Reflecting on My First Week of Grad School Classes
I enjoyed writing my last reflection posts about My Thoughts Before Going to Grad School and Graduate School Orientation Week and I thought it would be fitting to share what my first week of classes was like!
I started my masters degree with an intense week long seminar course, which was an introduction to neuroscience and research. We had 9 to 5 pm sessions almost every single day this week, so it is nice to have the weekend off before our actual courses begin on Monday!
The first three days we started our mornings off with coffee/tea and chats before morning lectures. We had 3 lecturers come from different fields and share about their neuroscience research, including linguistics, behavioural neuroscience and also psychopathology. My least favourite lecture was on linguistics (the first day) because it is not a research field that I am interested in (I also didn’t quite follow what the lecturer was talking about at times?) but the other two were really thought provoking and interesting!
We were divided into three groups and had seminar based activities, such as student introductions, debates, as well as group presentations that allowed us to get to know each other better and also collaborate on our first group assignments! Yes, I know. We did have a debate and a group presentation my first week of grad school! For the debate, we had to focus on an ethics issue in neuroscience and my team won! Prior to the debate we had a debate workshop in the morning. As for group projects, we worked in smaller groups (3-4 students) and had to choose an article and base our future research project on it. My group struggled to find a good article at first but in the end our presentation was not bad and had a lot of potential!
Throughout the week we had other fun activities, such as drinks (on the first and last day of the week) and a canal cruise in Amsterdam central! It was lovely to be on campus every day and have somewhere to go every morning, so I am definitely looking forward to classes starting next week! This seminar course was pass/fail based on attendance and participation and although we had to do a debate and present a group project there was no pressure and we could all enjoy ourselves!
The last day of the week ended with student presentations from 2nd year and also those who graduated from this program about what they did for their research projects, how they found internships and what they are doing now. It was nice to hear that people struggled to find internships that they could do and had similar anxieties to mine, such as thinking that everyone else already have their internships sorted out and I am the last one to do so, etc. It also made me think about what kind of skills I would like to learn during this masters degree and I now have a lot to look at!
This first week was exciting! I am looking forward to going back to campus because it is truly beautiful and learn new things! The transitional period is still hard but because classes are starting and I was busy this week I feel a lot better being here. It is nice to have plans every day and I love having things to do, so as I am still settling in, I am excited about what is to come in the future!
I hope you enjoyed this brief ramble about my first week experience in grad school! I am thinking about writing a follow up after my first month to see what has changed and how I will be feeling then! If you would like to read more from me, click HERE to see other blog posts! You can also follow my studygram HERE for some inspiration!












