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[red_lady]

I'm currently enrolled in a foreign language honors program at my university and am graduating this year. My language skills aren't good enough to get into a Masters program, which means I will have to study overseas. I feel like I'm getting older and older and that maybe grad school isn't the right route for me; I'm 24. How did you know whether it is worth it to go to grad school?

[scampster]

I'm currently enrolled in a foreign language honors program at my university and am graduating this year. My language skills aren't good enough to get into a Masters program, which means I will have to study overseas. I feel like I'm getting older and older and that maybe grad school isn't the right route for me; I'm 24. How did you know whether it is worth it to go to grad school?

I started at 24, but plenty of people start in their late 20s. Personally, I think that you can't possibly be passionate enough about your field of study to spend X number of years in grad school for it if you are feeling like you will be too old for it and you are only in your mid-20s. I had these pipe dreams of finishing before I was 30, and I was two years off the mark - if doing a PhD wasn't the only thing I could envision myself doing, then I'm not sure I would have had the stamina to spend 7+ years in school. I had been working for three years before going back to school and I needed to be doing something more challenging and that really allowed me to explore my interests. I think if you aren't sure, then it is good to take a few years off and work - that can really help you decide either way. And yes, you'll start grad school even later, but that is better than investing years in a degree you may never finish.

[mdwlark]

I knew it was right for me both times because I turned the applications in.  I thought to myself, "I actually mailed the applications. Hmmm.  I must really want to go."  If I hadn't wanted to, I would have found a way to sabotage my applications. 

People get graduate degrees in their 30's and 40's.  At 24, you are still a babe in arms.  You have 40 or 50 years of career ahead of you.  A few years for a degree?  A drop in the bucket.  Whether you get a graduate degree or not, going overseas is the way to learn a language, and what a great experience that will be.  Ignore your age.  Is this what you want to do? 

[arty_]

I went to grad school in my 30s and I'm a professor now, so I guess it worked out. I had ten years of bad jobs, while making excruciatingly slow progress on the things that really mattered to me, and I finally decided to take the plunge.

Only go to grad school if you REALLY REALLY want to go. It is too expensive, has too many lost opportunity costs, and is too difficult to go without a passionate desire.  You need to want the rigor and challenge, and be up to the "hazing." By hazing, I mean each discipline has its peculiar rituals and activities that can be dumb, time consuming, etc.

Assuming you really want to go, it's good to evaluate what you perceive the benefits might be. If you are primarily concerned with intellectual curiosity, grad school can be a great choice.  On the other hand, if you assume it will make you marketable for a job in the humanities, you will likely suffer disappointment.

However, if your language skills are iffy, why is a European grad school your only option? Spend a semester at Middlebury or something getting your language skills up to snuff.

[offthemarket]

I loved research in my discipline.  I didn't mind living very cheaply.  I knew I'd be happy for the rest of my life working on this even if it was never lucrative.

[glowdart]

I tried some other careers and hated them.   I kept coming back to this career and the professional equivalents of it, and I needed more training to do either well.  I also knew grad school would prepare me to either teach or work professionally, so I went in knowing that I had an out.

[prephd]

Because it's all I could see myself doing.

I had a near-miss with a creative writing MFA after undergrad. Then worked for a few years. Then went back for a (more practical) master's degree. Then worked for a few years. Then went back for the doctorate.

Still working.

I'll probably be 32 when I finish. Not that bad, and I've got several years' work experience to boot.

[ticklemepink]

I'm the only one in the academia of my friends.  My friends are in law, government, business, medicine, etc, etc, and I've talked to them about their work (n jobs and school).  They enjoy what they're doing but their stories weren't interested enough for me to imagine being in social work or public health, or whatever.

I decided to do graduate school straight out of undergrad because I was having too much fun with my research in my senior year of college and wasn't ready to let go.

Now I'm doing my MA thesis.... and I'm still having too much fun to think about leaving academia so... here goes my PhD applications!

And you know grad school is where you want to be when you get other people pumped and excited about you being in grad school because you're happy where you are!

[watermarkup]

The folks who stuck around to finish their Ph.D. in my foreign language program tended to be those who weren't coming straight from their B.A. schools. Going overseas to think things over is an excellent idea. If you're worried about your fluency in your language, it's an even better idea. Bouncing around outside the U.S. for a while is a not uncommon background for academics in the foreign languages. If you haven't been overseas before, some Ph.D. programs aren't going to accept you, even with good language skills are. Why don't you think your language skills aren't good enough, by the way? What areas do you feel weak in?

I started grad school--after a year abroad, by the way--at 25 and finished at 32. You've got at least a decade and probably more before your age becomes a factor.

Be sure to look into how the job market is in your language, though. If you're in Arabic, the world is your pony. If you're in French, well, not so much.

For grad school in a foreign language, there are two basic questions you have to ask yourself: Do you really love research? You can thoroughly loathe writing interpretations of Dostoyevsky or Dante or whatever, but is there some kind of research that you find so engrossing that you ignore food, friends, and TV?

The second question is: Do you love teaching Portuguese 101? Or, can you learn to love teaching it? Because if you get lucky, you're going to be teaching a lot of it.

I finally knew that grad school was the right choice after I finished my Ph.D. and started teaching in my first visiting position, when I discovered that I actually like what I had been trained to do quite a bit.

[tuxedo_cat]

One of my college professors made me faint with desire.  I didn't really need to think about it much more than that.

[red_lady]

I finally decided to ask another professor to write me a letter of recommendation. After I made the decision to ask for one, I thought somewhere along the lines of "I actually mailed the applications. Hmmm.  I must really want to go" like mdwlark. I mean, I was so close last night to asking my other professor to not write me the reference letter. Then I woke up this morning and thought "I better e-mail Professor X about the reference letter."
When I think about this being my last year in this field, I'm sad. I think "Oh, I better ask all my questions then because I won't have another chance to ask these questions after this year." And wouldn't you know it? I always have more and more questions. "The more you read, the less you know" seems to work with me.

I've talked to someone about the career prospects in this field. It's HUGE. The field started becoming popular not even half a century age so there's still a lot people are trying to figure out. The first generation of people who studied this field are going to retire by the time I get out there.

To answer watermarkup's questions, I LOVE research. I love reading more about the areas I'm interested in. Heck, I'm even interested in reading things that aren't interesting to me to see if I'll be more interested in the topic if I was shown a different side of it. I would LOVE to teach Language 101. I'm actually super interested in the linguistics aspect of the field even though literature is more my field of choice. There are seldom days when I tell myself "I'd rather go out to play than read this book/article." It just doesn't happen with me.

I think I'm super concerned about grad school because my transcript is not very good at all. I've only really gotten my act together in the last two years and I've been in school for more years than I would like people to know. I'm afraid to get rejected my universities because when they see my transcript, they're going to see how bad my record was. Rejection is hard. I'm kind of being immature about this by thinking "I'm going to reject you first before you reject me."

[msparticularity]

I've talked to someone about the career prospects in this field. It's HUGE. The field started becoming popular not even half a century age so there's still a lot people are trying to figure out. The first generation of people who studied this field are going to retire by the time I get out there.

I would like to gently suggest that you take a look at the current job listings, and find out what the hiring situation has been like over the last 4-5 years. The idea that masses of Boomers are about to retire and that this will open up a lot of jobs is a myth that has been perpetrated by the media and by a lot so-called career guidance counselors for years--and it's a myth.

I think I'm super concerned about grad school because my transcript is not very good at all. I've only really gotten my act together in the last two years and I've been in school for more years than I would like people to know. I'm afraid to get rejected my universities because when they see my transcript, they're going to see how bad my record was. Rejection is hard. I'm kind of being immature about this by thinking "I'm going to reject you first before you reject me."

Some (many?) grad programs will evaluate applicants both by overall undergrad GPA, and also by the last 60 credits. This is because a WHOLE lot of people have difficulty actually settling down and doing good work; they find themselves under-prepared in some areas, change majors, struggle with illness and/or depression for a semester or two, experience personal and family crises, and so on. If you have someone recommending you who can specifically speak to this, and point out that once you matured you have been an exemplary student, that will be taken quite seriously.

[sarhajojobean]

I am in my first semester in graduate school and it is definitely a lot of work.  I work full time and go to school full time and I can honestly say that if wasn't something I was sure I wanted to pursue, there's no way I would be succeeding in my courses.

I am also 24 and for me the decision to attend graduate school was out of necessity.  I really dislike the feeling of constant guilt that I should be working on my academics rather than having more time to myself and having fun, especially since I work full time to support myself, but I know that I needed to go back to school to advance my career.  My necessity was this: my undergraduate degree simply is not enough education to be considered for the careers that I want.  I have my BA in psychology and am currently working towards my MS in Counseling.

I took two years off after I completed my undergraduate degree and worked (and still am working) at a residential treatment facility for kids with both cognitive delays as well as mental and emotional disturbances.  Working there has not only helped me narrow down the things I am interested in but also has helped me decide the things I really have no desire to pursue (an equally important thing to know).

It seems to me that you are very unsure of whether graduate school is right for you.  I would highly suggest putting it off until you are absolutely sure and just work for a while.  You'll get to know yourself better and determine what it is that you really want to be doing.  You don't want to realize one day that you've been working tirelessly at a graduate program and have paid an obscene amount of money for only to discover that it's not a good fit for you.  And there's nothing wrong with pursuing a graduate degree later on.  You are never too old to learn.

[henry_adams]

Some people have a great time in grad school, but some do not.  Here's a link to a recent article by someone who didn't have a great time: http://chronicle.com/article/Academic-Bait-and-Switch-Part/48936/

You might want to take a look at it.

[bread_pirate_naan]

Some people have a great time in grad school, but some do not.  Here's a link to a recent article by someone who didn't have a great time: http://chronicle.com/article/Academic-Bait-and-Switch-Part/48936/

You might want to take a look at it.

Thanks!  That was fun.  You must read this if you are in lit/lang.  People in my neighborhood complain about colonization from people with this training, because they seem to think we also put up with that BS.  Some do, some don't.  But!  If you are in the humanities, you should definitely get yourself hazed by a literary critic.  If you are lucky, they will have learned and teach more in their fancypants program than how to play along.  And, they will not be your PhD advisor.

I liked this refrain. "Perhaps Dr. Quentin had revealed the passwords and secret handshakes after all."  Yes, and the writer heard the exoteric teaching, not the esoteric one.  Maybe it will become more obvious later,* or it is up in those frequencies only dogs and batsh!tters can hear.    Nothing but love for the rightest smartness literary types.  But, if you are going to join a cult grad program, you should probably know more and have something say about your interest in the faculty, especially your advisor, other than they are at the Vatican "Elite National University."

Translation:  The author speaks the truth, but is a tool.

*Oops, it didn't.  That guy's got MLASTAR's job.  I'll bet he is a grammar fundamentalist/fetishist to the bone.