TIFUpdate – didn’t realise I didn’t have a master’s degree

Hello everyone! A few days ago I posted about how it took me five years to notice that what I thought was a master’s diploma, was actually just a specialization and my university didn’t actually have any record of me finishing the degree. Some of you asked for an update, so here it is.

First of all I want to thank you all for the comments on my original post, I tried my best to keep up with them but I have to admit I didn’t expect my post to get so much attention. Once again, sorry for the mobile formatting, the TL;DR will be at the bottom.

I’m super happy to let you know that I have good news! To those of you who guessed this was probably an administrative error, you were correct! On the same day I made the post I found my dissertation, or thesis I guess, in the university’s repository, which means that it did end up getting published like it was supposed to and I emailed the university again with this information. I also took some time throughout the weekend to email my advisor and gather some information on who else I could potentially reach out to to escalate the matter if I didn’t get a reply from the people I already emailed, but fortunately it seems that won’t be necessary!

Yesterday, at long last, I heard back from the university! It turns out that when I finished my master’s they were transitioning between IT systems and something in my records didn’t get properly updated. Fortunately they told me they were already in the process of fixing it and apologised profusely for the mix-up. I hate that something so small caused such an issue and I’m kind of super pissed at them for the FU, but at least I’m happy it seems to be a simple and fixable problem. It might have caused me a ton of anxiety but I do still have my degree and I’m getting my diploma! Only took five years and a couple of meltdowns lol. Now I’m off to write to my advisor again, let her know everything should be fine. I feel kind of silly for wasting her time like this, but oh well.

Thanks again for all the support and advice, and to those who have been through a similar situation I’m so sorry you had to go through that, it really sucks that this apparently happens so often. Hearing about your experiences made me feel way less alone, but this kind of stuff shouldn’t be happening so much in the first place.

Have a good one, Reddit, thanks for listening to me!

TL;DR: I finished my degree right as they were changing IT systems and my record wasn’t updated when it was supposed to. It’s now in the process of being fixed, I do have a master’s degree after all!