people who think of what a brand would like to portray, and work on how best to portray it.
The next step was working out how to do get there. This is where my postgraduate journey began. I wanted to specialise my then current communication skills in the real world context that marketing provided. With little marketing experience under my belt I came to the decision that an extra year to specialise and sort out my CV, packing it with experience and other activities is what I needed. That’s where University of Sheffield Management School came to the rescue with the MSc Marketing Management Practice. With a great mix of practice and theory, the course suited perfectly.
Coming to the end of my masters now, I do not regret my decision. I have enjoyed my course, specialised my skills and boosted my CV. Remember it doesn’t matter when you make your plan, it just helps if you make one! Buzzwords aren’t bad either.