Application Update: On Monday, I finished all 6 versions of my personal statement. Yes, 6 versions.
Work Update: Yesterday was the worst day I've had at my new job yet. Hopefully it is not the start of any sort of pattern.
Master's Program Update: Tonight I followed a link on a friend's facebook page to "Sexting Ice Breakers for English Grad Students" for laughs. Afterwards there was another link titled "An Open Letter to My Abandoned English MA Degree." I clicked it and am relieved to find that there was nothing surprising. I already know that an MA in English Literature is basically useless in the real world, costs more money than it will ever make most of us, and leads to complete dead-ends in the Land of Paying Jobs (adjunct professorships? publishing obscure papers in university journals?). Cool. I know all of this. I also had a little chuckle* when the writer made a crack about inevitably becoming a high school English teacher, because - haHA - that's actually what I want to spend my life doing, not a sad, fall-back option I'll be forced to accept when my dreams of becoming rich and famous for my theories on YA dystopia fail.
BUT, I still feel like I'm ahead of that other schmuck who got sucked into The Debt We Call Grad School because I will be getting something else out of my experience altogether. I - if everything goes according to my plans - will get to live for a year in a foreign country (awesome!) with my boyfriend (awesome!) and travel and see and do things I wouldn't do at home (totally awesome!). Really, isn't grad school just the excuse to do all that other stuff anyway?
I think it is for me, at least in some capacity, a way to live a different life for a little while. Yes, I want the degree anyway. Yes, I expect that if I ever get sick of teaching high school, I will go on to teach college or university and will need the MA as a step toward those possibilities. But doing it right now is mostly fueled by the idea that if I don't, I won't. I won't take the big step and be adventurous about it. But maybe it's better that I see grad school this way, since everyone who went into it expecting something more seems to be bitterly disappointed. Thus, this awesome Google search:
*I hate the word "chuckle" but there's nothing that works better here.
I've been thinking a lot in the last several months about goals, public perception, this blog, and motivation. I started this blog three years ago when I first considered moving to England as a way to break out of my routine, shake up my life, and really DO something. I wanted to have a place where I could share the trials and tribulations of moving to a different country and the adventures I'd have there. But I never went.
It's not that I didn't want to go or that I chickened out. I was never offered a job in the UK and so I didn't make the big jump. It just didn't work out that time.
Later in the first year of this blog I wrote about my attempts to write the next big novel in chick lit based on experiences with my friends. Another flop. I started dating someone and suddenly had no interest in writing about dating.
Each time I announce my intentions on this blog, the 4 people who read it congratulate me on my boldness. When I talked to my friends and family about applying to work in the UK back in 2009, they all rallied around to pat me on the back for my courage and gumption. But the thing is, I actually hadn't shown any real courage yet. I never got on a plane.
I want this time to be different. I started thinking about graduate school again this last September because I was terrified of becoming stagnant in my life and I wanted to make sure I had a plan to work towards. Now I want to actually do it, and I'm torn over how much I should write about it. In my research I've found conflicting messages, too. We're told to announce our New Year's resolutions so that our friends will hold us to them. Which is why, I guess, everyone (including me) posts every time they go to the gym on facebook. This article from CNN this morning also claims that declaring your intentions is an essential part of setting realistic goals. But then there's this TED Talk about how keeping your goals to yourself actually makes it more likely that you'll achieve them...
The problem is, I think they are both right. In his TED talk, Derek Sivers claims that if you announce your goal, people will congratulate you so much on setting a big goal, that you'll feel as if you've already somewhat accomplished it, so you won't have the motivation to do the real work of accomplishing the goal. That makes sense and I can attest to it. I told people that Joe and I want to move to London next year = people were surprised and impressed and excited for us. Wow, good feeling.
But the other side is true, too. If I never told anyone that Joe and I want to move to London next year, it wouldn't feel like a real goal. Since we've declared our intentions, our various friends and family have shared their desires to visit us there, or go with us when we visit various other locales around Europe. It makes me want to go so that we can have those experiences with those people. I want to stroll the streets of London at Christmas with my mom. I want to meet Joe's mom in Italy for a week or two. I want to go and be there and do it for real and not just talk about it.
I am not one to make resolutions on New Year's, so I'm not going to declare my intentions for 2012 in that way here. I'll say that I'm in the application process still and that it's taking longer than I expected since I got my job in November. I still plan to use this blog to chronicle my experience as I try to make this jump, so I haven't let Derek Sivers get to me too much so far. But maybe I won't post until I have something definite to report each time.
