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.
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