GoKawiil20.06.2026
In 2022, towards the end of the pandemic, my life needed to change. While I would love to pretend that I inscribed to the masters degree in the noble pursuit of knowledge, the true reason was due to boredom in my freelance fullstack job, feeling stuck and somewhat lonely.
Having moved from Paris to Granada just two year before, my girlfriend and I had found out that the ideal size of a city to live in lay somewhere between that. Given that the city had nice beaches and a great university, Barcelona was the choice we landed on.
The somewhat costly move to another city coincided with my freelance project drying up, so in order not to starve, I joined a salaried position at Adevinta at the same time. Luckily, I was able to work out a deal to work part-time with them for the duration of my master's.
Subjects
The master's I finally landed on was the Master of Innovation and Research with the specialization advanced computing (what a mouth full). This degree, in line with its name, is mostly focused on academics. Subjects like randomized algorithms, advanced data structures, social and complex networks were not just focused on how these algorithms work, but also on what properties can be proven about them. Unlike the Bachelor's degree I did in Munich, a large portion of the grades, often more than 50%, was based on take-home projects, presentations, and “papers” you handed in. So ironically, the degree in theoretical computer science felt quite practical.
Culture-wise, the professors at the university were also very different than what I was used to in Germany. The professors personally put a lot of effort into helping their students. Partially, this may be due to the difference between a bachelor's and a master's. But the amount of effort that some of the professors put into helping the students out was more than I was used to. My thesis advisor, Alicia Ageno, for instance, had a meeting with me about every two weeks and sent me relevant papers and advice on a subject that was not her current research topic anymore.
But also other professors signed some papers to allow me to pass some presentations I did at local meetups as university credits, helping me in the monumental fight against bureaucracy.
Workload
Doing my Master's degree was one of the most stressful phases of my life. And that was despite doing only 3 instead of 5 courses per semester and working only 20 hours per week. Because it was presential, I would go to university 3 to 4 times a week and from there go to the office. All of this commuting was done by bicycle (luckily, the office had a shower).
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