Degrees of Ambition: Educational Aspirations and Exploration

One time when I was at the university, I was travelling back to school and met a woman who enlightened me about the real world when it comes to certificates. She was a Masters student at my university, and so we were heading to the same destination.

I wondered how she was going to go about her work when she told me about it, considering that she needed to be at my university for most of every week in session, and that was when she told me the very reason why a masters programme at her age and level at work.

"Just imagine people coming after you—years after you, in fact—and then watching them get promoted faster than you and even higher than you at some point." She said to me, "And it is all because they hold MSc degrees and you only have BSc." She continued. Then I figured out just why she was going to bag herself a master's degree. Then she went on to tell me how it really is imperative that one continually invest in themselves as long as the world is changing.

I went on to graduate with a bachelor's degree in engineering a few years later, and I still carry the "continually develop yourself words in my head." And much more motivating to forge ahead, my mother is still bagging degrees at this point in her life, mostly to inspire her boys to reach higher and soar.

Right now, I am currently serving my country as a National Youth Service Corper, and it lasts a year. With six months down the line of serving and also a year after graduating, the time to further my education a little further is drawing near—because I really want to.

It's not that I think that books are all that there is to life. I most certainly don't think so with the way the world is evolving. There's a whole lot more to it than just academics. Yet, there are perks to advancing even further in one's education.

Bagging B.Eng in mechatronics engineering was quite a journey. However, there's a whole world of robotics, automation, artificial intelligence, and the like to explore, learn from, and make innovative concepts from. And that's why I am taking my education a little further in that field.

In a conversation with a friend of mine who's more knowledgeable in robotics and AI, he made me understand that robotics is way deeper than most people think and that it's a pretty complicated field. I acknowledge all that, but I really would like to give it a try regardless, as I have always wanted to be there after all, being inspired by cartoons like Dexter's Laboratory as a young child.

Recently, though, I have been exploring AI a lot more. I am going much deeper this time by going through a prompt engineering course for ChatGPT that I found on Coursera.

Harnessing the power of AI tools and boosting my productivity and effectiveness is what I am interested in these days. And, also, I am just really curious about what these tools can do every now and then and how they can make certain tasks easy.

Going over the topics in the course I have enrolled in, I figured that I am likely going to learn about AI in a deeper way, and I am excited about that. It's not the master programme in robotics and AI, though, but it's a step closer.

It's an overwhelming process to begin the master's program. Surely, I'd like to do it somewhere other than where I am, and so some of the cons are being able to travel there and settle. Notwithstanding, I look forward to really pursuing it and reaching higher.