grad schools
Oh, my.
This morning, the phone rang. The caller ID stated the name of a professor at one of the universities I applied to for speech graduate program. I knew. I knew, and started screeching, "NO!" waving my hands wildly, trying to tell my mother that I wasn't here, don't give me that damn phone, thank you very much.
This was the school where I took a class last fall. Where I knew professors personally, and two of my three letters of rec came from professors of their school. One, in fact, came from the man who called today, who taught that class I took. I was turned down in May.
Then came today. When mom handed me the phone, he and I made brief small talk and he came to the point of the call: someone dropped out of the program, my name was at the top of the waiting list, and the spot is mine if I desire. I have seven days to decide.
I've been investigating library science programs. Last night, I chose continuing education classes to take this fall, and planned an intro to library class to take in the winter. I have a job; the kid knows I'm working with her, the mom knows, the teacher knows, the principal knows, the board knows. I know. I'm very excited about this job. I can't have my job and this program.
Everyone's telling me to take the place. Everyone assumes that this is what I worked for and what I want so I should take it. I'm less confident, and my confidence is being further rattled by the fact that I'm in a minority of one in not jumping at this.
I put speech behind me months ago. I moved on. No one else did, it seems. And now it's here again and I don't know what to do with it. Saying no would be taking a great deal of power and firmly making the choice to put this very big part of my life behind me and tell everyone they were wrong about how they look at me and that's very scary. What if I say no, and nothing else works out? Then I've screwed myself over because I didn't choose something that everyone SAID was the right choice, and what kind of idiot am I? But what if this is my chance to put this behind me, realize that a grad school in my field asked me to join them, so of course a library grad school would do the same thing.
Do I go for the sure thing (speech, bizarrely enough, after all this time) or do I wait and try for something different? Something that maybe I will want to spend the rest of my life perfecting? Do I stay with the old and familiar, or push myself out there to try something new?
I had everything planned out. I was going to work with my girl this year, enter a grad program next year, work in libraries for a number of years and then maybe get a degree in teaching. And now everything is shot to hell and I don't know what to do and I feel like no matter what I do I'll disappoint someone and I'm going to start crying now.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Grad schools suck.
Comments
Wow. Talk about coming out of left field. I don't have any real advice for you, as I can't decide what *I* want to do for the rest of my life, but. I just saw The Notebook last night (have you seen it?), and there's a point where Ryan Gosling says to Rachel McAdams "What do YOU want? Not what does your mother want, or what does Lon want, or what do I want, but what do YOU want?" Or something along those lines, as she was in the "no matter what I choose, someone's going to be hurt" mode. He told her to picture her life in 30 years, and asked her what she saw. Told her to make that choice.
Yes, people you know will see "librarian" instead of "speech pathologist" if you change fields, but who cares? If going with speech will make you happy, if you think you invested all that time in it because it's what you're meant to do, then take the position. Your little girl will be disappointed, yes, but she'll bounce back. But if taking the speech position is the easy thing to do, just because you HAVE put so much time into it, and you really see yourself loving library science, don't do it just because it's what you were "supposed" to do. You're going to live your career for the next forty or so years, so you have to do what will make you happy.
And either way, you WERE accepted to a speech program. So you can look at that and say you accomplished something. You made it that far, and you took another option. No harm in that.
I know none of this is anything you didn't already know. But good luck with whatever you choose!
Posted by: Kate | August 5, 2004 09:42 AM