I was invited all the way down to the University of Southampton for an open day. Southampton is at least a three and a half hour car ride away and I wasn’t originally planning on going, but then I thought that would be stupid.

I arrived there just before 11am, I missed the free tea and coffee but I didn’t mind, it meant that I was allowed an extra half an hour in bed that morning. We were greeted by Professor Kees De Groot, he is a member of the Nano Research Group here. He is a staff member of the same school as the course as I applied for, the Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) School, but I won’t be taught by him. Which is a shame, as he was amazing, he was eccentric in all the right ways and what he lacked in grammar he made up with his gestures and charisma.

We also had a current Masters student tell us all about her experience. She seemed really happy, but over worked a little (I guess that’s what you get when you sign up for a Master’s degree), she gave us myself and the 20 or so other guys some brilliant advice… She said to sign up for everything that university has to offer. You are only here once and you are paying for it, get your money’s worth. I’m planning on following that advice to the letter.

We had a buffet lunch and some other staff members came in to meet the prospective students. Dr Rob Maunder came sat next to me, another staff member that I won’t have any interaction with whilst studying here, but a very welcoming man and easy to talk to. We had a good chat about the general atmosphere, facilities, project work, connection to industry and what support the staff give the postgraduate students.

Professor Mark S. Nixon was making his rounds around the room, speaking to everyone he can, he was a lecturer I could be working under. He is very intelligent man who specialises in image processing and is famous for working on using Artificial Intelligence to identify suspects on CCTV by their gate. Meaning they can change their clothes or even have a hood over their head and still be recognised.

I had a quick chat with the man, but time was up and I was carted off with a student volunteer to have a tour of the campus.

The university campus had a good balance between old and new buildings, a good mixture between open greenery and a beautiful small metropolis. I love a university with good sports facilities and I was happy to see a swimming pool near the centre of campus. At my old university there wasn’t a swimming pool on campus and the sport facilities there were always a battle with other students to use them.

This place looks like somewhere I can seriously exercise my body as well as my mind.

We got to the New MountBatten and New Zepler buildings, the home of the ECS and where I will spend most of my time next year. I signed up to have two different talks from course leaders.

The first was for Software Engineering and Web Technologies. I was interested in the prior and Dr Julian Rathke was giving the talk on the subject and it gave me an insight on what kind of standard they want programmers to be. But, the second talk was for Artificial Intelligence and that was reason I was there for.

I applied, was offered and I’ve already accepted a place at Southampton on the Artificial Intelligence Master’s course, but this is my chance to get even more details in the course.  Dr Richard A. Watson was the man giving the talk and the course leader.

I got to see the optional modules that I can take, talked about industry partners, gave advice about the difficulties about robotics, and how I should have a play around with MATLAB to improve my matrix manipulation skills.

I got to look at the main computer lab, in there every computer had two monitors and were as powerful as you need. With 16 GB of ram, fast GPU cards and third generation Intel chips inside, I was well catered for, oh and a separate area just for the Master’s students.

After the tour I called it a day, there was still more of the open day, but that was a tour of the university accommodation, which I wasn’t interested in.

I was seriously impressed by the welcoming nature of the staff and the amazing facilities they had. This is a Russell Group University and you can tell. It’s been a while since I have been with people of the same expertise as myself and I really enjoyed it. I left the campus that afternoon knowing I have made the right choice.