I went and got a master’s degree in Global Humanities.

Despite the doom and gloom around the humanities and job prospects for it, I went ahead in the Fall of 2022 and started my first semester as a Global Humanities student at Towson University. I was going to do a PhD, but then didn’t get into any of the programs I wanted to actually go to—which, in hindsight, was a blessing in disguise.

In classes, we would sometimes read the doom and gloom articles about how the sciences can predict everything that the humanities does, but I still thought pretty confidently about the degree I was getting.

All through graduate school I was working full-time, along with being a full-time student, so I was able to sit back and continue my career, while also getting my master’s degree with no debt.

And guess what? I am glad I did it for a plethora of reasons. The opportunities my master’s degree gave me are endless, even as I finish it up and prepare to depart for South Korea and India on two completely different fully funded master’s degrees.

Let’s get into the nitty gritty reasons why I enjoyed my time here.

Choosing a flexible program with classes at night was absolutely critical.

I knew going into all of this that I wanted to graduate from my master’s with no debt. I refused to take out loans and go get something that I knew was somewhat going to screw me over financially. I also had the opportunity to live at home with my parents, which allowed me to pay off my tuition while also putting some money into my student loans.

That said, the night classes and flexibility allowed me to work full-time, as I mentioned before. I was actually still pretty net positive after all of my expenses, and once I got a graduate assistantship, which covered half of my tuition and even paid me a pretty nice stipend, I thought that I was pretty set.

Heck, I could even afford an international trip to Malaysia on the kind of money I was making. And because I was in a program that allowed these opportunities, I picked up an internship at the Smithsonian, did that during the day, and then managed to continue my coursework with ease at night.

A master’s degree is truly what you make of it sometimes, and I felt like I gained such valuable skills throughout it all.

The humanities are interdisciplinary, and you can learn to market these skills in different ways.

People often moan and groan about how the humanities won’t get you a job, but there are different components to it that will teach you valuable skills. Being able to write something concisely for a broad audience, making it accessible, is something that appears often throughout my marketing jobs.

Another key skill is being able to research, as well as learning intercultural fluency. My undergraduate degree was in International Trade, and I feel like a ton of people would not be able to communicate or understand certain situations. The humanities from this angle allows you interpret and react to situations appropriately.

I also learned how to get big assignments done in a crunch. I was averaging about 500 pages a week throughout most of my semesters, on top of papers and other work, which meant that my time management skills got really good throughout all of this.

The theory work I learned also seriously helped with this blog. Not only did I have the opportunity to grow this blog throughout graduate school, turning it into a real business, but I had so much more theory to approach the kind of reading and consumption I was doing. That’s so valuable to me.

It opened up so many more opportunities.

As I mentioned in the previous section, my undergraduate degree is in International Trade. I ultimately decided on this humanities degree to give a broader skillset and less niche experience to my resume, especially as I look to federal government work in the near future. I didn’t want to be limited to fashion or international trade anymore.

That said, I was able to pick up a Smithsonian internship because I had marketing classes in undergrad, but was able to talk about history and the humanities throughout my resume and cover letter due to my master’s program. It also unlocked more internship opportunities simply because I was a student again.

There’s also something else key to my decision: I wanted to be eligible for State Department programs like the Boren, the Critical Language Scholarship, and the Fulbright again. I was named an alternate for a CLS in Bangla in 2023, a finalist for Korean in 2024, an alternate for a Boren in 2024, and a Fulbright awardee in 2024. That’s about $70,000 in trips, programs, and research just for the two programs I was named a finalist in.

In addition to that, it’ll give me NCE status back for government jobs. That means I have a leg up, and if I had never would have agreed to this master’s degree, I never would have had these opportunites.

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