Every year come October I get this overwhelming urge to go back into education again. I loved being at university as both an undergraduate studying Biology and as a postgraduate studying Computing, and freely admit to pining for the mental stimulation that full-time education brings. And yes, the lazy mornings and impromptu mid-week drinking sessions, but that’s another story…
So, come October I always wonder what I might have done if I’d continued on with my education. I’m still adamant that one day I’ll take a crack at a Ph.D; perhaps when the kids are older and I can get them cleaning chimneys to bring in a few more shiny pennies.
I’m not 100% certain about what I’d like to study although something that mixes Biology and Computing would be a good blend of my interests and skills. I’d certainly want to make use of the computing knowledge I’ve accumulated, so failing a multi-disciplinary course a straight computing course would be the most likely.
With said urge at the back of my mind, I was interested to discover this week that Oxford University runs a modular, part-time Msc in Bioinformatics which seems tailored to someone in full-time employment admittedly related employment, but I doubt that would be a big hurdle. They also run a short course in bioinformatics starting in February which looks like it’d be a good taste test for the full course.
At only three days it wouldn’t impact my job too much (and that takes me to Oxford one day a week anyway). It’s fairly expensive though. Mind you I’d sooner pay for that kind of training than anything “professional”. I know people doing various Java Certification courses and for the life of me I can’t work out why. Personally if I’m interviewing someone and they can show me some code that I can look over for myself, maybe something they’ve released as open source (or contributed to an open source project), they’re much more likely to score points that someone who has answered a bunch of multiple choice questions.
Now to check in with the bank to see whether I can afford the training.
And then with the wife to see whether I can really afford it!
Lost Boy 