Degree

Long story short: I got a Bachelor Degree in Computer Science.

While a degree is the goal after writing a paper, it is not part of a paper at all. The paper is just another course for the qualification that a degree requires. A degree is a set of courses that should tell anyone that you should have the qualification to do what they expect of you, as a teacher has already evaluated your knowledge.

The path to take in order to get a degree is a bit tricky, as there are a couple of steps to take from the moment you get an approval from your examiner. My first step after getting back my paper was to upload it to DiVA. After some back and forth confusion from the examiner, the administrator finally approved the paper and it was made public. From here on the course was officially finished and it was up to me to take action.

As some of you may know, I am one of those rare birds that switched education program after finished over half of the courses. It basically was going from a 5 years program down to a 3 years program. I only needed to complement with some additional courses to fill all of the criteria. As I therefore had several courses that was not in the line of now chosen program, I had to filter some of them as either they were already complements from other courses, or I had just too many. After talking to the student counselor we found out that there there was only two of the courses I had which I had to remove, while the rest was complements. And while I did not need those specifically, due to their advance kind, I did not mind excluding them as I could easily do them again if needed, because I had been a tutor to both in the past. With this knowledge, I filled in the overly complicated form of application to apply for a degree. They said that it could take up to 2 months, but they responded the next day, with an ask that I had apparently applied for Bachelor of Science (teknologie), instead of Bachelor of Arts/Science (filosofie), and wanted to know what cause of action I wanted to take, giving me multiple options. I therefore told them it was a mistake on my part and that they could change that. Later that day I got my degree.

I am happy for my degree, because that closes a chapter in my life and makes it easier to get good pay for any job I apply to. Although, it should not take 8 years to finish a 3 year program, plenty of other things happened at the same time, resulting my focus to be deviated. Life comes with unexpected surprises which may make it both harder and easier to live, but these challenges I have faced have made me grow as a person and individual. For instance, I have learned a lot, not just knowledge in a specific field, but also better social skills, language improvements and loads of useful tools. I still have a lot to learn, but that is what life is about, to always strive to learn more, as you will never become a real master in a field.

Do note that I will not list my research here due to privacy concerns, but if you know me and are interested in the paper I will be more than happy to send the link to you.