Now time to answer a letter from one of my dear readers.
Dear TYCDIGS,
Should I go to grad school?
Thanks,
SIGTGS
Dear SIGTGS,
This is a very important question in any young or youthful but aging
person's life, and the answer can be reached with a complex decision calculus.
If you are interested in gender/race/sexuality/"popular
culture" with no background in any particular social science, you should
strongly consider going to grad school, unless you have any creative talents,
in which case you should consider becoming a blogger, artist, hat maker or
cupcake baker.
If you identify as a radical, anarchist of any shade, socialist, leftist,
or Occupier but still like to feel better than most people around you, you
could probably just go into non-profit or union organizing. Or move to Detroit. But if you can come up with at
least two reasons why these options just perpetuate the structures that
oppress you and others, and eventually want a shot at making over
$50,000 a year, you could try out grad school if you don't mind eventually
abandoning everything that led you there in the first place.
If the proudest day of your life was the day you graduated from college,
you should most certainly go to grad school.
If you enjoy impulse shopping, promiscuous sexual relations, travelling,
sunshine, the possibility that at any given time the next step in your life
might bring you to something completely different, shallow analysis of anything
at all [=news, non-academic non-fiction, emails from your friends and family],
do NOT go to grad school, unless you don't mind losing enjoyment from
everything you used to love, which is, by the way, one symptom of depression.
If you've always thought you might want to go to grad school but don't
really know what for, resist the urge to study Urban Planning, Comparative
Literature, or Ethnomusicology. If you must go to grad school, fork out for a
professional degree related to something you've actually done before, and then
go get a fucking job.
If you want to go to grad school because you don't know what else you could
do with your life, you could become a yoga teacher, or English teacher, or
teacher of any kind, really. But then again, that is also the end goal of
going to grad school. So you’ve got to figure that one out on your own.
If you want to go to NYU, CUNY or Columbia, and have never actually lived
in New York, then you probably just want to move there,
and probably wouldn't really make it anywhere anyway. So why not just try
your luck as a barista in a cute mid-western city? Cincinnati is really quite quirky
these days.
If you're exceptionally good with numbers, computers or chemicals, the
answer is no.
Did any of this apply to you?
Love,
TYCDIGS
It's Friday! But the LA/Tehran contingent brought a bit too much LA to this city, and now I'm not even sure I can go out this weekend. At the very least, the recently planned pub crawl must be postponed. I know, this is very non-NON GRAD.
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