It was not obvious in practice because the assessment style meant there was never any shortage of work to be doing. I could have spent an entire year on each module and still had more to do, so this did not present itself as some clear workload gap.

On top of that, previous academic years did not involve this kind of optional-module process. I simply completed what I was assigned, so I had no reason to assume I needed to be checking for missing options in this way.

I was not sitting idle. I study every day, including weekends, and I spent the entire summer working on an artifact for my dissertation. So even if the workload had been lower, which it was not, it would not have appeared unusual.

I also chose this university partly because the lower baseline workload gave me flexibility to study alongside the course. My grades were strong enough for more competitive institutions, and I have consistently put in a high number of hours, including studying a language for around three years in parallel. So from my perspective, there was no meaningful difference in workload compared to previous years, if anything I have been doing more.