I used to think my window for returning to graduate school had all but closed. That was until I went scuba diving for the first time on my honeymoon a few months ago.
Although graduate school has been in the back of my mind since I received my bachelor’s degree in 2002, each year goes by and I fail to submit my applications.
Many of my friends who didn’t go back to school immediately upon receiving their bachelor’s degree find themselves in similar situations. We all talk about returning to school – how it could help advance our careers, how it seems like everyone has a master’s degree – but few of us actually apply.
What’s holding us back? Some of us say it’s the money. Others claim that it’s the time commitment. Both valid concerns. Typically, though, I’ve found that beneath these anxieties lies a nagging question – one that we feel we must find the answer to before we shell out $30,000 and commit ourselves to a few years full of late-night study sessions: What do I want to do with the next 40 or 50 years of my life?
Most of us, myself included, can’t possibly imagine what we might be doing decades from now. Because we can’t identify exactly where our careers are headed, we don’t know how or if graduate studies will help us achieve our long-term goals.
During our undergraduate years, we could wander – a music appreciation class here, a psychology class there. This time, though, we need a plan. But how can we assess whether additional school fits into our plan if we are re-drafting it almost daily?
Not being able to answer this fundamental question has caused me to let half-finished graduate school applications gather dust in my desk drawer for the past few years.
Then I tried scuba diving on my honeymoon. More precisely, I bobbed on the surface of the ocean for 20 minutes, every so often attempting to descend 5 feet, only to shoot back to the top. Eventually I returned to the hotel.
But I came back the next day. This time, I tried to remember the skills I’d practiced in the pool back home, and I made it down. When I came up, I realized that I conquered a huge fear, and, more important, I did something I never thought I’d do.
I didn’t learn to swim very well as a child. So scuba diving naturally seemed out of reach – way beyond my skill set. But when it came time for diving to fit into my life, it didn’t matter that I’d chosen dance lessons over swimming practice years ago. What mattered was that I was able to obtain the necessary knowledge at the appropriate time.
I then realized that the question of whether or not to return to school was impossible for my friends and me to answer because we had forced ourselves to plot our entire lives before stepping foot in a classroom. And we assumed that by choosing our life’s course, we then could pick the degree that would provide us with all the knowledge we’d need to chart that course.
Just as I couldn’t have known as a young child that I should learn to swim because I would be coerced into scuba diving one day, my friends and I can’t possibly know exactly which skills we’ll need for whatever we may be doing at 45 or 55 or 65. We only can hope that we’ll be willing and able to obtain the knowledge we need when we need it.
In the meantime, perhaps we can decide whether or not to attend graduate school by remembering how we made decisions as children.
In other words, if our choice to return seems to follow with our interests, talents and goals as we see them currently, if we can commit to school and the potential careers that follow for the foreseeable future and, finally, if we know in our hearts that going back to school is what we really want to do, maybe it’s time to dust off our applications.
Amanda Cherry is a twentysomething newlywed who lives in Boulder.
