In episode 45, Matt tells us about being purposeful, things changing and having an anchor place.
Each episode is a snapshot, a moment, a sneak inside the minds of our graduates. As the world emerges from pandemic paralysis, are our Class of 2021 feeling inspired or inhibited, glad or gloomy, chaotic or calm?
Welcome to Season 2, a little bit of the same but quite a lot different. Subscribe now and find out what everyone is up to and how they feel about life, the last 12 months and future plans.
All opinions expressed are those of the individual and do not necessarily reflect those of the University of Edinburgh.
Multi Story Edinburgh has been created and produced by the Alumni Relations team at the University of Edinburgh. If you are interested in telling your story, please get in touch and let's talk.
Music: Since When by Mise Darling from freemusicarchive.org
Artwork: Vector created by redgreystock from www.freepik.com
In episode 45, Matt tells us about being purposeful, things changing and having an anchor place.
Each episode is a snapshot, a moment, a sneak inside the minds of our graduates. As the world emerges from pandemic paralysis, are our Class of 2021 feeling inspired or inhibited, glad or gloomy, chaotic or calm?
Welcome to Season 2, a little bit of the same but quite a lot different. Subscribe now and find out what everyone is up to and how they feel about life, the last 12 months and future plans.
All opinions expressed are those of the individual and do not necessarily reflect those of the University of Edinburgh.
Multi Story Edinburgh has been created and produced by the Alumni Relations team at the University of Edinburgh. If you are interested in telling your story, please get in touch and let's talk.
Music: Since When by Mise Darling from freemusicarchive.org
Artwork: Vector created by redgreystock from www.freepik.com
[Theme music]
Sonia 0:09 This is a snapshot, a moment, a sneak inside the minds of our graduates. This is season two, class of 2021. A little bit of the same, but quite a lot different.
Matt 0:22 Hello, everyone. I'm Matt, I just graduated from computer science at the University of Edinburgh. I bet you recognise my voice if you've-- if you know me, you know me around in places and extracurricular activities, doing this and that. And yeah, I'm glad to be on this podcast.
Right now I am in London. I've been here since school finished. And I'm waiting to do a masters in September, which will be at the University of Warwick at Warwick Business School. I mean, sort of, from the beginning, a Master's was always possible-- always an option after I finished my undergrad. But it became much more clear to me that I wanted to do a Master's, mostly in the, in the past year it solidified. It's going to be in business with marketing. And I'm quite excited to start academic work again, not in the sense of actually doing projects and writing out essays and such like, like that, but just being in that environment feeling like I am-- I have a purpose in life that I am progressing my skills and, and all that jazz. It will be hybrid, and I will live on campus in accommodation. Yeah, I think it should still go back to in person. Because even now, I faced some challenges being productive when I'm just clamped up in this room, like sort of going on chat rooms and clicking all the unread messages because I feel like I don't have the energy to just close all that and just sit down and even just, even just watch something, watch an episode of something. But I just came back from Moscow. And the reason I was in Moscow is because I was doing an internship there. And I'm still doing it now. It's still like a week or so to go, but I was there as well because my grandmothers there, my dad was also there. And even there, with my supervisors, sometimes being physically present there and messaging me, I think that helps to keep me alert. So having someone to feed back to you, more so in a mutual way, a study buddy, or yeah, something like that. It happened that a mix of dedication on my end, and just also people that I knew just through the network chain, I found out about it. And since my gran was there, just like yeah, this opportunity to go and see somewhere new.
Even offices now, they're switching from in-person all the time to, to hybrid as well. And in Moscow, it was sort of a rotation. So people would be in the office sometimes but then not on other days, so it would rotate. So not everyone was in the office at once. And I think more companies will do this sort of permanently, I think. I mean, it was fine. But uh, I think this kind of shows how COVID just has changed like, work in general. I mean, if you even just look at like advertisements like recently, they're, they're-- you get a sense that they're different from what was before since we're now more inside and sort of how we think about health in general. And so just how companies interact with customers, but I just get this feeling in my, in my cranium that something is changing. And of course everyone is more digital nowadays and though I hope people don't-- I hope people will go out more after this is all over.
Edinburgh, what do I think of? Well I think of societies. Well yeah, I was in computer science, so yeah, things related to-- things that you stereotypically think. I didn't expect coming in that my main takeaway-- my main like memory sort of would be that I didn't expect that you feel like you belong to a group. But then in like, you-- the, the events are the gateway, and you do more and more events, but then through those you start learning about the individual people more and then over time you start doing other things with them. That's how any friendship works.
Well, I don't have a grand plan, well I kind of have a distant image. But so far it's do the Masters, apply to like a class of firm that's most related, and then go to that like firm for at least two years, work at that firm for two year. And then dot dot dot, and then dot dot dot dot dot, and I'll get to this point, which maybe I'll get to, though that might change. I'm, I'm confident that-- I'm confident I will finish my master's. Getting something, I'll get something maybe not-- because I have this anxiety about how I do it, you know, three different interview process stages, or some crazy stuff. Some of these firms make you go through, but uh, yeah, like, I have to go through all this, or this or this. So there's how I-- which ones should I aim for top priority, like all that stuff is not really sorted at the moment, but I've done, I've still done a bit of research. So it's not completely-- I'm not completely hopeless. I should get something, maybe not the ideal thing, but I should get something.
My current graduates and current students in this dramatic tone, I will tell you, people will shine when they move forward with their shaking hearts. We have this anxiety in us. But also, this anxiety has this sort of energy to it. So you're like, you're shaking a little bit, you're scared of something. But this energy, you can turn this anxiety into action. And through this action, you will demonstrate yourself, prove yourself. It's quite dramatic, but it sounds better in a song because songs, songs and other stuff let you like express these kind of things, like more, like more acceptably, I'd say. But uh, yeah, try and actually think about what that like, think about what that means.
Sonia 7:03 We also asked our graduates to share a place. Somewhere special, somewhere we can get together when all this is finished.
Matt 7:14 Well, this place is a place of deep reflection, is a place of dreaming, is a place of discovering myself. And this place is my room in my last year of high school. So you come into this room, there's some posters on the wall. There's my PlayStation 2 in the corner. There's all the games below. There's the stuff on the shelf. On the shelf, there are DVDs, blu-rays, music, music is very important. And these posters, they have characters, they have maps, for example, Middle Earth, Middle Earth map, that was pretty cool, except the bottom right of the map is sort of cut, it doesn't show all of Mordor for some reason. You've got, for example, a big long poster of Link and Midna from the Legend Zelda Twilight Princess in this awesome art. And you've got the window, looking out. And imagine it's like 2am and I'm just sitting in my bed, because I'm thinking about all these things, not just in my room, and what they mean to me. But how I will gather all those beliefs in my head. Especially music, and, and how I will carry those beliefs and thoughts to my future self. And so I have to get up out of bed and walk up and down the room until I am completely tired. I'm sick of walking, and then I fall asleep. Then I wake up and I go to school, tore through the day, think about stuff, go with my friends, come back home, and then repeat until I leave for Edinburgh. And then four years later, here I am. My mum moved out of the house before I left for Edinburgh. So I can't go back to it. But I sort of can go back to it because in my head, I can go back to it. Yeah it is a nostalgic place. This was sort of an anchor that I can go back to because that anchor is sort of a checkpoint in like my life's narrative you could say, like these sorts of rocks, as we call them. They're solid points from which to remember events that took place and reflect on yourself. So this makes you appreciate more the journey that you had from this rock up until the present. And yeah, that-- this sort of, this room, this space that occupies my head. Yeah, I'd encourage everyone to do that and find a place that is in your history.
Sonia 10:10 Thank you for listening. Join us next time for another graduate and another story.
Kirsten 10:20 You're not on your own when it comes to planning for your future. Your University of Edinburgh community is here to support you. And this includes ongoing support for graduates from the Careers Service. Why not take a look at our website to find out more about how we can support you to get the future you want. Go to ed.ac.uk/careers to get started.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai