On Graduate School
Two weeks into my master’s program, I feel like I belong.
When I first started applying to graduate schools, picking out where I wanted to go, I began to realize what was important to me in my life. One of the most critical things was that I didn’t want to leave home again, especially after spending time in New York City. New York humbled me, taught me about the meaning of art and grit in order to survive, but I didn’t want to struggle for several years. So I packed up my bags and returned home. And two years after I returned home, a year out of college, I crossed every single program off of my graduate school applications except three.
One was a safety: Towson. One was a place I had core fond memories at: Iowa. The final one was my dream PhD program, with professors I felt like were interesting and right up my alley in terms of research: Hopkins. Hopkins was a long shot, but I had faith in my application and sent it off with recommendations. I was confident in Iowa. I believed in my work and portfolio, thought that it was different and experimental. I was clean rejected from both. Not even an interview or waitlist. So I panicked and applied to Towson, got in almost immediately.
My last choice ended up being the right one.
I recieved a $1,000 scholarship from Towson, bumping down my first semester tuition down to $4,300. Most master’s programs I would have gone into debt doing, but I didn’t take a single loan in order to go to Towson. I pay my tuition all by myself each semester, supplemented by my freelancing jobs, a job I took on campus, and my parents chipping in for my gas money once a week. I bought a car right before I came here, got my license, and now I commute thirty minutes to campus one way. I take three graduate seminars, then the rest of my free time is spent writing essays and doing research.
The classes I ended up taking I loved. They were discussion based, and the readings on theory and history. I took a class in Power, and we’re discussing South Asia, the Caribbean, and Africa through the lens of local theorists and global ones. Another class I’m taking, Colonialism and Decolonization, is led by a Native American history professor. I’m absolutely fascinated by the readings in those texts, as I never had a chance to learn about native history in school.
One of the largest civilizations in the early world was Cahokia, located right out of St. Louis. Despite the mythology saying that the Americans were empty when the Europeans arrived, they were, in fact, covered in different kinds of civilizations and societies that were simply erased off of the map. It’s so cool to learn about these people and how the law affected them so deeply, as well as the concept of settler colonialism globally.
Not only am I learning so much more about the world, I’m slowly starting to realize I could not handle a PhD at this stage in my life. Those who know me in real life know that I am a perfectionist and somewhat of a workaholic. I worry about money a lot, and now I’m realizing instead of heading straight into a doctoral program, I can stop, make some money at a job, and always go back. I’m learning to value breaks and rest ever since my gap year, and I don’t have to always push on the gas and jump to the next greatest thing.
Making wise financial decisions for a master’s.
Most people will look at my degree and wonder why the heck I basically got a degree in liberal arts with a global focus. They say I’m not going to get a job or that I will have to go into a PhD program, but little to they know is that the government actually has on a lot of their hiring forms nowadays that they want people with a background in Global Humanities. It is absolutely critical to have a perspective of the world and the systems in which we see it, but, at the same time, most master’s programs will leave you broke. A local school I looked at priced their master’s degree at $40,000 a year with little to no financial aid. I am paying a mere fraction of that.
I mentioned in the last section that this was the better decision, and a key part of this is the finance aspect. In a PhD program, I would have to spend so much of my time to research, and thus my writing, career, and even this blog would get shoved to the side. In August and July, I had to take a break from this blog alone from how much my work was consuming my life, so to have to add the stress of a PhD program it would have wrecked me not only emotionally, but financially and career-wise. I would not be able to do some of the things I am doing so far, and I don’t think I would have liked to sacrifice it at this point in my life.
Sometimes the path laid out for us isn’t the right one. Everyone expected me to go to Harvard, including my professors. When I went to my school in undergrad, my teachers at my high school were shocked I went there. Now that was a no-brainer, since I had horrendous grades in high school due to depression and I would not have gotten in anywhere else higher. But now, I’ve quote-on-quote made it brains wide and somehow I am defying everyone’s expectations by being in graduate school.
All of this is a lesson in cultivating personal happiness. And, at the end of the day, I think I’m finally becoming happy.
