Is it completely ridiculous to apply to both as a kind of whitewash and then make up my mind as to what on earth I want to do later on? I feel completely at sea here and am crazily being pulled about a thousand different directions as regards to the future.

Maybe I should change my username to ‘carpe diem’ because that just about sums up my general problem, I just don't think about the future at all if possible!

What areas are you intereste in? From that you can narrow down potential masters, and from what you like about those you can look at possible PhDs. However, if your unsure what area, I wouldn't start a PhD, it is hard work and you don't want to start it, then decide it isn't for you.

Thanks for the reply, my degree is in genetics but the field is so huge i'm finding targeting specific areas of interest quite hard, in fact targetting the things i'm 'not' so enmoured with is a much easier process.

I am now thinking of possibly taking a year out while i consider my options.

Whatever you do, don't get temp work.

Take a year out to decide. Work in a science environment to see if you enjoy it, if you do you'll know that you want to do further study. At the moment it just sounds as if you've never considered the possibility of leaving university as apposed to actually decided you want to do a masters/Phd.

It can be a painstaking process pinning down a project that involves exactly what you want to go into.. I know I did when I was looking.. My field is microbiology and so first of all I had to decide on viruses or bacteria and then decide what area of it I wanted to research.. I found my area of interest became more defined after I had been looking at studentships for a while

Are you doing temp work now Matthew82? I was doing temp work at a college while I was applying for PhD's its not ideal but luckily I was able to imply that it was useful with the transferable skills etc.