It’s a graduate program, and I, as a semi-anonymous Ph.D. student, am here to explain exactly why.

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Program Structure:

Lots of players, I think, enter the College of Winterhold and attend Tolfdir’s lesson on wards thinking oh boy, I’m really gonna study magic at this here college of magic, only to be unpleasantly surprised that they get to attend exactly one class between entering the College and being promoted to Archmage.

It turns out that this experience, better described as here’s one lesson and now good luck to your ass, closely parallels graduate training and supervision in real life. Depending on your program of choice, you get anywhere from zero to two years of training in research or analysis methods. Your supervisor and program lead then assume that your largely theoretical training is sufficient to send you out into the field and “apply” what you’ve “learned.” In fact, you will either forget your training the moment you need it (I can’t recall ever casting a ward in Saarthal) or run into a situation in which it’s completely useless (I’m pretty sure you can’t ward against explosive runes).

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Once you’re “trained” and the program deems you “ready,” be prepared for a years-long slog as a lone wolf with the world on your shoulders. Doing just about anything toward finishing your degree will take years or what feels like years. (Looking at you, Labyrinthian and basically every other dungeon crawl in the main questline). If you’re looking for advice on how to move forward, good luck: Your professors will be either a bit naïve about what school is like these days or completely preoccupied with their own projects. You can always commiserate with your fellow students, but it won’t be long before they shift the conversation to vent about their own problems. Between the long, even indefinite timelines for students and the many conflicting responsibilities that professors face, advisors can potentially lose track of multiple students entirely.

If and when you do manage to graduate, what you do with your life after the program may be, at best, tangentially related to your studies. The job market for court wizards and alchemists seems pretty tight these days, but hey, I hear the Companions are recruiting, and the benefits are decent!

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Faculty and Staff:

The faculty are not your teachers from the Harry Potter universe, but they reflect graduate program work culture pretty effectively!

Tolfdir: The nice, supportive senior prof who’s a bit naïve about how tough things are for students these days. Lots of other faculty want him to be the next Dean or something simply because he’s had the tenacity or intrinsic motivation to stick around for a couple of decades.

Mirabelle and Faralda: These two are essentially in the same situation: Low-to-mid level faculty who are taking on way too many obligations in hopes that the university will notice their service and consider them for tenure. For cultural reasons, female faculty tend to have even more trouble saying no when they need to. (Picture Faralda shivering outside the College entrance as she tries her best to deal with the general public, or Mirabelle who pretty much runs the college on Savos Aren’s behalf.)

Drevis: (He’s the Illusion teacher, in case you’ve never seen him before.) The recently tenured, young-ish male prof who has an inflated view of the quality of his work. He’s more than happy to rope students into assisting him with menial tasks (read: completing them for him) while he focuses on doing whatever he thinks fits his station.

Colette: The lifelong student who’s always dreamed of being a professor because she was bookish growing up and thought this job would be more of the same. Unfortunately, all of that extensive reading and acing her classes came at the cost of developing even basic social skills, so now she has to figure out to navigate a real workplace with real people in it. She means well but is pretty tough to work with.

Phinis: The prof who spends all his time at the university and does research with a pretty questionable purpose. Naturally, he’ll talk your ear off about “public engagement” and complain that no one outside academia respects what academics do.

Arniel: Very protective of his research, so much so that his colleagues don’t really understand what he does. No doubt he’s on the verge of some sort of breakthrough, though. Curiously, he’s managed to avoid taking on a single teaching assignment or any advisees; as far as most students are concerned, he might as well be a ghost that haunts one of the old department offices.

Savos Aren: I mention the headmaster this far down the list because he’s the department head or college president who you’re unlikely to see more than a couple of times throughout the entire course of your program. Seems like a nice enough fellow, not that you can even describe him to another person if asked. (He's the, uhh, Dunmer in the fancy robes?)

Urag: We all know the protective librarian type. Urag also fits the profile of a research librarian in that he’s exceptionally knowledgeable and knows exactly where you can find what you’re looking for… even if this means going Divines-know-where to find them because several of the books you need are too old or rare for the library to have copies on file.

Sergius: The ancient senior prof who will likely only retire by dying at his desk. He doesn’t believe in “coddling” students with too much mentorship because hey, he made it all those years ago, so the students just need to be more resilient like him. (It’s not like we’re studying during the civil war and the return of the dragons now.)

Ancano: Supposedly a prestigious visiting scholar, welcomed to the university even though we’re pretty sure he’s a spy or something. (Personally, I get pretty strong admin vibes from him as well.) Everyone’s pretty uneasy around him.

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Your Classmates:

Once again, we’re not in Harry Potter world here; we’re in a grad program where you and your classmates are all adults bringing a lifetime’s worth of baggage with you.

Brelyna: Her parents are probably both professors, and she’s clearly prepared for this her whole life (or, rather, her parents and private tutors prepared her for this). In other words, enormous pressure and internalized self-doubt are her replacements for the real problems her less privileged classmates face.

J’zargo: The affable, driven international student. There is skill in magic, there is charm, and there is a strong will. He genuinely sees all this as an immense opportunity, the poor dear. You really hope the program doesn’t break him a few years from now. You’ll notice him bringing up money in conversation fairly often, too, since international student funding isn’t exactly secure.

Onmund: The first-generation student whose family doesn’t really understand the point of being in this program. He’s glad to spend some time from them mingle with people who truly get him, though he can’t entirely avoid complicated family matters catching up to him later.

Nirya: She’s internalized the competitive, toxic culture of academia so badly that she’s become a major part of the problem. Her real-life counterpart probably spends too much time on academic Twitter.

Enthir: I nearly forgot about this guy, honestly. Anyway, the money isn’t great as a grad student, so you’ll almost certainly have classmates who spend most of their time on side gigs (or worse) and are rarely seen on campus.