[Why are you pursuing your degree?]

When I was a kid literature kept me off the streets; it gave me enough perspective not to do the stupid crap everyone else did in high school, stay out of jail, and get a free ride at an Ivy. I truly believe literature has a specific ability to help the mind transcend its immediate environment, and that only by helping young people and young adults transcend their environment and see what's on the far side of the struggle can I ever change my community and communities like it for the better. So I want an MA to fight for a community college job or, more likely, something on the non-profit edges of education, but also to develop a more forceful version of this underlying theory, specifically in relation to protest literature.

 

PhD though...hopefully I'll know in two years.

I hear you, and I agree. Getting kids to care about literature is something I deeply care about and think will help build a better future while also preserving a?/the? past.

 

However, it seems that high school is less and less the arena for accomplishing this. Nowhere in the Common Core standards does it care about appreciating literature or building life-long readers or learners. Why? Because you can't measure appreciation and you certainly can't measure something "life long." And if you can't measure it, then what's the point?

 

Ok, bringing my toe back off the soapbox now.

 

As an update, I'm actually persuing teaching online for next school year. Testing the waters elsewhere while staying at the high school level, I suppose. I will see what next year brings; I wouldn't feel right if I didn't give teaching at least two years. Consider it my own TFA. ha! And I'll have also gotten my feet wet in my master's classes.  It's been very helpful here, though, to get a sense of what I'm in for, and I've also been reading Getting What You Came For (got a cheap used copy from Amazon). I'm trying not to stress too much; just taking it one step at a time! I'll decide towards the end of next school year if I want to go full time with the MA into PhD.

[Why are you pursuing your degree?]

My problem with the paradigm of 'real world' jobs is that to me they feel like the opposite - the university feels like the real world to me and the other jobs I've worked have been in-Limbo place-holders, even the ones I've enjoyed. The work* I do when I'm 'in academia' is the only work I've ever done that doesn't force me to consistently lie to myself. Every other job I've done includes lying to myself or others about my enthusiasm, passion, strengths, motivations, and qualifications.

Interesting!... I can definitely see where this comes from, unfortunately. Is academia really more genuine, or is the rest of the modern world just mirrors and smoke? ha.

[Why are you pursuing your degree?]

I jest, I jest.  In actuality, I got the "if you can see yourself doing anything else, do it" speech from a few people and I agree, it's an important threshold that people should pass before they do something like this.  And the thing is... I've done other stuff.  I worked horrible, dead-end jobs (retail, telemarketing (YES, TELEMARKETING)) until I landed an okay office job that I've held for close to nine years now.  And I'm tired of it.

 

This cycle, I went all in, both because I knew I couldn't keep up a schedule of two full-time jobs forever and because my office job was starting to devour my soul.

ha! Yes, I've worked retail, food service, and an office job. I worked 20 - 30 hours a week during UG, and while it had its perks (relatively low stress), my soul was also starting to be devoured! Teaching secondary school devours you soul in a whole new way, though!

[Why are you pursuing your degree?]

Thanks for all the replies! Good reading over here.

 

 I did land a teaching job the following year, but it probably wasn't one I should've taken in retrospect. Middle schoolers really aren't who I'm the best with in a classroom setting. I tend to work better with either really young kids or older ones.  By mid-year, I knew I probably wouldn't be continuing there.

 

At that point, I began to revisit my thoughts about grad school. There were some extenuating circumstances that drew me to a particular school, and I ended up getting accepted. About halfway through my first year of my Master's program, I found myself loving teaching college students and really thriving in the classroom. That was pretty much when I decided that I had to this PhD thing. 

I actually really enjoyed my student teaching in eighth grade!

 

I enjoy teaching high school, but there are parts I don't care for. For example, I have very little sympathy for students who don't come to class everyday, regardless of their home problems. I am not a social worker, but that is what's expected of teachers, more or less. I have some of my administration dropping hints that I would be good for admin, but I seriously have no desire to manage things in that way. I find myself drifting away from a passion for the curriculum / pedagogy side of things and yearning towards the content side of things. More literature, theory, and research, please!

 

Since I started college and have been teaching, nothing has been more exciting than when I've been "in the zone" of research and writing... when the perfect connection or "le mot juste" strikes and my fingers can't type fast enough ere it evaporates.

 

Anywho... Maybe I'm just burnt out from teaching--I mean, I did devote years to getting where I am now,--but I don't want to wait too terribly long trying to figure it out if I'm not totally satisfied!

[Why are you pursuing your degree?]

Hey, everyone! First post here... I tried to search around, and while I found some threads discussing how abyssmal the job market is and how everything in the English field is horrible ( ), I have a different sort of question.

 

A bit of background on me before I ask (skip to the bottom if you're not interested!): I am currently a high school English teacher at an urban charter high school. I graduated with a BSE in English in December of 2011, and I got hired at my current school six weeks out of graduation. I had a 3.98 GPA for my undergrad. This coming fall, I will start on my master's in English part time while still teaching.

 

Perhaps I'm jumping the gun, but there's a part of me that won't stop nagging. I want to pursue my studies full-time! I enjoy teaching high school, more or less, but I miss research, and I feel like I have more to do and contribute in academia. I've had undergrad professors encourage me to go on to a doctorate. I don't feel like my mental set entirely matches that of my current colleagues.

 

That said, naturally I enjoy being financially independent. ha! I also am not sure if I am just "that good" and did everything right to get a job right after graduation or what, but it's daunting to think about giving that up when the market in secondary ed is hardly better than that at the post-secondary level. In addition, if I were to go onto a PhD, I fairly have my heart set on Penn at the moment, and I recognize the incredible odds achieving that would take.

 

 

 

All that said, my questions are these: How did you decide to pursue a PhD? What motivated you to take that path instead of a "real" job? When did you commit to that decision mentally? And perhaps as an addendum, have you ever regreted it?

 

Thank you in advance!