Grad School

Well, I'm leaning toward leaving the business. I hate to do it. But it's not as if I have a choice at this point. I'll still do some freelance work in newspapers and magazines. But I need a steady income, something I can rely on.

I have been communicating with a friend from high school who now is the dean of the English department at a small college. He said he made $40,000 last year teaching online courses. That was in addition to his regular duties.

So I'm thinking that might be the way to go. I'm going to tackle my masters over the next 24 months and then consider going for my doctorate. I don't know whether I'll settle into the university world or use my degree to open some other door. But it's time to get serious about my future.

The problem is that I don't know where to start.

So I'm looking for tips, advice, pointers, etc.

Probably the only question I have now is whether some of the requirements for grad school are set in stone. I see one that says I need to have taken a college foreign language course. I took three years of French in high school, and my university didn't make me take a foreign language course. So I'm hoping I can jump through that hoop rather than spending a year trying to cross off a bunch of a shit before they'll accept me. From the looks of things, my first order of business is to pass the GRE, get my college transcripts, seek out a few letters of recommendation and submit my enrollment application.

 

I'm right there with ya, man. I'm weighing going back and get a masters in visual design to go with my journalism degree, with an emphasis in online development. The first step is to take (and hopefully pass) the GRE and then decide where in the world I want to go.

Then what to do for income while I'm back in school. I've got a lot of legwork to do, but I figure it's worth it in the long run if I'm able to get a stable job outside of newspapers.

From what I've heard from a few people who have taken the GRE it takes a good amount of studying just to do decent on it.

Then, I remember back when I was getting my bachelors all the professors I asked seemed to agree that if you're getting your masters it's not a good idea to go to the same school. (Mostly, I think, because they said much of the material is the same from the bachelors programs.) Unless it's in a whole different field.

 

I finished my Master's Degree recently, IS. In my program, there were certain set courses that needed to be taken (only a couple though) and other than that, I was free to take what courses I wanted as I sort of defined my own fields (unfortunately, sometimes the course selection wasn't the greatest, but that's another story entirely).

I needed to pass a foreign language reading exam, which wasn't the easiest, considering I hadn't taken Spanish in a few years (no matter how much I had taken, I still needed to pass the exam). My degree hasn't taken me where I want to be yet, but I still think it was worth it.

 

I expect to have that degree in the next couple years, too. It's been a professional goal of mine since I started college.

 

Ditto here. I'm headed to grad school in '09 for my master's in journalism.

That's all I got. No tips, mostly because I'm in the same boat you are.

 

I'm going to work on my master's tonigh ... oh wait.

Make sure the degree will pay off, both in time and in money, since chances are most of us thinking about grad school are borrowing for it.

 

How do you know it'll pay off?
My thinking is by going back to school I can delay jumping back into the god awful job market at least for a few years. At the same time I'll be building valuable skills that will help me branch out into other fields after I'm finished. It doesn't duplicate real-world experience outside of newspapers, but you gotta start somewhere I figure.

 

I got lucky by finding a place where I could be a TA and basically be paid to go. The only stuff I had to pay were fees, so I only have one outstanding loan, and thankfully it's not too much. Unfortunately, a lot of places don't offer those kinds of deals. I might've gone somewhere else, but it was too good to pass up.

 

Starting my Master's in January, the great thing about my school is that I don't have to take the GRE. I did and did bad so I would never be able to get in anywhere good. I am going back for elementary education.

 

I'm preparing (test prep kinda stuff) to take my GRE and my LSAT. I do well on standardized tests, and really and truly my idiot self should have taken the 169 I got on the LSAT coming out of Ohio and gone to law school then.

I'm hoping to ride out the recession while in grad school starting next fall. We'll see.

 

Wow. I sort of wish there weren't so many others in the same situation. It's depressing.

I spoke with my wife about things today on our way home from a long vacation. I told her I considered law school, teaching, a master's and then the corporate world, continued freelancing with hope for a rebound, a hard science. I have lots of interests. But not one of them is my passion. I only have one, and it's journalism. If I can't stay in that world, any plan is just as fine as another. I'm not looking for extreme wealth. I wish I could use my writing talents. If I can, though, it appears it might be as a secondary thing.

I need to pick a path and follow it. There's not much time, and there's not much room for error. I figure teaching has the best job security and the shortest learning curve. It's my understanding that I can get a teaching job tomorrow and take some night classes to gain certification. It's a three-year certification process. Meanwhile, I can also take a few classes toward my master's degree as I go through that certification process. So, my hope is that I'll have a master's degree in three years and certification. Then I'll have the option of teaching some college classes, too.

Of course, there's a little budget problem in the surrounding school districts. So I might not be able to find a job for a year or so. This next several months might be the craziest, most overwhelming of my life.

 

I was thinking about going into grad school to get a master's so I could teach at the college level.

I'm thinking of teaching journalism, but I also have one day's English 101 lecture mapped out in my brain.