Uncovered: Life Beyond
Join the conversations of Rebecca and Naomi, two ex-Amish Mennonite women who jumped the proverbial fence in their younger years and later experienced college as first-gen, non-traditional students. They discuss pursuing formal education while raising a family, navigating the hidden curriculum of academia, and other dimensions of reimagining a life beyond high-demand religion. Send your questions to uncoveredlifebeyond@gmail.com.
Uncovered: Life Beyond
40. Beyond the Brochure: What First-Gens Need to Know about Grad School
How did Naomi stumble into one of the most defining experiences of her life? In this episode Rebecca gets the scoop on Naomi's (scenic) route to grad school as well as the good, the bad, and the unexpected that happened along the way. They discuss Naomi's inner struggles over combining motherhood and grad school, the impact on her children, as well as the activism she found at this intersection in her life.
Along the way, Naomi explains some of the distinguishing features of advanced degrees such as time to degree, how students are typically funded, when prestige matters (and when it doesn't), and a host of other important things to consider when deciding which program is right for you--or whether the reality of grad school will be worth the benefits.
As Naomi discovered, success in graduate school involves much more than just good grades and perfect attendance. Navigating the politics of graduate school can be as complex as the coursework itself. As for any institution, universities are minefields of gender dynamics, academic hierarchies, and unspoken rules. With personal anecdotes, she reveals the importance of networking, the ups and downs of "passing," and, ultimately, her reflection on where her seven years of grad school have ultimately brought her.
Links we mentioned in the show (or should have):
Graduate Study for the Twenty-First Century: How to Build an Academic Career in the Humanities (G. Semenza)
The Professor Is In (Karen Kelsky)
Academia is a Cult (TEDx Talk by Karen Kelsky)
Outline of Academic Disciplines (Wikipedia)
Dear Committee Members (Julie Schumacher)
The Shakespeare Requirement (Julie Schumacher)
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This is.
Speaker 2:Rebecca, and this is Naomi. We're 40-something moms and first cousins who know what it's like to veer off the path assigned to us.
Speaker 1:We've juggled motherhood, marriage, college and career, as we questioned our faith traditions while exploring new identities and ways of seeing the world.
Speaker 2:Without any maps for either of us to follow. We've had to figure things out as we go and appreciate that detours and dead ends are essential to the path Along the way, we've uncovered a few insights we want to share with fellow travelers.
Speaker 1:We want to talk about the questions we didn't know who to ask and the options we didn't know we had.
Speaker 2:So, whether you're feeling stuck or already shaking things up, we are here to cheer you on and assure you that the best is yet to come. Welcome to Uncovered Life.
Speaker 1:Beyond.
Speaker 2:Hello everyone. Welcome back to Uncovered Life Beyond. This is Naomi. This is Rebecca.
Speaker 1:So today we have Naomi in the hot seat and I'm kind of excited about this. We're going to talk all about graduate school Me too.
Speaker 2:Hopefully I won't get too triggered. School Me too. Hopefully I won't get too triggered, because you know, grad school is wonderful and also, as I look back on it, there are lots of triggering moments too. So hopefully, hang with us through the nuance. Well, hopefully everyone will hear the nuance in that and not just take one, one of those sides of it, because it was both awesome and awful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I believe it. I believe it. So, to start us off, tell us a little bit about where you were at with your life and family when you started grad school. How did that influence your decision and some of the things you did or didn't do?
Speaker 2:Okay, well, first let me say that in retrospect I realized I did everything the wrong way and the fact that I've landed where I am. I feel I count myself as extremely lucky to have landed here, because I mean and I think this is a really common thing for, especially for those of us who are first gen or not sure you know what questions to ask, not sure you know what our options are and and so yeah, so just putting that disclaimer out, please don't anybody take my story as a guide. Learn from my mistakes, but also just know that I'm not telling my story with any sense that this is a path anyone should follow, but I will be happy to share what I learned and what I wish I had known Well on that note, though I think for many of us who have left and, like you said, are first generation students, most of us aren't necessarily doing it the right way, or the best way, or the most easy way.
Speaker 1:Right, correct. At this point. Typically, ideal isn't necessarily a part of the equation anymore. You just kind of are in the suck it up buttercup mode and make it happen, however it needs to happen.
Speaker 2:You are absolutely right. That's so true, so true. So where was I? Well, I had started undergrad at 25. So I was, I'd already gotten a late start, it felt. It felt like I did, although I know that's that's all relative and we all do things in different timeframes.
Speaker 2:Okay, so four years later graduated, I was married and we moved to central Missouri for my now ex's job, and I took about two years between undergrad and grad school, and during that time I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do. So, a of all, I was learning the hard reality that the days of an English degree or any degree making you more marketable was really out of touch. Advice that I had been following, and I did have some ideas, and I also knew that there wasn't much. I couldn't be job searching during my last semester or last year of college because I wasn't sure where we were going to end up and where we ended up was completely unfamiliar. So I just waited till we got there, and then it took a while to find something, because, guess what, In rural Missouri, people are not begging for English majors, so Not a lot of options.
Speaker 2:Are not begging for English majors, so not a lot of options. No, no, and so I ended up. I did a few months at a nonprofit and I spent most of the time working as a legal secretary.
Speaker 2:And it paid as well as anything that I was exploring, you know, any of the other options I had. It wasn't great, but it was as well as anything I could get. I also got a little bit of experience interning at the state capitol during that time. So there were a number of things that were. They were all learning experiences, all worthwhile learning experiences, but not necessarily fun learning experiences. But at least I wasn't finding my place with any of those. So during those two years I was also exploring grad school options.
Speaker 2:I thought about law school. I took the LSAT and my scores were not exciting. I did get waitlisted for a law school but I just, yeah, I ended up deciding not to do that. I thought about other fields. I mean, I really enjoyed my English undergrad, thought about sociology because I was interested in some of the kind of cultural, social concerns, and I was also thinking about English because I liked the writing. I enjoyed the writing, I enjoyed the research part of literary studies, but I couldn't decide which of those two I was most interested in.
Speaker 2:Oh, and I should say too, I was also looking at other jobs at this time and I was looking at other options.
Speaker 2:I was looking at whether or not I should get a paralegal certificate and continue in the legal field. So I realize now the right way to get into the right way the quote unquote right way to find a graduate program is to identify the field that you want to be in and then look at the programs, look at the scholars in the field, find out kind of where you think your niche might be and then pursue that location, pursue that college or university you know, rather than looking like, like you say, I mean, this was, this is what we as non-traditional students often do. We're graphically bound, we have. We just got his new job and so we were going to stay there a while and so, even if I had explored other universities, we weren't necessarily going to move there. I mean, that wasn't the plan. So for me, grad school was one option among others. So if I had found a job I really liked, I would have done that instead that makes sense.
Speaker 2:And the advice, and so also we're looking at so 2006. So it's just a couple. You know the economy was already starting to tank a little. Yeah, I mean it didn't really hit for another year or two, but it was. It was heading that way and so jobs weren't plentiful. But it was heading that way and so jobs weren't plentiful and I loved school and so grad school was really tempting for those reasons.
Speaker 2:So as I was looking at the English program there at the University of Missouri, I saw that they had, without knowing about rhetoric and composition I'm sure I heard about it somewhere but it didn't register but what I saw was that this was a subfield of English that focused on writing and research about how we learn to write, and then also there was also an element of cultural critique in it, in the rhetoric. So this like combined the things I loved and you know, and then I was learning about how you get funding and assistantships when you go into these programs. I was like that sounds more fun than a job. Hello, again, terrible, a terrible reason to go into grad school.
Speaker 2:But I applied and they offered me a really nice fellowship and let me say this too, my GRE scores were not impressive. So let me just say anyone who takes one of those standardized tests like LSAT or GRE or something like that and gets substandard scores, just know it's not the end of the road. Substandard scores just know it's not the end of the road. You might have to try a different path, but I still got offered a really nice fellowship even what that means, what a fellowship means it's like a scholarship. So on top of getting paid for teaching courses while I was in graduate school, I also got a stipend on top of that.
Speaker 1:Okay and so. So it's pretty typical for grad students to be teaching as well, correct?
Speaker 2:Well, let's, that's a really important question and I want to get to that and I have it a little further down in the notes because I definitely want to talk about what is the difference? There's kind of two kinds of two buckets of graduate programs, as it were.
Speaker 2:And that's an important part of it. So, anyway, this is kind of getting along. So some other things that were weighing on my mind I was almost 30. I was reading all these articles in the news about how fertility tanks after 30.
Speaker 2:And I knew that going into any humanities program was not a quick ticket to a good job. I mean, I knew that academia it didn't feel like a secure career path for me, so, but I wanted to study those things, I mean, and I also there were. So I also wanted to have kids and I realized like, well, I knew it'd be really really hard to have children while I was in grad school and I knew that also going to grad school and humanities program was no guarantee of anything. But I finally came to the conclusion like I could end up almost 40, which is about what I would be. So this is I was looking at a seven year program. So I could end up almost 40 and have no career and no kids. Like I could give myself every give, give everything to grad school and end up without kids and no career. And let me tell you that's in some ways, that's more likely than not for someone going into a humanities area of grad school, and I don't say that because it's a bad idea, just that that's the reality of it's, the unfortunate reality. But the other thing was like, well, could I do that and have kids, so that at least, if the career doesn't work out at the end, I at least have kids, I'd have a family.
Speaker 2:So that's what I ended up, that's what I decided to do. Good for you. Well, I don't know. I mean I feel lucky for how it has ended up. But again I landed in a subfield of the humanities, the one subfield probably, I mean there might be a few others, but I don't know of them, I'm sure but one of the very, very few subfields in the humanities where the job prospects were relatively good. I mean, yeah, and I didn't know that when I selected it. So again, don't do what I did, I know what you're getting into.
Speaker 1:When you talk about humanities, talk to us a little bit about what that means, specifically in academia.
Speaker 2:Yes, thank you. Yes, yes, yes. Yes, the term liberal arts is kind of this broad term that covers fields like English, history, sociology, languages, you know, religious studies, and then there's also the arts and also sciences like biology, chemistry, geography, geology, right, all those. So these are these broad fields of study of a particular subject and they're kind of these traditional fields of study. They've been around for a long time. So that that's, the humanities is one section of that, and the humanities is like english, philosophy, what else? Why am I blanking uming? And I should just say, too, these categories are fuzzy. English is definitely humanities, but when you go to any institution and you see what all they include under humanities, it's not necessarily going to be the exact same thing as another institution, so that's-.
Speaker 1:There's variables within it.
Speaker 2:There's variables, for sure, and I mean anyone who is really wanting to understand this and maybe we can put a link in the show notes of a diagram that kind of shows the relationship between these different fields, and it will make a lot more sense then. So that's so. Yeah, so humanities, things like English. Does that answer the question? Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, I think of those graduate programs as one bucket. The other bucket are like the pre-professional programs or like applied fields, like nursing medical school, physical therapy, like nursing medical school physical therapy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, although like psychology. So this is where it gets a little fuzzy too, because psychology would be a social science, so in that way it's like one of the liberal arts, right? But then when we're talking counseling yeah, that now we're talking professional, yeah, and even within psychology you'll have a PhD program in psychology. Research-based is going to look very different from what a program in counseling, like a master's degree in counseling, is going to look just very different In terms of what you do, in terms of the commitment expected, in terms of what your job prospects are afterward. It's just very, very different, even though there's lots of topical overlap.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:So how did I decide to do it? It worked out, yeah, and I was kind of pretending, I realize now I was assuming I had all kinds of privilege that well, I kind of did but kind of didn't. I mean it worked out. So that speaks to some of that privilege that I had. I was able to succeed, but also I didn't know the risk I was taking, right, yeah, I wouldn't recommend anyone else do what I did, unless they are independently wealthy and they don't need a paycheck and they don't need to save for retirement. So that's that's that.
Speaker 1:That's that, and so your specific program was seven years commitment.
Speaker 2:What? Well, yes, yes and no, so it was. The program I applied to was a master's, phd, and so graduate school encompasses master's and PhD. So the expected timeline was that it would take two years to get the master's degree and then five years to do the PhD. And the benefit of doing this was that I didn't have to then go apply. You know, once I finished my master's program I didn't have to go reapply.
Speaker 2:But if I had successfully completed that, I could continue that. And that worked out really well for me, because my daughter was born my second year of grad school. And guess what? Pregnancy, childbearing, big energy sucks, because that's important work. And graduate school was designed for wealthy white males who have families supporting them, okay, so you can see the tension there. So definitely not me. And so, all that to say, I didn't get my thesis finished on time, but what I was able to do was that third year start PhD coursework while I was still finishing up my master's degree. So technically it took me three years to get my master's degree done instead of two, but it still worked out to seven, seven years total.
Speaker 1:So you played catch up and it worked, yeah. So what did you find you enjoyed most about grad school?
Speaker 2:This is a good question, because there was so much I did enjoy the opportunity to read, like when you know. This is the cool thing about going to college is like your quote unquote job. You know what you're signed up for is reading things you know, and when you're in grad school you get to focus on things that are on topics that are of particular interest to you, right, and so on the Enneagram I usually come out as a three, but sometimes I wonder if I'm really a five and there's something about whatever fiveness I have was really gratified by those deep dives. I made friends and I never got to spend as much time and develop those relationships as much as I would have liked. But thankfully Facebook it was just coming on the scene then, and so that's allowed me to at least keep somewhat in contact. There were colleagues that I really admired, and so one of the trade-offs of having kids is that the recommendation was you can do grad school in one hobby. That's it.
Speaker 2:The reality is, you will not have time for anything other than that, and so my hobby was kids, and so that did not leave much time at all for socializing, and I really regret that. I wish I could have learned to know so many of my colleagues better. That said, the new experiences, you know, opportunities to hear. So at big universities they'll have people come speak. So I heard people like Madeleine Albright and, oh, barack Obama came, he was, he was campaigning, and he came to our campus and I wanted to go, but then I was five months pregnant or something. Anyway, I was just concerned about being in a massive crowd of people without access to bathrooms. Yeah, so we ended up not going, but but we got t shirts. I'll always regret I didn't go see Maya Angelou when she came.
Speaker 1:That's amazing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so that's. It's all the things that come with it, like all the things that are not technically part of the program.
Speaker 1:The bonuses.
Speaker 2:The bonuses are really awesome. Some really good advice that I was given early on or that we were given early on was that in the program was don't try to predict which field you should go into because of what the world's going to look like in seven years when you graduate. Instead, focus on something that you care about so much that, even if you end up with no job, at the end you say, okay, that was worth it.
Speaker 1:That still sounds scary, though, because some of us need a paycheck.
Speaker 2:Exactly, exactly, and that was good advice. I mean, that was because you know, if you don't have a trust fund, where does that leave you and also, during those seven years you're not saving up for retirement.
Speaker 1:Right yeah.
Speaker 2:And there's no money for savings Right. But I think the advice is good in terms of how to approach it and this is why it's an expensive hobby. Someone who is in undergrad and who is considering grad school, my advice is only get as much education, like formal education, as you absolutely need to reach your dreams, unless unless it's like you're doing a writing program, an MFA program or you know a writing program, just for the sheer personal benefit of it. I think that's the ideal way to do college. Just do it for the fun of it. I mean, that's how, that's the best way to do it, but most of us can't afford to do that, so that went off on a rabbit trail. Bring me back.
Speaker 1:So tell me, what surprised you most about grad school.
Speaker 2:I think what I was least prepared for so in that sense it surprised me was the politics, because I think the reason I did so well, one of the reasons I did so well in undergrad is I'm a really good rule follower a lot of the time until I'm not, and then up through undergraduate, following directions will really get you far. It'll get you good grades and those grades will open doors. But once you finish undergrad, being a rule follower puts you at the back of the line. Interesting and also interesting, is that gender, how gender plays into this. And yes, women get more bachelor's degrees than men now in the last what decade or so. But guess who still has the high paying jobs? Not women. So men still out earn women, even though women are getting more degrees.
Speaker 2:So what I was least prepared for were the politics of it, because the politics managing the politics, navigating the politics of graduate school, of academia, is not about rule following, it's about relationships. I wasn't prepared for how much illogical behavior that I would witness in a place that taught me how to think logically and in retrospect, this is just institutions. This is what institutions do Right, and people within them exhibit that same behavior. And and also like. We're all human and, whether we deny our illogical behavior or not, we are not logical animals. Right, we might like to imagine that, we might aspire to be that, but, but the reality is no, that's not how it works, and so things that really disappointed me were moments and let me say it's moments, it's not the whole entire thing, but there were moments where I would hear people make snap judgments about other people, and maybe it was other people who you know, maybe I identified with some aspect of their identity.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I hear them make snap judgments about them, and that taught me to shut up real quick about my background. Unless, I felt let me rephrase that Maybe not shut up, but at least be really careful when you talk about, Because I saw people or at least I heard about snap judgments being made that were maybe the exact opposite of what was appropriate in the situation but because of the snap judge that kind of thing, so that I wasn't prepared for that.
Speaker 2:Again, this is not everybody, this is not the whole time, but it did happen, and it happened more than I expected.
Speaker 1:And it definitely influenced the way you presented yourself Totally totally, which here and here's the thing again.
Speaker 2:when you fracture yourself Totally, totally. And here's the thing again. When you fracture yourself like that and you cut off part of your identity to fit in with the present, it will give you a certain amount of success, but it also isolates you in a certain way.
Speaker 2:Because people don't really know all of who you are, they just know that one side of you. And I remember talking with one of my friends there in grad school who was well, she was also non-traditional, she's from Jamaica and she taught me how to make this amazing ginger lime punch or something it's not alcoholic, but anyway, it was so good I had her come over to my house and show me how to make it.
Speaker 2:Anyway, she was great and we would study together. Sometimes I was talking with her about my background and her experience, of course, was being a Black woman in academia in a very white institution, and so I was lamenting the way that, by passing, I felt isolated and she said well, she said, but you have the privilege of passing. She said I can't. I was like, oh yeah, so yeah, I feel like it's a double-edged sword.
Speaker 1:So what do you wish? You would have known previously, before you got started.
Speaker 2:Well, one of the things is, I wish I would have understood how to research the field. I mean, I did look at stuff online but I wasn't sure what to look for Right. How would you know? How would I know Right? And then you know I was looking at, you know message boards about law school, message boards about different kinds of graduate school or different fields. You know different career paths and I finally came to the realization oh, they are all like they're all terrible. I mean there are horror stories in all of them. Yeah, and I realized I couldn't let the horror stories make the decision for me, like I had to be aware of those potential pitfalls but also to realize it's not. I can't just pick a field to avoid, avoid the messiness.
Speaker 1:Potential yeah.
Speaker 2:Because I can talk about the horrors of employment, the job market for academics, but I was reading horror stories about lawyers working for $20 an hour after they'd been to law school and in horrible working conditions people in the field. Then I would hear about this program or that program and I would go oh man, I didn't know, I didn't know to even look there. I didn't even know that. That would have been a great fit for me If.
Speaker 1:I would have only known I could have applied there.
Speaker 2:But also, I was kind of stuck there in Missouri so it wasn't like I was going anywhere else. I was kind of stuck there in Missouri so it wasn't like I was going anywhere else. So again, if I could do it over again, I would look at that and I remember trying to Google this kind of thing to find out. But I just knew so little about the subfield and, yeah, I went into it blind, which was definitely not ideal. I mean, again, happy where I have ended up. So I scraped through. But it could have been easier.
Speaker 1:The sad thing, the difficult thing, is you don't know what you don't know, but then you also don't know how to look for what you don't know.
Speaker 2:Exactly, Exactly. And there are some good books out there and thankfully, I did come across one of them that I read. I think it was maybe my first year in the program because I think it was recommended by some of the mentors there and I will link it in the show notes, but it's a graduate study in the 21st century and even though this was published in 2010, so we live in a different world than 2010, as I remember it, a lot of that advice still stands. Some people don't like that book because they say he's too harsh. I think he's just. He's saying it like it is Saying some of the quiet stuff out loud.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, and he is not beating around the bush about how much it demands of you, gotcha, I think it's a really good, really good book, especially for first gen students.
Speaker 1:So you also mentioned the importance of knowing how to evaluate status and mentors and relationships. Tell me more about that.
Speaker 2:So, you know, I think you and I grew up around the idea and I think, well, we do embrace this idea of valuing everyone equally and not valuing them on the basis of their status within a community.
Speaker 2:I mean, you and I know how hurtful that can be, and this is not something that is a new development for you and me, right, you know, like this is something that I have embraced and I know you have too, too for a very long time. It turns out, though, you can't ignore it, and it doesn't mean you have to buy into that value system, but you can't ignore it. So, for example, in academia, when we think of high status institutions, high status universities, we think of the Ivy Leagues, and, on one hand, do you get a better education there? Well, maybe, because, guess what? They do have better resources, and you're going to get to know people and make professional contacts there that you're not going to make at a state school, at some state schools anyway. So it does matter, and people will judge you based on that right. So, even if it doesn't matter to you, it matters to other people. It can influence your future in ways you might not be prepared for.
Speaker 1:So it becomes a little bit about knowing how to play the game of chess.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely. And along with that, the importance of mentors and relationships. This is again it's not enough just to get an A, it's not enough to go to class, it's not enough to do the work that's assigned to you. You've got to cultivate relationships with mentors because they are your entree into the field, especially in a humanities setting. But I think in general, that's really important, but definitely in a humanities PhD program. It's all about networks Fascinating, yeah. And who can recommend you for what? And who's going to actually give you a glowing recommendation, or who's going to damn you with faint praise? This is why you got to be nice to everybody, even the jerks, yeah, yeah, I know. Ask me why it's triggering, wow.
Speaker 1:So in many ways I have observed that a lot of the same skills you need in the high demand religious world are the exact same skills that will get you through academia. I take it that you would see that as well.
Speaker 2:And here's the thing that can be one of our resources that folks like us who have experienced educational neglect and high demand religion can draw on, and it's about understanding how egos work understanding, in fact, we usually do really well functioning in a hierarchy. We know what to do in a hierarchy, and if you know what to do in a hierarchy, then you're going to do well here. Do you know what I'm saying? That gives you. That is one way to navigate. But here's the thing it's a culture that is often not very direct. It is a culture that people will say things to you that in the moment you think they're complimenting you and then you walk away and you realize, oh, that was a burn, that was a diss. That was a burn, that was a. That was a diss.
Speaker 2:Like I had one of my advisors after my second child was born at my baby shower. Everybody threw for me after the baby was born and my then mother-in-law was there and this mentor says so. Well, I hope Naomi gets her focus back on school now. It crushed me because I was very conscious of needing to keep doing everything. I was back on campus with the baby less than two weeks after he was born. Wow, on stage at this presentation thing, wow. And then I talked to my main mentor and I was like wait, wait, is that how you feel about me? And she assured me that no, that was I don't know. I don't know what game she was trying to play by saying that to my mother-in-law, but I'm just saying that's the kind of yeah, that kind of nonsense. Does that stop me? No, does that mean that I can't continue doing what I'm doing? No, it doesn't stop me. Is it disappointing? Is it annoying? Yes, especially when these people also hold your future in their hands, right?
Speaker 1:At the same time, there's a part of it that probably felt a little bit familiar.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, yeah. And you just have to know and this is where, knowing why you're going to grad school. And you know, I spent those two years between undergrad and grad school in jobs that were not good fits for me, right, but every minute of those two years was worth it, because once I did get to graduate school and I, you know I had those moments, those hard times I would go well, do I want to be here, or would I rather be back in that beige office? And the answer was always a resounding I want to be here, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so tell me a little bit about graduate programs and kind of how they operate.
Speaker 2:Okay, so I mentioned earlier that graduate programs fall in these two categories. On one you have these arts humanities, these more traditional fields. Then on the other side we have these more applied professional degree programs. They are different in a number of ways. I'm going to try to run through these differences pretty as quickly as I can. So the more traditional humanities kinds of programs, which is what I did those programs tend to emphasize research and teaching.
Speaker 2:So what that looked like for me for my master's was doing, I think, three semesters of coursework and then one semester of writing my thesis, and the thesis is I don't know 50 page research project. And then for the PhD part, there were two years of coursework and then one year of reading for comprehensive exams, which was a list of 100 books that I put together with with feedback from my mentors, and they were on different. You know, I had different subject areas that I was focusing in on. But the idea was like after that, like I really man, that was so valuable because at the end of that year I had a much more comprehensive sense of the field. You know, I could pick up any article at that point and understand oh, they're talking about this and they're mentioning this and they're referring to that, you know, and so, like that was, that was really helpful. Ok, so that was a year for the comprehensive exam and and at the end of that then I would write a paper that passed Back in the day, they would put you in a room, isolated room, at the end of reading all those books and you had to write an essay and you didn't see the prompt until they handed it to you and you had to write it on the spot. So, yeah, mine was much more humane. I got to write it on my own time, with revisions and everything, of course, sure. But then the last two years were for writing my dissertation, and that's a book-length independent research project.
Speaker 2:Okay, let's talk about some of the ways they're different. So, within a more applied professional now, I've not done one, so I've only observed others who have done them. From what I observed is that they focus a lot more on coursework. They are often designed for working adults, and so they often do not demand your whole entire life the way humanity or I keep saying humanities, it's not just humanities, but like the PhD programs, do. They also include internships where you're doing on the job, you know where you're working, you're learning on the job, that kind of thing. So usually the traditional, these traditional PhD programs, there's not as much out-of-pocket cost. But the way they get funded often ideally is that you teach undergrad courses while you are taking graduate courses and then that covers your tuition and gives you a small stipend. I mean you can borrow on top of that, which I did, because I had kids in daycare and let me tell you that is not pretty. I'm going, how am I ever going to pay for their college? I've already paid for their daycare, anyway.
Speaker 1:So it's fair.
Speaker 2:It's true. But here's the other thing, though because I work at a nonprofit now right, and it's a university I am eligible for loan forgiveness, and within the next few months, that loan is supposed to go away, that massive, massive loan that I graduated with. Now I've been paying on it all this time and, to give you a sense of what happens to the interest, I've been paying on it for most of this time and the balance stays steady.
Speaker 1:That's just awful.
Speaker 2:When people get their loans forgiven it's usually that they have more than paid back. The principal what's being quote unquote forgiven is the outrageous interest that gets charged. It's insane. Yeah, okay, research expectations with the more traditional PhD program you're expected to do research and that research gets again. The more advanced you get, the more very, very, very specific nitty gritty your focus becomes. You get that teaching experience.
Speaker 2:Often at the end, like if a master's or PhD you do generally, you do a thesis or dissertation. That's what kind of. That's the kind of a distinctive factor about it where with some professional programs, you might write, you might have the option of writing a thesis or you might have to just take an exam. I say just, I mean that's it's just picking, picking your stress, type of stress, expected career paths. If you get a PhD, the expectation is you're going to go into academia because you're learning how to research. I mean you know it has not really prepared you for anything else specifically other than that You've become an expert in this area.
Speaker 2:And they's not jobs for that, because it was not designed to be job training College wasn't. On the other hand, when you get into an applied professional degree program, oh, and this is the thing we should talk about for-profit colleges and online for-profit colleges. Because here's the thing I know people who have found out once they'd done the program or once they were in a program and they were looking at certification. Like you read the fine print and you find out about requirements no one ever told you about, you had no idea and you didn't know to go look for those requirements and one of the requirements in one of those processes was that none of the courses could be from an online institution.
Speaker 1:Interesting.
Speaker 2:When you see advertisements from the University of Phoenix and all these online places. They do such a good marketing job of making themselves look legit and yet folks in academia are generally very they hold those in suspect because they want your money and whether or not you get an education is kind of beside the point. And I say that, and I'm sure there are exceptions to that, but I'm just saying that's the perception. That's the perception, but it does give you an expected career path. So when you get out of counseling, out of a counseling program, the assumption is you're going to be a counselor Status. Why does status matter? So I talked about this a little bit before. Often with status comes more funding opportunities and that allows you to do more stuff and whether that's research or you know some kind of innovative teaching approach or some kind of interdisciplinary thing or whatever.
Speaker 2:So status matters not intrinsically, but pragmatically. It matters in terms of what doors it will open for you or not, and not saying it's fair or right, just saying that's how it is. Then the payoff and the benefits. So, hypothetically, if you are cool with living in poverty for about seven years and kind of scratching through some of your prime child bearing years, often prime earning years, years when you're going to benefit the most from saving for retirement. If you're willing to live in genteel poverty for those seven years, you know well, then you might have a stable career. I'm lucky to have one, although my son was asking me how much I make the other night I was like I don't know if I should tell you or not. And then I did and he goes Mom, that's all he said. How do you buy us all this stuff?
Speaker 1:The question I ask every day, the question that's, that's, that's it.
Speaker 2:Well, I see, you know, just a few years ago, if I would have said I make $10,000 a year he'd go $10,000.
Speaker 1:Why can't I?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a lot of money Right, and so that was interesting. It was very gratifying to hear my son say that.
Speaker 1:Okay, so tell me a little bit.
Speaker 2:The contrast with that is like if I'd gone to to law school and would be working for a big law firm, I'd be making you know three times, four times what I'm making now.
Speaker 1:Right, so it took me a bit to remember the difference between the different degrees. Tell me more about that. So we have your associates, we have the bachelors, we have masters and then the PhD. Break that down for us.
Speaker 2:So that's a great question and just for our listeners, Rebecca needed to leave, she had some folks coming by and so I'm going to try to finish this up, and apologies for the monologue, but I'll try to make this as painless as possible. So what's the difference between the different degrees? So when you hear associate's degree, that's usually a two-year degree and that is often what you can get at a community college. Now, that could be something in the humanities like English or history or psychology or social sciences, or it could be technical training, paralegal certificate or something like that. So there's kind of a broad range. The bachelor's degree, then, is typically a four-year degree. You're not going to be able to get that at a community college, but you can get that at a four-year institution. You know small liberal arts college usually, and a large institution as well. Right, that's kind of the most typical one that we think of when we think of going to college.
Speaker 2:Master's degree that's usually the first degree level in graduate school. So once you have a bachelor's degree, you've graduated from a four-year institution if you want to go on. So with the master's degree comes an association of what usually prepares you for management level jobs in the pre-professional fields. But then the doctorate or PhD involves writing a dissertation, and so that's kind of the upper level of graduate school, as it were. So when you hear people talk about graduate school, they're talking about the master's and doctorate level, both, and then breaks down in that way. Also, there are programs like doctor of physical therapy, doctor of education. That is a little different from a PhD. A PhD is often seen as the most prestigious of those, and I mean that's my impression, but that doesn't mean it's you know, inherently better. You know it's all depends on what your needs are, your individual needs, on your individual goals and ambitions are. But just to understand that they are not exactly the same and how they are different can really vary from institution to institution. So the last question that Rebecca had for me here before she left was what advice I would have for someone looking at grad school or considering it, and so I have a list of things to be thinking about for anyone who's considering graduate school or wondering if it's the right thing for them. Since I can't go back in time and tell myself what questions I should have been asking, I hope this might be helpful for someone else who is wondering about whether it's relevant for them or not.
Speaker 2:Okay, so one thing to understand is that at every level of education in general, we are learning how to be increasingly independent in what we study, and so that certainly continues. So at you know, with a bachelor's degree you can major in a particular subject area and subject areas of interest to you, right, and so that's more specialized than high school. But once you get to graduate school, it becomes even more specialized than undergrad, was bachelor's degree, and then, of course, PhD. It's even more specialized. So when someone is very educated, usually in this context, is that they are very educated in a specific field. This is where I find a lot of humility in what I know and don't know, where I realize just how little shame there is in admitting to what I don't know, right, Because nobody can know all the things. And the deeper you go in one particular area, the more you realize. Oh wait, all the other areas have this kind of granularity as well, and so for me it inspires humility.
Speaker 2:Another piece of advice would be to get familiar with the scholarship in your field so you're prepared to enter the conversation, or at least know what questions are relevant to the field, because that is a way of establishing your credibility as a scholar is when you are engaging with what other scholars in the field have said, and that is an expectation in graduate school. It's not just about kind of getting out there and saying whatever you want to say. It's really about engaging with what scholars before you have said and that's you know how you show your relevance to the field. One way to find out what's going on in a field you're considering is to find the conferences in the field and just read through their. You know what kind of topics people are talking about at the conference. You don't have to go, don't go to the conference, just read about them and see what people are talking about, and then that should lead you to some of the biggest journals in the field. In fact, you can just search for major journals in X field. You know, skimming through those doesn't say exactly what you're going to study, but it gives you an idea of what people are interested in talking about in that field generally, and that's just important to know whether or not you follow whatever.
Speaker 2:The current trend is Also read Inside Higher Ed and the Chronicle of Higher Education. These are more news outlets that write about the realities of university life, of academia, and you know, every now and then there will be an article in there that will really tick people off. There will be an article in there that will really tick people off, and you know, usually in my experience it's usually when someone writes a very opinionated article about something that has nothing to do with their field of study and reveals their ignorance. It's again it can be really helpful just for getting a sense of how people are, what people are talking about, what kinds of concerns are going on, because information is power. All right, I talked earlier about understanding how higher education is extremely relationship based, and part of this, too, is becoming enculturated into it. I'm not sure what percentage of undergraduate college students are first gen, but it's a significant number, significant percentage. There's a much smaller percentage of graduate students who are first generation, and so the norms of white middle-class culture are even more expected at the graduate level.
Speaker 2:And when you come from a working class background, it often comes off as really snooty and pretentious, and it can be. But I would encourage anyone who is going into higher education and is aware, I encourage you to be aware of it, but not to let it intimidate you and just kind of hold it lightly. It is what it is. Make a note Underneath that pretentiousness there might or seeming pretentiousness might be a really sweet person who's just talking the way they've always, the way everybody around them has always talked. Or it could be someone who is a jerk, and you just don't know until you get to know them better.
Speaker 2:Another thing when you go to select a committee, so when you're writing your dissertation or your thesis, you have a committee of faculty, of professors, who are going to evaluate your work and they decide whether or not you pass, and if you pass you get a PhD or a master's degree or not. So you definitely want to keep them happy. Now, there's kind of a trade-off here, or there can be, because since they are in many ways kind of your sponsors in the field you're going into, who they are can really matter. If they have a very recognizable name, a name that's really respected or that you know people look up to in the field, that can open a lot of doors for you, because they, you know, the assumption is well, if you're working with so-and-so, you must be pretty good. So, but at the same time there can be a trade-off, because sometimes scholars like that are really focused on building their careers and mentoring, being there for their grad students, responding to grad students' questions and emails drafts in a timely manner. It's just not a priority for them.
Speaker 2:It's hard to know this at the outset, but it's really helpful. It can be really helpful to ask around who do you have as your who's, your advisor? Why did you decide to pick them? Obviously it's going to need to be in your subfield, but also you need to think about the potential trade-offs there, because sometimes someone who's not well-known but really takes their mentoring seriously is going to get you so much further than someone who's well well known but really takes their mentoring seriously is going to get you so much further than someone who's well known but doesn't mentor you. And there's a handful of folks who are both mentors at heart and well known and respected in the field. And if you can catch on to one of those, if you can work with someone like that, then that's going to serve you really well.
Speaker 2:I think one way to also make that decision is to think about your future goals. So, for example, if you are wanting a career in academia, in a competitive institution or you know competitive kind of job or you really want ambitious and you want to really dedicate yourself to having a long and rich career rich in the sense, not in the monetary sense then the status of the institution probably does matter, and my sense is that in the more liberal arts humanities programs, the more liberal arts humanities programs, status matters more. Where in more applied professional programs maybe it doesn't as much, but that's a big maybe. I think again, it depends and it's worth looking into. It's not to say that the status of the place where you get your degree determines the rest of your career, but it can certainly open and close doors. Again, not saying this is fair or the way things should be done. I'm just saying this is the way things are often done and so getting a sense of what institutions are respected, what are not, can be really important, what or not, can be really important.
Speaker 2:I think the more clear a person is about why they're going to graduate school, what their goals are, the better off they'll be, just because there are lots of opportunities that come along in life that you have to say no to. I missed a lot of important life events and extended family things like weddings, funerals not all of them, but I missed many of them because graduate school just did not allow for the flexibility to do that. Also, if there was a job opportunity that came up during that seven-year period, I had to stick with what I was doing or I would have had to walk away from you know what three, four years of work without anything to show for it. And I think what can be really important to be thinking about as you are writing your application essays for grad school what's your professional narrative and what's the narrative of your life. The more that you can turn that into a story that makes sense and so that it makes sense, why, given your background, why you're doing what you're doing now and where you want it to take you, the more it will help people you meet have a sense of who you are and it can help nurture those relationships that are so, so necessary. Okay, and I'm sure once I get off of here I'll think of all the other things that I wanted to say, that I forgot to say. But that's the beauty of having a podcast we can circle back down the road because there's certainly more to say about grad school than what we're talking about here. Okay, so, if I can wrap this up.
Speaker 2:This conclusion doesn't look as brief as it probably should be, but let's see, see if we can do this. So, when I sum up my experience with graduate school and thinking about it in regards to someone else, who's thinking about it and wondering if this is the thing for them, when I think about was it worth it? Was it worth the demands? Was it worth the opportunity costs? Was it worth the demands? Was it worth the opportunity costs? Was it worth the? You know the negative experiences that happened, which you know are going to happen regardless of what you do.
Speaker 2:I want to say two things that sound contradictory, but instead of thinking of them, as you know, contradictory, I hope you can think of them, as I do, as both being true. So, first, I'm incredibly grateful that I had the luxury that I could just scrape through on a seven-year program, because I was married to someone who had a stable job and so, even though we were scraping by, we were still able to survive needs of some kind. I would have had to make some hard decisions. I was also able to finish on time and there's lots of folks who aren't able to do that and so I feel very fortunate for that. Despite the opportunity costs, the fact that it was accessible to me as a privilege I don't take for granted for a minute. I met so many wonderful people who I still think of fondly, even though I am not in a whole lot of contact with them thanks to Facebook. They don't feel completely lost to me and I have a sense of community just knowing that they are out there across the country, different institutions doing similar work, and we have that common experience of surviving grad school together, and that really does create a long lasting bond.
Speaker 2:The work that I do, the teaching that I do, is more rewarding now than when I started it, and that's probably the biggest understatement in this whole episode. And how many people can say that about their work? More than 10 years in, I am also part of the first generation of women who can own their own house and support themselves with a respected, stable career Not necessarily a lucrative one, but it's stable, and my kids and I are doing fine, and that is no small thing. All right, so that's all the good stuff. At the same time, the emotional cost of being a student for so long means that we got year after year of that experience of being a novice and all the uncertainty and powerlessness and cluelessness that goes with being a novice. The cultural commute from my background to graduate school could have been measured in light years, and I wasn't always sure what I would be risking by talking about my background. So I generally didn't. And also, being a mother and developing this emerging identity as a scholar didn't leave much room for thoughts of anything else either. I'll be honest I've always wondered if the reason we are an ADHD household is because my children were bathed in cortisol and caffeine throughout both my pregnancies because I was in graduate school. If I hadn't been in graduate school, I would have been working somewhere and maybe it would have been the same there too. I don't know.
Speaker 2:I said earlier that graduate school's emphasis on relationships is really important, and this can make things very thorny when things don't work out. For example, when you get passed over for an assistantship, some kind of a role that you really need to develop your qualifications, maybe something you are more than qualified for and it goes to someone who's less qualified not because you did anything wrong necessarily, but maybe that less qualified person had a closer relationship with the one who was doing the hiring and then you have to turn around and be collegial to both of them, because maybe if you play your cards right, you can get that position the following year and you know there's a very good chance you are going to need their goodwill at some point down the road. And so, even though it feels very unfair, even though there is absolutely nothing you can do about it no one you can complain to except your friends you have to suck it up. If you want to stay in the system, if you want to stay in the program, if you become someone who is always fighting for what is fair, you're likely just as you would at any job you'll likely be dismissed eventually as a troublemaker. You're more likely to be seen that way, Not to say you are just. That will be the perception.
Speaker 2:Another way this can bite you is if you feel like you're drowning, just trying to get to all the things you need to get to do, all the studying you need to do, and also being a mom, a young mom, so you can feel very busy juggling responsibilities to seek out mentors. So you can feel like, as you're juggling all those responsibilities, you don't even have time to seek out one-on-one conversations with mentors. And then what is frustrating is when you later get called out because you didn't seek out their mentorship. Or, on the other hand, the flip side is asking for regular office visits to keep you on track with a project and being told no. And so, okay, you accept that that's their boundary, that would be too much for them. But then, a couple of years later, the same professor said they would meet with me regularly after all, because another student demanded it. And as I think about it now, I'm struck by how many of these experiences involved upper middle class white guys.
Speaker 2:Anyway, probably coincidence, Totally coincidence were working on was keeping the campus from shutting down the daycare for parenting students and, spoiler alert, they announced the closure the day before I graduated. It wasn't a cheap daycare but it was very convenient. But all through its 40-year existence there had been detractors and people who were trying to shut it down. One university administrator who was responsible for the center reportedly had said that people with children should be going to community college. Now, I don't know if you remember, but in community college you can't get more than an associate's degree. So this was at a large university where many of those parents were graduate students. I don't know what that administrator was thinking. But anyway, so many levels of effed up assumptions in that statement, so many times graduate school felt like I was carefully looking both ways before crossing the street and then getting hit by a plane. And while you're doing this, you're also trying to prove how smart and capable and collegial and hardworking you are, because who knows who you will need to ask to write you a letter of recommendation at some point down the road right, so you need to stay on everybody's good side. So while these are just a few examples of the dark side of graduate school, and while they are very much hashtag, white girl hashtag, first world problems, they were triggering at the time and they're still triggering when I think back to them now.
Speaker 2:In fact, there's a phenomenal fictional satire set in an English department in a Midwestern city. Actually it's part of a series it's called Dear Committee Members and then also the Shakespeare Requirement. It is so well written and so on the money, I couldn't get past the first two chapters. It was just it was not. It didn't read like satire to me, like real life, it was just way too accurate. And you know, I've changed my medication since I tried to read the book. Maybe I could get through it now, but it's real, it's real, Okay. So, despite all those negative things and there are plenty more I could have said despite the sampling of negative things, I'm still glad I won.
Speaker 2:Ultimately, my bottom line advice is that, whether graduate school is going to cost you big in terms of money or time often both a person should not pursue it unless they know exactly why they're doing it. And maybe it is an expensive hobby, that is a legitimate reason. If that's the reason you've chosen, that's fine. But now you know, and that should set your expectations for what will happen at the end. On the other hand, if you're trying to have a really secure job, then you're probably going to want a different reason, right?
Speaker 2:Okay, it's time for me to wrap this up. Thank you so much for hanging in there with us. I want you to know, dear listener, from the bottom of my heart, that I know how scary and intimidating academia can be, and also, nothing would give me more joy than to help decode it for the people, the many, many people who are entirely capable of succeeding there as well and who would thrive and enjoy it immensely. So, if I can help you find those portals, help demystify it help you figure out what your path is. If it is through graduate school, nothing would give me more joy than to help facilitate that for you. What concerns do you have about graduate school? We want to know what would be most helpful to you to empower you to live life on your own terms. Talk to you soon.
Speaker 1:Thank you for spending time with us today. The resources and materials we've mentioned are linked in the show notes and on Facebook at Uncovered Life Beyond.
Speaker 2:What are your thoughts about college and recovery from high demand religion? We know you have your own questions and experiences and we want to talk about the topics that matter to you. Share them with us at uncoveredlifebeyond at gmailcom. That's uncoveredlifebeyond at gmailcom.
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Speaker 2:Until next time stay brave, stay bold, stay awkward.
