Really strange and varied background?

[racataca]

Total apologies in advance if this is tl;dr.

Hey everyone. I'm just looking for some insight because I desperately want to study linguistics at the graduate level and hopefully eventually earn my PhD from a decently respected institution, but I'm wondering about the futility of my situation, given my background.

I went to a decent Jesuit school in Chicago (there's only one...) that didn't offer a linguistics program, but it wouldn't have mattered because I didn't even know what linguistics was at that point in my life. My sophomore year I transferred to an art school in Chicago, but immediately transferred back because I'd rather write reports than withstand critiques every week.

I majored in International Relations, which simultaneously allowed me to take all the language classes I wanted. I took two semesters of upper-level courses in German, as well as two semesters of beginning Arabic, and three semesters of Spanish which put me through Spanish IV.

Due to my gluttony for punishment, I worked full-time during school, volunteered as an ESL teacher with the school's Literacy center, volunteered as a darkroom supervisor, and took 18 credit hours nearly every semester. Freshman year was dismal, but there was a definite upward trend from Sophomore year on, which resulted in me graduated with a 3.4 uGPA and a 3.25 GPA in my field. If I factor language into my International Relations GPA, that raises it to 3.47. My foreign language GPA on its own is a 3.81 (which, thinking back, leads me to wonder why I didn't major in a foreign language in the first place).

So I know those aren't incredibly strong stats. I graduated in 2007, and since then I've

--Been a Peace Corps volunteer, where a large portion of my service was centered on teaching ESL and which introduced some awesome, endangered languages to me that are super fascinating.

--Been an ESL instructor at a high school in Panama.

--Been an ESL instructor at two universities in Panama.

--Worked as an ESL instructor at a big corporate language company that sells their program at Kiosks in malls (yellow box, blue logo, its name is taken from an ancient stone that has three languages written on it), with an eventual promotion.

I really want to study linguistics because it fascinates me, and luckily that job will pay for it because they see it as pertinent to their interests. There's a school near my house which, as far as I know, is unranked for its graduate linguistic program is concerned, but the professors there are doing research in fields that interest me (sociolinguistics, endangered language preservation, historical linguistics).

Indulge me, or on the flip side, slap me across the face with reality: if I can do well in this (unranked, unknown) program - I mean get published, write an awesome thesis, etc. - is there hope in my life to someday go on to do a PhD at a well-known institution? I'm primarily concerned with my undergrad GPA, and am finding any way to kind of rectify that situation.

Edited May 26, 2012 by racataca

[Cockneysparrow]

I just PMed you. My background is not entirely dissimilar to yours.