Every time I fill out a form about my educational background or turn in my resume, I cringe at the phrase: “some graduate work.” After graduating summa cum laude with my B.A., I was surprised to find myself dropping out of a master’s program. It was a huge disappointment for me and my professors (“chagrined” was the word my favorite professor used—ouch!).
It took me a few years to understand why I had been anchorless in grad school. Neither of my parents had ever graduated from college, much less gone to grad school, and the same was the case with my childhood friends. So when I filled out my application, I had no idea what I was applying for.
I thought grad school would be a continuation of college. To be honest, that’s partly why I signed up; I wanted to stay in the environment I was used to, wanted to put off deciding what to do with my life professionally. Bad strategy. I was at the same university in the same department, but grad school was totally different.
The workload was slightly heavier, sure, but the real problem was that I was suddenly in a professional academic environment. I was supposed to have this over-arching vision and interests for my career and I didn’t, because that’s what I was trying to avoid by going to grad school in the first place.
This crisis came home to me one day when my professor handed me a photocopied article. “Here. I thought you might like this,” he said, handing me an article with a title along the lines of “Syllable-final R-variation among upper-class women in Mexico.”
“Is this going to be on the test?” I asked.
“No, I just thought you’d find it interesting,” he answered with a friendly smile.
“Oh, so this is something I’ll need for comps,” I said, referring to the two-day-long exams we’d take at the end of the master’s program.
A frown flickered across his forehead. “No, no, it’s just for you to have,” he repeated. “That’s all.”
