I'm sure some of you are mulling over what to do after you finish your undergraduate degree, especially if you're nearly graduated. Perhaps you're thinking about continuing school, and it is to you whom I write today.

By the time I reached third year, I was resolved on continuing school, so I filled out a handful of long, stressful applications for grad school and wound up taking a master's in information studies at McGill University. This was a professional degree program, so if you're thinking about pursuing an academic graduate degree, please don't let me keep you, as my anecdote and insight may be inapplicable.

Don't get me wrong; I really enjoyed my studies at McGill and there were plenty of challenges to keep me interested, to be sure. I developed the technical skills and acquired the knowledge I needed to become an information professional. However, at the beginning of the program, I was definitely in an education cultural shock. It wasn't as intellectually stimulating as my fourth-year seminars and I took this to mean that I wasn't learning anything when I actually was, albeit for a different purpose.

Undergraduate programs reshape your analytical processes and make you critical-thinking, dichotomy-finding citizens of academia. You obtain new lenses to view the world in and uncover rich levels of insight that go beyond our high school essays infused with Wikipedia entry summaries. Professional degrees do not challenge you in the same manner, or at least mine didn't. I learned to do and think practically. I thought critically and applied analysis, but about how to create solutions for matter-of-fact challenges.

Now this is not to say that doing a professional degree is without academic merit. Many fellow classmates pursued this professional degree academically, by writing research papers and conducting hard analyses of information problems. Some are even pursuing PhDs in this field. However, I really believe I would have avoided a lot of self-questioning and frustration if someone had told me that a professional degree would be a much different experience than my undergraduate one. And as I reread this, I also realize that the experience is what you make it.

If you are thinking of pursuing a professional degree, don't take this as a foreboding sign. Professional degrees lead to careers and are a great credential to have on your CV. (Just don't be surprised if you forget what a dichotomy is in the process)

Rachel Legaspi is a recent graduate of McGill University's master of information studies program, where she specialized in Knowledge Management. Prior to this, she graduated cum laude from the University of Ottawa with a joint honours in history and political science. While Rachel's first love will always be learning, she also enjoys making music and playing sports, (especially fastball). She hopes that by contributing to this blog, she will provide useful insight on technologies that can assist readers in finding jobs and careers.