I'd love to see where you think I was being passive aggressive and/or condescending... Like I said above it's hard to tell in text but what I read in my original comment is an overtly aggressive overview of my experience in academia. You my have a different experience and that's fine.

Apologies if that's the way I'm coming across, my intent was the opposite. My mindset isn't one of delegating my intellectual advancement to others, my experience of academia is that academia actively stifled it. I almost dropped out of my bachelors be ause I felt I wasn't learning anything, but my wife talked me out of it.

I'm certainly interested in learning and exploring and finding out stuff, but my experience so far is that the academic processes stand in the way of this.

If that's the case then and researching is way above masters level then how is it you get on a PhD? Genuine question. If everything I've done to date is a pale imitation of the real thing how can I make a fair assessment as to whether I want to pursue a PhD?

I've a bachelors of science (first) in computer science, and currently doing a dissertation for a master's in cyber security, on route for a first but that might change depending on the mark for this dissertation.

My experience with the bachelors was that despite my project being derailed by the bullshit around formatting the document, doing "research" by searching the library for peer reviewed papers that backed up my claims, etc, etc; I got a excellent mark. In short I set out to make something and due to the academic processes failed in making anything, but because I was able to critically reflect on it, I got a good mark. Waste of time, unless you were just are a good mark.

For my masters I know the project doesn't matter, I'm concentrating on the academic nonsense because that's where the marks are.

Do I detect a hint of condescension? Hard to tell in text sometimes. I'm not sure how else to read your message, so in the event it is a passive aggressive attempt at being patronising I would caveat my original point with the fact I've spent the better part of a decade in higher education and I've done pretty well for myself in terms of marks, so if after all that I'm still not clear on what is meant by academic research or the point in the practice as presented to me during that time it's hardly my fault.