MPhil(s) Gathering

Tonight, I met with three other MPhil. students(three are the graduates and one is waiting for Oral Defence). We are from the same course, same department and same university(of course!). However, we are not so-called "classmates", because we studied in MPhil. in different years.

From the last 5 years, only 4 Hongkongeses studied this MPhil. course. The rest of them are mostly come from mainland China and one from France (this French guy is VERY HANDSOME. I haven't met him before. My friends said he's teaching French in the University. Some of my friends took his courses when they were studying Undergraduate)

Tonight is the first time that we gather together. As I have mentioned that we studied in different timing, we hardly met each other in the University(We supposed to be sitting in the same room). Tonight is a WONDERFUL time to chat with them and share our experiences.
Studying MPhil. is my toughest time in my life. It's MUCH HARDER than preparing the HKCEE or HKAL.
During tonight's chatting, we simply have several common experiences during our studies:

1. We ALL thought of QUITTING our studies in certain circumstances,
2. We ALL studied in a lonely environment, because we didn't have any classmates that we could ask if we'd any questions,
3. We had GREAT difficulties while reading the prior researches, BUT WE STILL NEED TO. We ALL understood each single word written in the paper, but we had NO IDEA what it was really about,
   
4. We ALL temporarily don't consider to have FURTHER study,
5. We ALL agree one professor(actually, he's my favorite professor) would not be considered as a supervisor ANY MORE,
6. We ALL felt depressing in some situations.
   

These HARD feelings are really DIFFICULT to be shared. No one would understand how hard the MPhil is (of course, if a student pickes an easy topic, it'll be easy!!). We are so ambitious that choosing a challenging topic. In my case, I was studying media in Undergraduate degree and I stopped learning computer from Secondary 3. HOWEVER, I tried to program a renderer in my MPhil degree. It's SO IMPOSSIBLE!!!!!!

There is a great diversity of careers among our classmates too. Two becomes pop stars. Some work in publishing companies. Some work in magazine publishers. Some are directors, editors, 3D animators, etc. My job nature is so-called "teaching", but I'm still teaching animation. Therefore, I'm still working on "production-related" in my profession.

Finally, we talked about recent situation of our professors/lecturers. Half or one-third of them left within these 5 years.
I have just added the link of Karen's blog in "友blog". She taught in City University of Hong Kong. She taught an elective course and I helped her to prepare the notes(of course, I was just an assistant ^_^). She recently published a book, called "Pre-animate! A Guidebook for Independent Animators". I will buy it asap!!!!