Experience of being a mature student

By Holly Kalra, Nutrition MSc

I’m Holly, and I’m in the final few months of an Msc in Nutrition at Kings. I’m 28 which I guess makes me a ‘mature’ student! Here’s how I found going back to study after working for a few years.

After graduating from my BSc in Physiology in 2016, I started working for a charity totally unrelated to my degree. I loved my team and believed in the work the charity was doing, but I was missing science. I thought about going back to university to do a Master’s but wasn’t quite sure what to study. I’d always been interested in food and nutrition, so I decided to find a job role that would give me some experience in the field and ended up working for a food redistribution charity. This confirmed to me that I wanted to pursue a Master’s in Nutrition.

I was living in London so decided to look at universities there. I found several courses which sounded interesting to me. However, after attending online information session run by the course director, and hearing about the research that was happening in the department, I knew Kings was the place for me. I put together my personal statement and applied…

Fast forward six months, I’d given up my job and was sitting in a lecture theatre. The first semester was a very steep learning curve! Questions such as ‘How do I take notes? How much do I need to write down? How am I ever going to read ALL those papers?’ raced round my head. I still remember submitting my first assignment and triple checking I’d uploaded the right document! As time went on, I started to make some friends on the course and discovered that they were having the same thoughts.

Although there was a huge amount of content to learn, it was all so interesting! I found myself spending hours reading papers and articles, something I don’t remember doing in my undergraduate degree. I ended up viewing assignments as an opportunity to explore and research in depth a topic that appealed to me. Studying full time allowed me to fully immerse myself in a subject I was passionate about!

The lecturers who taught on the course were approachable and always happy for us to stay behind at the end of a lecture to ask questions or send them an email. But for me, it was my course mates who really shaped my university experience at Kings. The wide range of ages, nationalities, previous education, work (and life!) experiences meant that we have all supported each other throughout the year.

I truly believe that taking the time to figure out if I wanted to do a Master’s degree, and what I wanted to study gave me a richer and more fulfilling experience than if I’d chosen to go straight into it after my undergraduate degree. If you’re thinking about going back to study, I would really recommend it. And Kings is an incredible place to do it…

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