How the UK Helped Me Reinvent Myself

Why I chose to study a master's in the UK

Twelve months ago I had no idea whether this would ever happen. I kept opening emails about scholarship rejections, incomplete applications and new requirements, one after another. For months, studying in the UK looked like a plan on some days and like a daydream on others.

Looking back, I'm so glad I didn't go through that process alone. My advisor, at Across the Pond, was there for every single one of those emails, guiding me with instructions that were always crystal clear at a point when there was still nothing to celebrate. Her name is in the acknowledgements of my dissertation today because, without her thoughtful guidance, that dissertation would simply never have existed.
 

So, why the UK? One practical reason and one deeply personal one.

The practical one: a British master's takes just one year. By the time I applied, I'd already spent more than a decade working in educational innovation in Mexico, and being able to specialise without putting my career on hold for two years was one of the deciding factors. Plus, a British degree travels: it's recognised well beyond the UK, and it opens doors in Mexico and in Europe alike.

The personal one: I've always been drawn to the way British universities understand learning. I came looking for a place where asking good questions mattered as much as finding answers. That's exactly what I found.
 

Why Essex turned out to be an excellent decision

Before I arrived, I assumed studying outside London would be a disadvantage. It became one of the best decisions I made.

Colchester has the right pace for studying. The campus is green, you can walk almost everywhere, and you quickly stop feeling like "an international student" and start feeling like part of a community.

The best part is that London never really goes away. It's less than an hour by train. More than once I went in just to walk through a museum, catch a concert, have dinner with friends or wander around the city, and came back to campus the same night. The journey became part of the plan.

I also loved being able to spend a day in Cambridge, visit Norwich or explore the Essex coastline without having to organise a complicated trip. Essex gave me something I hadn't expected: the calm of a campus university without giving up anything a city like London has to offer.
 

The campus advice

I lived in The Meadows for the whole master's, and I'd choose university accommodation again for a first year.

Yes, there are probably cheaper options off campus. But living there made meeting people effortless. Nothing had to be arranged; you simply ran into the same faces every day.

And there's another piece of advice people rarely give.

Find your place.

Not your room.

Your place.

Mine was the foyer of the Computer Science and Electronic Engineering building (CSEE). That's where I put presentations together, wrote a good part of my dissertation, despaired over Python, celebrated when something finally worked, and shared countless coffees with classmates.

It sounds like a small thing, but having somewhere you genuinely feel you belong changes your whole university experience.
 

Find a community

If I could give you a single piece of advice, this would be it: when I arrived at Essex, the Latin American community and the Catholic community on campus became an enormous source of support. One gave me the language, the food and the jokes that don't need explaining. The other gave me a fixed point in the week where somebody genuinely asked how I was doing.

Don't wait until you feel lonely to go looking for your community. Academic life will absorb you from the very first week; everything else has to be built on purpose.
 

Can you study artificial intelligence without an engineering background?

This was by far my biggest worry before applying.

My background wasn't Computer Science.

I'm a clinical psychologist and neuropsychologist.

The first few weeks were intimidating. I had classmates nearly ten years younger who programmed with an ease I simply didn't have. While they seemed to have been speaking the language of code for years, I was learning Python in a matter of weeks and returning to calculus after a very long time.

But eventually I understood something that completely changed how I saw the programme.

The university didn't expect us all to think alike.

It expected each of us to bring something different.

My background in psychology allowed me to ask questions about behaviour, emotion and decision-making that connected naturally with artificial intelligence.

By the end of the year, I was researching emotion and personality prediction from EEG signals and collaborating on a wearable emotion recognition project.

That's when the biggest lesson of the master's finally clicked.

This programme never asked me to abandon my previous training.

It asked me to translate it into a new language.

If you come from another discipline and you're wondering whether you belong in an AI programme, my answer is simple: you do. Your previous experience may turn out to be exactly what lets you see problems other people miss.
 

Much more than learning to code

By the end of the master's I could build models in Python, work in R, use statistical software, apply machine learning and information retrieval techniques, and contribute to AI research projects.

Honestly, though, that wasn't the most important part.

A model isn't valuable simply because it works; it's valuable because you can explain why it works.

Good methodology matters just as much as good results.

And, more often than not, good research starts with a better question.

I also learned to live in English, and I enjoyed it far more than I expected. If that's your worry, let me split it in two: conversational English stops being a problem within weeks. What's genuinely hard is the technical vocabulary of a field that's new to you as well, and writing academically against the clock. That can be learned, and the university offers dedicated support for it.

And while I was at it, I ended up studying artificial intelligence and picking up some German out of pure curiosity, thanks to the language courses the university offers. Never underestimate everything a university gives you outside your own programme.
 

Life outside the classroom teaches you too

There are lessons that never appear on a syllabus.

Like discovering that when a British person asks, "You alright?", they're usually not worried about your mental health; they're simply saying hello.

Or realising you'll develop completely irrational preferences. In my case, no student needed to shop at Waitrose... but every so often I did because, for reasons I still can't fully explain, it made me feel just a little bit more British.

I also found something I hadn't expected: how accessible culture is here. Concerts in churches, free museums, ballet, orchestras and exhibitions all became part of perfectly ordinary weekends.

One of the things I loved most was that these experiences didn't feel like special occasions. They gradually became part of everyday student life.
 

What I wish I'd known before arriving

You don't need to arrive knowing everything.

There will always be someone with a stronger background. And trust me on this one… you belong!

I'd also have appreciated a few very practical things:

• Register with a GP in your first few weeks, even if you feel perfectly fine.

• Hard water really is hard.

• Coming from Mexico, I underestimated how much the changing daylight would shape my routine. I loved having sunlight until almost 10 p.m. in the summer, but I was much less prepared for winter, when the short days affected my energy levels far more than I expected. It's completely manageable, but it's something I wish I'd known before arriving.

• Say yes to day trips, museums, concerts and last-minute invitations. Many of my best memories were never in my calendar.
   

Would I do it again?

Without a second thought.

A year ago I was dreaming about studying in the UK.

Today I'm leaving with research experience, friends from all over the world and, above all, the certainty that changing disciplines halfway through your career doesn't mean starting from scratch.

I came to the UK hoping to understand artificial intelligence.

I'm leaving knowing how to ask better questions.

If studying in the UK still feels like a dream today...

Turn it into a plan.

-Maria Jose