The MDP Student Blog
A Day in the Life of a MDP Student
Author: Stephen Dalby, Marketing Advisor (2019-2020)
In many ways, it is difficult to write about a typical day in the life of a marketing masters student on the MDP, because no two days are the same. Throughout this article I will try to give a flavour of all of the many aspects we touch upon on a day to day basis.
My typical day in the office starts when I wake up around 8am to get ready for college. One of the unique aspects of our marketing masters in particular is our formal attire. So, I get my suit on and rush out the door to get into the office. I try to get into the office at 8:40am for our 9am start – not because I am very punctual, but because generally there is always something fun going on before the official start at 9am. It ranges from gossip, to paper toss and occasionally a game of keepy uppies.
Officially, 9am is when we start. On Mondays & Fridays we start with presentations involving weekly updates on projects, current affairs, interesting marketing topics and many others. At times our mornings will start with lectures ranging from digital marketing, advanced digital marketing and market research to name a few, although this changes from semester to semester. More often than not at 9am we start with our group project work. In our marketing masters we work with a huge variety of real life clients across a vast range of industries, one of the unique aspects to the programme is that we are left to our own devices to work on our projects.
Our first break is at 11. At that time you can find most of the course topping up with coffee at Lucy’s cafe in Smurfit. While most days we are working from the office, the nature of the course means that very often we are required to work outside of the office on many different tasks from market research around Ireland to checking out venues for a range of events that we may organise. Once back in the office from 11:20-1 we would continue our project work or we could meet with Harriet (programme manager) & Elaine (market research expert) to discuss projects we are working on in order to get their input and advice, along with showing them our progression.
For our lunch break at 1-2pm generally you would find most of the course down in Blackrock indulging in one of the many lunch spots as a group, or we would congregate back in the Smurfit cafeteria together over our lunch. Our last stint of the day from 4-5:30 we often continue with our project work or we may be presenting to a client on a project we have been working on throughout the previous week. Our official C.O.B is 5:30, although we will often stay late with our groups and work on our projects.