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Stay at Home Mom going back to graduate school


soarhigher4

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I think I'm part of the minority here, but are there any stay at home Moms applying for graduate school?  I took ~6 years away from school and work, attempted at starting a small business and after some soul searching realized that my true passions can only be fulfilled by returning to school.  

 

Can I hear from any of my Moms out there?

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I think I'm part of the minority here, but are there any stay at home Moms applying for graduate school?  I took ~6 years away from school and work, attempted at starting a small business and after some soul searching realized that my true passions can only be fulfilled by returning to school.  

 

Can I hear from any of my Moms out there?

 

 

Good for you! Try checking out the older students thread, there's several women in that thread that are currently in grad programs that are older, married, and with kids :). Good luck!

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I wasn't a stay at home mom between undergrad and grad, but I did go back to school as an older person with a kid and a husband. On the day I walked for my master's degree, an 87 year old woman walked for her bachelors; she had a 40 year, child rearing & clerical job hiatus between starting school and finishing it. SAHMs have every bit as much right to pursue their dream as anyone else. Actually, I dislike the notion of SAHM simply because it makes an irrelevant social distinction for valuation. It implies that the woman (never the man), didn't do anything but change diapers and wipe up snot when she wasn't watching her stories or making overly elaborate plans for someone's first birthday party. That, unfortunately, is an obstacle women always seem to have to address in any application process.

 

Education has a use-by date when it comes to research. If you haven't been doing anything in your field for a few years, find some creative ways to discuss how you actually have been doing things in your field. A person trying to get into an agriculture program can discuss experiments she ran (likely unknowingly) with her backyard tomato plants. Volunteer work related to the field can be used. Create a fresh writing sample that includes research published in the past year (or update an old piece of work with new research). The writing sample will show, beyond anything else, that you are current in the field if you have a hiatus in your resume. This varies from field to field, of course. Research in computers is out of date in a year or two; research in English literature takes a lot longer to stale (like a decade). The fact that you owned a small business for a while can make inroads. Grad students tend to be of the traditional sort, straight from high school to undergrad to grad with, at most, a gap year somewhere. You have outside experience, particularly with industry, that you can use to apply to your future plans in some fashion. There is often a way to use the many things that go into running a business to talk about future interests, even if they don't really coincide.

 

I think that going after your dreams is almost always a good idea. (The almost caveat is for dreams of things like marrying Prince Harry or being the first person to own a live unicorn.)

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I actually know 2 women in my program who were SAHMs before going to grad school.  One woman in my class has this amazing story, she got pregnant really young and got married and was a wife and mother and... I am not going to go into her entire story but she brings something different to the class.  Most of my classmates are like 22-23 and right out of college. I think it is cool, I have taken a real liking to her.  The other woman I know is my therapist.  She went back to grad school after having a kids young and getting married and being a SAHM, then going to school, dropping out, going back, changing programs, dropping out again working odd jobs, and then finally finding the program she loved.  Good luck, I'm sure it'll be difficult but manageable.  

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I actually know 2 women in my program who were SAHMs before going to grad school.  One woman in my class has this amazing story, she got pregnant really young and got married and was a wife and mother and... I am not going to go into her entire story but she brings something different to the class.  Most of my classmates are like 22-23 and right out of college. I think it is cool, I have taken a real liking to her.  The other woman I know is my therapist.  She went back to grad school after having a kids young and getting married and being a SAHM, then going to school, dropping out, going back, changing programs, dropping out again working odd jobs, and then finally finding the program she loved.  Good luck, I'm sure it'll be difficult but manageable.  

Thanks for sharing your experiences.  This is more than helpful and encouraging!

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