wApr 9, 2007


I don't know what to title this, except "I should have gone to bed instead"

I was feeling really fine about everything, but then my dad had to go and urge me for the 20th time to start applying to grad schools (even though I don't want to go to grad school, and never have), and to not take any "time off" after I'm done with undergrad. What the hell? The only person I can think of in my entire extended family who has a master's degree is him, and my first-cousin-once-removed Molly, who will graduate this May. I mean, all the power to people who go to grad school, but I guess I just never knew it was something that was expected of me.

What if I just want to work? It's working or law school, and I don't want to jump into law school immediately after undergrad. Some people do, and that's fine, but I'm not ready yet - not financially, not emotionally, and probably not academically either. My GPA isn't horrible, but it's not going to set me apart from anyone either. If I work for a couple years, my work experience will become more important, and if I decide law school is for me, then I'll have a better chance of getting in anyway.

Additionally, I feel like law school is different than undergrad in that it's totally fine to jump into undergrad without knowing what you want to major in, or where you want to end up when you're done. But I don't feel like I could get through law school without having at least a vague outline of an end-goal in mind. A prize to set my sights on, a destination that I will sweat to get to. I don't want to go through all of the crap of studying my ass off for the LSAT, paying all of the money it costs to apply, and somehow making it through law school itself unless I know that I want it. To me, this makes sense. I think I've explained it at length to my dad at least four times, but I guess it hasn't sunk in yet. He never actually wants to talk about it, but will just say things like, "When you apply to grad school, you should do it right away. Don't take any time off." Like it's already decided that I want to go or something.

As for grad school - grad school is totally fine for some people, but I'm fairly certain it's not for me. Maybe I'll change my mind one day, but for now, I know it's not. I could probably handle taking classes, but having free reign over myself to research and develop a thesis for something no one's ever done before? I tend to suck at stuff like that. There's no way I could keep myself motivated enough to slog through research like that. Especially for my fields - for English, I feel like anything that hasn't already been done would be dreadfully boring; for Political Science, I sort of feel the same way. I feel like Poli Sci would be more interesting to me in terms of graduate research, but I still don't think I could motivate myself to research a certain topic for years.

I'm sick of all this crap where I'm supposed to try and figure out "who I am" and whatever. I know exactly who I am. There's just nothing that I want to do with myself. No job has ever really sounded appealing to me, and I only become more painfully aware of the ticking clock as time goes on. It never gets any easier, and I know that once it gets down to the wire, I'll just pick something and hurl myself headlong into it. It might not be the right thing, or the thing I'm good at it, or the thing that makes other people happy, but I know that once I pick something I won't turn back.

I guess it's not true that nothing has ever sound appealing to me. I've always wanted to be a writer, but sometime in my first couple of years of college, I guess I figured out that if that was what I really wanted, I would do it more often. And maybe one day I will. If I had a stable job and didn't have homework or OMGFUTURE to worry about, I would probably write in the evenings on the weekends. Maybe one day, I'll get good at it. Maybe one day I might be so good that I could quit my job and live off of the money I make from writing. But I know for certain that I'm not there right now, and that to get there, I need to support myself through other means.

Which leaves me with the "just pick something and pwn it" option. Which is probably what I'll end up doing.


Also, now when I turn on the space heater, part of it gives off sparks, so I've turned it off and unplugged it. It's 34 degrees outside, and it's freezing up here in my room.

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scribbled mystickeeper at 12:40 AM
1 comments
1 Comments:

Don't be discouraged. I know a lot of people seek college educations so they can "find their perfect job"--the one that makes them happy to be working.

It's entirely possible that you can have a job that simply pays the bills and isn't horrible, and you can come home at night and do the things you love to do without too many obstacles (ie, WRITING). In this case college is simply jumping through hoops, and I doubt grad school is a hoop required on the way to a non-specific, non-appalling yet non-exhilarating job.

It seems to me that grad school should only be pursued if there is utmost REASON for pursuing it. Undergrad always has the vague appeal of "it'll get me more $", but grad school is simply excess, a waste, if not required.

What I'm trying to say is that if you love writing you should seek a job that isn't going to interfere too much with your abilities to come home and write at night, and hopefully will offset the writing such that it will always remain a welcome break to come home; and that this type of career probably doesn't need grad school, despite parental pressures.

Good luck! Miss ya.

By Blogger Tas, at 10:43 AM, April 10, 2007  

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