Peddling uphill
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Peddling uphill Friday November 25
The following is a metaphor which will be employed later in this post. You have been warned.
Every day I ride my bike home, and on the very last stretch, I have to peddle uphill to get to my apartment. It's defintely not a small affair, but I've gotten used to it. Of course, this means that I get to cruise freely in the morning all the way down; wind in my hair, sun on my face. In terms of physics, it's a zero-sum energy game, but because I view the uphill work as a requirement for the downhill fun, I think of it as a positive-sum game. I'm working for something.
Two and a half years ago, I had to choose between going to Japan for a full year my senior year of college and staying in Champaign. If I stayed in Champaign, I reasoned, I could move to Japan after graduation, and that I could stay as long as I felt was necessary to be fluent. Ten months in the middle of college, or even a year, might not be enough, I thought, and I didn't want to be forced to go back to UIUC before I felt ready.
There were many factors influencing the decision then; the main one being the above logic. Yet, smaller, illogical components also contributed. My attachment to Cara (and presuming her eventual return to Champaign), my desire to spend senior year with my friends, and, possibly the silliest reason of all to anyone but Todd, Alissa, or myself, I wanted to live at 603 West Nevada.
It seems delay was the best decision. Without that delay, I would have never taken Professor Abelmann's ethnography course. I would have missed a key year at Foellinger, and thus likely not succeeded Monika last December. I would have not met some of the people I've met, and I would not have made some of the mistakes that I have made.
Of course, on the other hand, you can't always think this way about life. No matter which path I chose, there would have been new people, new experience, and new lessons. What I can say, however, is that the types of experiences I had in Champaign that year were, essentially, what I needed. And not all of them were good. It was a good decision. My momma likes to say that you do the most growing when things aren't going your way.
Anyhow, back to the present.
In life, every time I don't know where to turn next, I have these uphill moments. I drop everything going on in my life, focus entirely on the issue at hand, and work out some sort of solution. I did that for the above, and I did that when I determined whether or not to spend last summer in New York. Again, last fall, when I applied for JET, and subsequently this program, I did it again.
Of course, my path (to move here) was more-or-less decided last fall, so I didn't have too much trouble filling out the details. I did have to, though, decide between coming here now and trying to defer for a year, only to save more money from the Foellinger job. This time I opted for action over delay. You have to mix it up, you know?
Now, it's late November and I've been wrestling with the graduate school question for a few weeks. I intended to start the application process much sooner, but I, simply stated, became caught up here. With the workload, I assure you that this is quite possible. It'll be June before I know it.
In a flurry of "what am I going to do next year", I have researched information about graduate programs, spent hours upon hours crafting e-mails to say exactly what I wanted to say to professors, talked with students at the Center who are older than I am and interested in similar topics, sought the advice of my family and friends, and, of course, thought about it a lot. Those thoughts follow below in the form of a cost/benefit analysis.
A master's degree in the liberal arts (particularly, East Asian Studies or Cultural Anthropology) sounds great to me, and it would be a very good "shallow end" approach to jumping into the pool of academia. Moreover, since I do not have an anthropological background, I believe it would be a good opportunity to learn the "science" in an academic environment.
However, most programs offered by decent schools in this field are PhD programs. PhD programs, at a minimum, take at least five or six years to complete. I have been told that I have the intelligence, academic background, and connections to be able to pursue a PhD successfully, and I don't doubt that. What I do doubt is my ability to make an unwavering five-to-six year commitment to a field that I know that I like -- but actually have very little experience in.
Also, master's students in this field don't usually get any sort of funding. It would cost me a lot of money. In Mike's case, it's an investment that has a solid return -- if you invest in an MBA and are reasonably proactive in jobseeking, you will be able to repay that debt within a decade easily. Even three-four years, depending on your money management policies.
PhD students are different creatures entirely; they TA courses, and thus are more-or-less supported by the department which they are under. There are cases of master's students TAing courses -- Ashley does this, Sara K does this. However, their fields are larger, and thus there is a greater demand for these positions.
When I couple the above pros and cons together, it occurs to me that if, or maybe I should say when, I apply for that kind of graduate school, it will be a PhD track program. I have known for some time that I would like to have a PhD. However, with such a lifetime commitment involvement, it is a mistake to commit to something like that without the knowledge that it is exactly what one wants to do.
This is why I wanted to stay here for an extra year next year. Not only for the experience and the language, but to bring my goals into clearer focus. By virtue of going through the motions this week of preparing for graduate school applications, I've generated a list of things I need, I've made contact with some important people, I've receive a few "book lists". As Helen said in a comment below, since I've seriously thought about it, the application process next year would become much easier. And I'll have had a year to consider everything I should have been considering before I came. I was too focused on just getting to Japan, but this was unavoidable, I think. Moving abroad did take a significant amount of planning. I've always known it was the right decision.
I'm going to go on a short tangent, but will come back to the point of my graduate school decisions. My three favorite classes in college were Professor Abelmann's ethnography course, sophomore year differential equations, and the international relations course I took in the summer of 2003. Possibly, I put the most work into these classes, and thus got the most out of them. These three mirror my interests quite well.
Anthropology. Learning about people. Writing about people. Understanding. Teaching to other people. Working for a better Earth.
Political Science. Learning about entities, organizations, and individuals. Analyzing. Recommending policy. Working for a better Earth.
Differential Equations: mathmatical abstraction. A metaphor for computer programming, finance, business, and economics. Working for a better self.
I'm aware of the disparity between my judgements about who I'd be "working for", but the truth of the matter is that one of the more rewarding aspects of, say, my coding work is seeing the results of my own actions immediately, right in front of me. People exchange money (generally, value) for what I do, and thus this equates what I write to having value. If I could work for myself (or in a young company) for a few years, build up some base wealth to work with, work in the public sector for another few years, and then become a professor, I'd have the best life ever.
This leaves me with one remaining option for this year. There are master's programs that focus on East Asia while keeping true to their political and economic bases. Graduates from these programs seem to seek employment in government service, business, or even academic matters relating to East Asia. I could see myself doing this for awhile, like I said, acquiring experience and wisdom, and then taking that and running with it towards a PhD eventually.
This may be a bit of a pipe dream. By the time all of that happens, I might be married and/or have children, and I can't necessarily take 5 years "off" to become a professor when I have a family to support. Or can I? Rick did it, except that he is doing a business rather than academia.
Either way, pipe dream or not, I believe that the final word on this year is that. I will not apply to any PhD programs. I will stay in much better contact with my University contacts, and outside of the academic realm, learn more about the fields that have interested me up until now. I will continue to reevaluate their place in my life as I learn more, and as I experience more in my own life.
I will look into these joint programs that I just mentioned above, and I will likely apply to a few this year. If this doesn't work out, or there is some very, very good opportunity here upon graduation, I will either defer or change my mind. Next year, I will apply to the academic PhD programs if the research that I am challenging myself to do in the coming year compels me to do so.
That's what I've decided. Man, that took like, a whole week. I feel like I just peddled up a huge hill. We'll have to see what the other side looks like.
