Should I go to grad school?

[Firiel]

Okay, so I just found out that I've been accepted to the masters program I applied for. I got a teaching assistanship, which means they will pay for my degree and give me a small stipend (a little less than I'm making now, which isn't much) and I will teach a few introductory classes each year. It's a pretty sweet deal, but I'm not sure it's worth it.

 

See, I was foolish enough to graduate with an English degree. I know I was an idiot, but I was young, idealistic, and still believed in passion and happiness. I believed the well-intentioned but misguided assurances my professors gave me that employers loved English majors because they had been taught to write and think. So of course I've been unable to find a good job. This masters program is a masters in literature. I just fear that if I do this, I'll be in the exact position I am now in three years. The only thing more depressing than being a college-educated janitor is probably to be a janitor with a masters. My ideal plan would be to get my masters and then work either as a community college professor or as an editor for Tor publishing.

 

The problem is that I've read some pretty depressing stuff about teaching. The supply of PhDs is too high for the demand, so many PhDs have started working at community colleges which leaves far less room for people who only have a MA. And I think the odds of my getting into the publishing industry are very low. I have no experience, and while I would try to find opportunities for interships or whatever in that field while in school, I sincerely doubt it would help considering it seems like 80% of all publishing jobs are in New York.

 

So should I go to grad school in the hopes that it will open up more doors for me, or is that just opening myself up to more disappointment and setting myself to be too overqualified for any job that would think about hiring me?

[preciousgirl82]

I can understand your concerns. I received a master's in health education. I never even heard of the field before entering the program. I was naive and didnt think it through.I have been working, miserably, as a health educator ever since graduating but there's no growth in the field and very few jobs available. I, too, feel like Im going to be working in fast food with a Masters Degree if things dont pick up. So ive decided to go and get a Masters in Counseling with Certification in School Counseling. I dont know where you live but here in NY, many teachers are losing their jobs and im worried that this degree wont help me much either. Its a gamble when you get a degree, especially with this recession we are in. I can tell you honestly that you have a great deal on your hands and getting a masters degree is NEVER a waste of time or money. Even though i am not happy with the type of masters degree that i chose i really do believe that it impresses employers when they see I have one. If you are truly interested in becoming a professor I think it'd be your best bet. Publishing can be a highly competitive field. I would suggest going for teaching and getting certification. There will always be internships available. It just may take longer than you would like to find one.

[lucyblue10]

I think you're right to be wary.

 

I have a PhD but as I neared the end of my PhD I realised that academe wasn't for me. The job I'm doing now doesn't need a PhD and I don't have a problem with that, I made my choices and work in the non profit sector in a completely unrelated job.

 

If you don't have a burning desire to work in academe and you are not doing a vocation related degree then you should consider whether a Masters or PhD is for you. There are humanities postgrads churned out in the thousands all looking for jobs. If you can't move to where the jobs are, your options are even more limited. Lots of people always mention teaching in schools as an option, but that's something that you need to love and enjoy, not do out of desperation.

 

Another option would be to consider doing your Masters in a few years time, the financial and job situations might look very different, and you might have a clearer idea of what you want.

[Brownstone322]

I don't know what other interests you may have, but remember that you don't have to pursue a master's in English. You seem career-oriented, so keep in mind that you could go to business school for an MBA or go to law school. You'll have to take the GMAT or LSAT first, and you won't get an assistantship (so you'll probably have to take hefty loans), but those fields will pay you back.

 

I can remember browsing William & Mary's MBA web site one time (it's kinda near where I live, and it's first tier all the way), and it specifically said that their business school preferred undergraduates with liberal-arts backgrounds. (They can "write and think," you know.) So maybe think about a grand educational compromise.

[thejigsup]

You pretty much have to know someone to get hired at ANY college, so if you have a connection or connections, I say go for it. If you don't, what can I say? Who was the genious who talked you into a degree in English for goodness sakes?! That is almost as bad as a degree in Liberal Arts. Passinon for something is great, but it doesn't pay the bills. If you want a job in this rotten economy, which I hear will be around for quite a while, get a Masters in some science or math field. Just don't go near engineering, they are being hit hard, too.

[Firiel]

You pretty much have to know someone to get hired at ANY college, so if you have a connection or connections, I say go for it. If you don't, what can I say? Who was the genious who talked you into a degree in English for goodness sakes?! That is almost as bad as a degree in Liberal Arts. Passinon for something is great, but it doesn't pay the bills. If you want a job in this rotten economy, which I hear will be around for quite a while, get a Masters in some science or math field. Just don't go near engineering, they are being hit hard, too.

 

I know. I was a stupid 18 year-old who still had hopes and dreams. Trust me, I'd go back to kick myself in the face and tell myself that hating a job that pays well is 100x better than hating one that pays crud.

 

The problem with getting a master's in something else is that... well, it costs a lot of money that I don't have. My options are basically an MA in English through a TAship or sticking with what I have. I wish my parents had told me how worthless I was when I was growing up instead of letting me discover it on my own.

 

Edit: Thought I should add that I adore the idea of teaching college English. The only reason I'm not pursuing a PhD to become a professor is because I don't want to work full time when I have kids, and it seems like a lot to go through for 2-3 years of teaching. Well, now the second reason is because I've realized that even if I wanted to pursue it, it's an empty dream that would never happen anyway.

[MissIndigo]

If you want a job in this rotten economy, which I hear will be around for quite a while, get a Masters in some science or math field. Just don't go near engineering, they are being hit hard, too.

 

Which engineering is getting hit hard? I find the situation in my market to be just the opposite. Demand for master's level engineers in my area is huge. PhD's are having a tough time most anywhere though, no matter what the field.

 

To the OP--if you have any interest in a technical field at all, science and technical writing and editing is huge right now and pays well. It's about 50/50 whether the job wants a grad degree in English or one of the sciences, but that may be an idea for gainful employment in your field. I would be interested in working in that area but it's such a catch 22...I have the technical background but not the writing/editing experience!!

[Firiel]

I would be interested in doing technical writing, but I don't really have any idea how to get my foot in the door. In fact, that's my problem with anything I'd like to do.

 

 

The consensus seems to be that a masters in English is not worth it, even if I'd get teaching experience and a salary from it and even if all I'm doing right now is cleaning toilets. I hate how what I want to do is more useless with fewer opportunities than being a janitor.

[mdog]

I think getting your grad degree is a great idea. Maybe you should do something with business or go back and get a teaching degree..so you can teach english to like high school students or something like that. I mean it isnt a great paying job, but im sure it pays for the bills..

[MissIndigo]

I would be interested in doing technical writing, but I don't really have any idea how to get my foot in the door.

 

Try seeing if you can volunteer to do some grant writing for an agency--look and see if there are any non-profits you may approach and inquire about opportunites. It can get you some experience, and a reference from people at the agency who can speak about your ability. I might suggest to check with charities that deal with human health issues--you can get more acquainted with some medical or other technical terminology that way.

 

If you were to take the offer to get your graduate degree another great way to get some technical writing/editing experience is to offer your services to students in the science departments. They'd probably welcome it.

[mgirl]

I'm thinking, why don't you attempt to get into the career you want (editing), and give it two years. If it hasn't worked after two years, then you can do your Masters, or a Teaching Qual. I don't see the big hurry, perhaps you should remove yourself from the "now" mentality and try the career first.

[MissIndigo]

Or can you defer for a year after having been accepted and try to get some more experience during that time? That could buy you those months not only for the experience but also time to find and speak with more networking contacts about the value of indeed going for the master's.

[Firiel]

I don't think I can defer my acceptance. From what I've read about deferment, it's usually only for really important things or not available at all. The problem with waiting is that I'm not getting experience. I'm working as a janitor and in child care. Important jobs to be sure, but nothing a publishing house will look highly on. I could refuse this and try to get into a highly-ranked program next year when my husband and I can move, but that seems pretty risky.

 

I'm leaning towards not going. I have to get used to hating my life sometime, and doing something I love for two years is not going to help me do that.

[lucyblue10]

I agree with Mgirl that you don't have to do the English Masters now. Chances are if you've got one offer for grad school, you'll get another one.

 

Also, I can't help noticing that you seem very negative about your career choices. Yes, it's tough getting a breakthrough but no point beating yourself up.

 

What sort of publishing work do you want to do?

Are there any publishers where you live? Doesn't have to be big bucks companies, maybe you can get some work experience?

Are there any publishing organisations you can join to find out what's going on? Network etc. This is in the UK link removed

Are there any writers groups near you? Could you help others self publish, or set up your own company?

Or maybe consider doing a publishing or journalism degree if that would get you where you want to be?

[hrtlsngl7]

You pretty much have to know someone to get hired at ANY college, so if you have a connection or connections, I say go for it. If you don't, what can I say? Who was the genious who talked you into a degree in English for goodness sakes?! That is almost as bad as a degree in Liberal Arts. Passinon for something is great, but it doesn't pay the bills. If you want a job in this rotten economy, which I hear will be around for quite a while, get a Masters in some science or math field. Just don't go near engineering, they are being hit hard, too.

 

 

LOL!!!! That's a new saying!!! "Passion don't pay the bills."

[hrtlsngl7]

I don't think I can defer my acceptance. From what I've read about deferment, it's usually only for really important things or not available at all. The problem with waiting is that I'm not getting experience. I'm working as a janitor and in child care. Important jobs to be sure, but nothing a publishing house will look highly on. I could refuse this and try to get into a highly-ranked program next year when my husband and I can move, but that seems pretty risky.

 

I'm leaning towards not going. I have to get used to hating my life sometime, and doing something I love for two years is not going to help me do that.

 

Hey, maybe become a lawyer. Law school doesn't require a specific degree. You SHOULD know how to construct a convincing argument being an English major.

[orchidrose]

Try seeing if you can volunteer to do some grant writing for an agency--look and see if there are any non-profits you may approach and inquire about opportunites. It can get you some experience, and a reference from people at the agency who can speak about your ability. I might suggest to check with charities that deal with human health issues--you can get more acquainted with some medical or other technical terminology that way.

 

If you were to take the offer to get your graduate degree another great way to get some technical writing/editing experience is to offer your services to students in the science departments. They'd probably welcome it.

 

As a grant writer for a nonprofit, I can say that unless the organization is very tiny and/or desperate, they will typically not let somebody write grant proposals who has no experience doing so. It's the eternal conundrum: can't do it without experience, can't get experience without experience. I got into grant writing through internships. Started out with just helping with tiny pieces of proposals and worked my way up to doing it full-time. In my experience, most agencies (even those that are small) now have someone on payroll doing grant writing.

[MissIndigo]

As a grant writer for a nonprofit, I can say that unless the organization is very tiny and/or desperate, they will typically not let somebody write grant proposals who has no experience doing so. It's the eternal conundrum: can't do it without experience, can't get experience without experience. I got into grant writing through internships. Started out with just helping with tiny pieces of proposals and worked my way up to doing it full-time. In my experience, most agencies (even those that are small) now have someone on payroll doing grant writing.

 

Good to know. And that conundrum you mention is all too true in the sector I'm trying to find work, on top of being overqualified but underexperienced.

[Philos]

I'm not against going to grad school - infact, for a liberal arts major, I wouldn't recommend even getting a BA (rather than, say, a technical degree) unless you did plan on going further - so since you do have a liberal arts degree you should go for grad school. With that said, this program may not be right for you. Unless you have strong aspirations to be a novelist or literary critic, a masters in literature won't help you if you're looking for a strong career (and community college teaching jobs won't be given to 26 year olds when perhaps 45 year olds with a large number of papers published apply - although teaching experience will give you an edge).

 

You shouldn't discount your degree though, or brush this opportunity off. You have this narrative that you've constructed for yourself, that liberal arts majors are unemployable, and you'll probably tend to notice everything that supports that statement and discard everything that challenges it. Considering you have an english degree, I'd try to challenge that belief and get more self esteem in your degree and your abilities - the negativity really shows through. What almost everyone goes to school for and trains for is wholly different from where they end up. If you did go into this program, it'd be a double whammy - a graduate degree and college teaching experience - all paid for and in only 2 years.

 

I know at my office, the attorney general's office, they're interviewing for law clerks right now. About 40 people come in for only a couple positions. For the first time they're having the applicant sit at a computer and type something out - about why they went to law school I think. It's not a content piece; the law office is really looking for people with writing skills that can spell and use proper grammar. In the past they've picked law clerks based on interview skills, and when the time came for them to draft pleadings/arguments, write letters, etc., they'd surprisingly have the grammar of a teenager and the spelling of a drunk! Those were people with related degrees (probably pre-law, philosophy, history, english, etc.) who went to some of the best schools in the country, had to have graduated with honors, and are in law school. Strong writing skills can speak volumes.

[Firiel]

I didn't construct the narrative that liberal arts majors are unemployable. The job market did that for me. My attitude would be entirely different if I was working a temp job, as an administrative assistant, as a library assistant, or really anything other than as a janitor and in childcare. It's not that I'm not doing what I went to school for... it's that I'm doing jobs I dislike that I'm pretty sure you can do without even having your GED. Because I am so ridiculously incapable and was stupid enough to get a worthless degree, my husband has to go to school full-time and work two part-time jobs. And yeah, after nine months of it, I'm beginning to feel a little negative.

 

Community colleges, unlike typical four-year universities, look more for teaching experience than they do how many papers the candidate has published, so that's a positive. The bummer is that if I take this TAship, I don't have a lot of options as to what type of program I can take. I'm limited to English-y things, though I'm thinking of focusing on Rhetorical Methods and Composition (it's a fairly new focus at a lot of universities, and an old professor of mine has told me that if you get a master's in that, you can basically write your ticket to any CC and even some small universities).

[Brownstone322]

I didn't construct the narrative that liberal arts majors are unemployable. The job market did that for me.

You're taking a short-sighted view of the value of a liberal-arts education, and I think that's because you have very little professional experience and because, purely by coincidence, you graduated during an historic economic recession. These conditions shall pass. I know lots of people (much older than you) with liberal-arts degrees (communication, history, sociology) who do well for themselves, but it took some career-building on their part.

 

Ten or 15 years from now (when you're still young), you'll thank heaven that you have a bachelor's degree (in anything), and you'll know people in their mid-30s without degrees who would kill to have an education like yours. So be positive. Things will come together for you, and I guarantee that your view of your own education will change.

[Philos]

It really doesn't even matter what degree you have, it's the skills you take from it. As you grow older and mature, the narratives your constructed for yourself get challenged and more than likely change. You only know how to relate your current problem as "liberal arts degree holders are worthless" because you haven't lived through or experienced the alternative yet.

 

A more probable thesis, and I'm not even completely sure of your history/situation and just reasonably guessing, is this: You have no work experience in fields that you quoted, like being an administrative assistant, or a library assistant. You probably worked non-related jobs through college, or didn't even work at all. I'll save you the suspense: very few places are going to hire someone, even with a degree, if they have no related work experience. I'm graduating from a legal administrative assistant certificate program in a couple months, and I'll tell you right now, you need experience. Unfortunately, unless you get an in from a family member or really lucky, you'll have to tough it out and do a lot of grunt work. I've personally volunteered over 200 hours at the Attorney General's Office already, and probably will chalk up another 100-150 hours before I even start looking for a job. And that's with the certificate (ontop of my normal AA degree). I don't even expect to be hired as a legal administrative assistant to be honest, but probably as a legal receptionist.

 

It's too late to tell you the best advice; that you should have found a related job/career path that interested you during your junior or senior year and interned/volunteered. That's the reason you can't rely on a liberal arts BA in the way you narrate it. Technical BAs usually have internships, and internships give experience and lead-ins to jobs. English programs don't. It's not that they're worthless; far from it. You just need a double-pronged approach - a job and an education that both complement each other. That's why this program is good - because its double pronged teaching experience and graduate degree.

[Firiel]

I know experience is needed, but I've never even gotten a call back from the tutoring places I applied to, and that IS what I did in college. I'm just frustrated. I know I should have decided what I wanted to do in college, but... well, I didn't. I tried, too. I just didn't know what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a writer... then a used-bookstore owner... then a teacher... you get the drift. It wasn't until I graduated and was browsing the website of a favorite author that I thought about being an editor/getting into the publishing industry. The thing I really prepared myself for in college was grad school because I didn't really have any other ideas. Well, I did have an internship in a museum which was fun. And now I'm realizing that all that time going to conferences, writing (I know this will sound arrogant, but...) brilliant papers, and loving loving LOVING what I was doing is worthless because grad school is worthless. I was hoping to also use grad school as another chance to find some internships, since I have more of a direction than before.

 

I don't know. I guess it's extra frustrating to me because I don't have fifteen years. In fifteen years, I want to have three or four kids already. And I want to stay home with my kids for the most part while working a part-time job. I figure it's probably very difficult to get any sort of decent part-time, flexible job if you don't already have a lot of experience and aren't highly respected. I don't have time to wait for this economy to get better... if I don't DO something about it soon, I WILL be stuck as a janitor my entire life...

[catfeeder]

Dearest, deeeerest Firiel, I hope you won't close the door on this creative and exploitable opportunity in the middle of a recession while you're suffering from depression--for what? A couple more buck an hour as a janitor, which you hate?

 

Take the total dollar value of this free education (in something you love, which is priceless) and divide it up by the hours you would otherwise work at your current job or any job over the duration. Tack THAT amount onto the hourly wage of the teaching assistant job, and tell me that's not a better deal than your current wage or projected wage during this time.

 

On top of that, you'll come out the other side with a master's degree. If you skip this opportunity, you'll still come out the other side of that time--without a master's degree. So unless you have a bigger proposal for a better way to spend this time, what's to consider?

 

Whoever said you'll need to remain a teacher? Do you believe that those of us who've built success of any kind have done so within the scope of a college major? Research that a bit. You'll be shocked by the numbers of people who do NOT work in their intended field. Our degrees were never 'worthless'. Degrees don't create limits, but if you view them in terms of job training, that's a misuse of their intent--and it screws you. My last promotion was to Vice President of IT with a big 6 financial firm, and my major? Undeclared. I'd left school in my sophomore year. Didn't finish my BA until late 30s, my MS was in management, but I've since left management to go technical--in an art department.

 

Most of the tech writers I managed, including myself, were English and Lit and Other people, not techies. Decent jobs come with their own training programs. Problem is, right now there are no jobs. Period. You can continue to pursue this barren world of work as an inexperienced person who's graduated, or you can target a potentially improved job market in the next few years as a graduate with a master's degree and some teaching experience. If you don't believe that the latter can open more doors, try applying for any job you'd love to have right now.

 

If you come up with a more profitable way to invest your next year or three, post it here--and I'll shut up.

 

In your corner, and big ((hug)),

Cat

[Philos]

The unemployment rate for white people over the age of 22 with a 4-year degree is 5-6% - close to what they call full employment. Just an FYI to challenge your perception.