I remember my father telling me that the best career decision he ever made was getting his PhD. He said it had given him endless opportunities and it had increased his earning potential in a way that nothing else could have. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same thing about my master’s degree.
While I’m glad I earned a graduate degree and I don’t regret it, it has not had a significant impact on my career or my quality of life. I haven’t found additional job opportunities and I haven’t earned any more money than my colleagues without master’s degrees.
It’s been almost six years since I graduated from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. The school is considered one of the most prestigious and competitive—if not the most—in the nation for journalism. The work is beyond rigorous, the curriculum is comprehensive, and the professors are truly inspiring.
It was one of the most exhausting, yet fascinating years of my life. It was also a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity because I had earned a major scholarship and the timing was perfect since I was in my twenties, unmarried, and without children.
Deciding to go to graduate school is a huge decision that has the potential to affect the rest of your life. After all, you could find a fulfilling new profession, enhance your existing career, or end up unemployed with tens of thousands of dollars in debt. Okay, the last one probably isn’t likely, but it was especially scary job-searching just months after 9/11 in a rocky economy for a few of my classmates who were saddled with massive student loans.
Graduate school can be a great opportunity to shift gears, and many people use it to change careers completely. I remember my class at Columbia had people who had been doctors, lawyers, teachers, and even a ballerina.
I wasn’t switching careers entirely. I had already been working as a newspaper reporter for several years, including a stint at a small-town daily, a couple years at a big-city business paper, and an internship at a newspaper in Asia.
I was passionate about journalism and I couldn’t imagine ever wanting to do anything else. But I did want to do more. I wanted to work for bigger news outlets and I wanted to know how to do more than simply write newspaper stories. I had never taken a journalism class in college, so I liked the idea of learning more about the craft of reporting and writing. I was also intrigued by television news and thought I might like to move into that industry some day.
A few months into the program, I decided that I wanted to focus on television, so I learned to shoot video, write for television, produce TV news stories, and even do on-camera reporting and anchoring. It was challenging and interesting, and I imagined an exciting career after graduation.
There was just one problem. I really didn’t know enough about the field I was studying. I had visited CNN and talked with people who worked as TV reporters and producers (oddly, a few friends working in television cautioned me against the move). But I realize now my mistake was that since I had never worked in the business, I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into. I should have done an internship or even taken a week off to shadow someone in the industry before I decided it was something I wanted to pursue.
Instead, I got my training through an expensive graduate degree and plunged into the job market with my resume tape looking for an on-air reporter job. I landed a gig as a reporter and weekend anchor at a small station serving some small communities in West Virginia and Virginia. I soon moved on to a bigger station in Charleston, South Carolina.
