Why do you even want to go to grad school anyway?

[callista]

I was not well focused throughout my years as an undergrad (8 years). I had little direction and dealt with bouts of depression and social anxiety. Both of my parents did not have a college education and were pretty taboo in talking about mental health, so there were countless semesters where I was in and out of school.

 

My sis recently got her PsyD and I see how empowering that has been for her; not only as a Filipina-American woman but as the first on both sides of the family to earn a Doctorate. Applying to grad school at this point means the world to me-i feel like it would be this sort of redeeming experience to compensate for my lack of focus during undergrad. 

 

I have had struggles with similar issues for much of my life, so I can really relate to this.   <3

 

While I was able to get an MA many years ago, I was thoroughly miserable and cried so much that it's a wonder that I didn't float away.  I'm ready to enjoy graduate study now!  This is for my self-fulfillment.

[Grev]

Because I love the work I do in my field, teaching and research both.  Every time I've tried to do something else I've hated it, so who am I to blow against the wind?

[phku]

One reason, and one reason only:  I don't feel like I'm ready to be done learning yet.  Will that change after PhD?  Probably not.  But this is the best route for me.  I wasn't even thinking about grad school 5 months ago, and I applied to these schools on a whim thinking that I wouldn't have a chance.  Somehow I got in, and I am not naive enough to believe I'll ever have this opportunity again in my life.  I must take the opportunity, I must take the risk, I must learn as much as I possibly can -- this is a pretty good descrption of who I am.

[GirlfromChicago]

I arrived at my decision relatively late - like, last half of undergrad late. I originally wanted to be a PA, but then I spent an entire summer doing job shadowing and I realized that I didn't care enough about the people I would be treating. I had always loved being in the lab - any lab - where I could connect concepts with observations. It always helped to give me that "click" of understanding.

I chose biochemistry so that I could potentially get into drug research, which I figured would be a good way to still address my interest in health care without all the direct contact with patients. I decided on a PhD program because I'd like to have the opportunity to be a leader in the lab and help make decisions on the direction of the research.

Also, if I'm accepted I'll be the first person in my family with a doctorate of any kind. I think that would be pretty cool.

[nackteziege]

One reason, and one reason only:  I don't feel like I'm ready to be done learning yet.  Will that change after PhD?  Probably not.  But this is the best route for me...Somehow I got in, and I am not naive enough to believe I'll ever have this opportunity again in my life.  I must take the opportunity, I must take the risk, I must learn as much as I possibly can -- this is a pretty good descrption of who I am.

 

 

This is basically me right now.  I want to feel like an expert (though I realize I probably never will).  I'm in a field with a lot of uncertainty and a lot of complicated challenges, and I feel like there is so much more to be learned and I just don't know if I could go into the professional world already feeling so frustrated with not having the answers.

 

Everything seems to have culminated to this.  I made a decision to graduate early from undergrad and only applied to one school for a master's because it was a good fit and because of my partner.  I landed there at the perfect time; they had just hired a new faculty member who became my advisor and ultimately a great mentor--I admire her as someone I want to emulate.  She is leaving for a new school next year, so had I spent another year in undergrad I would have had a significantly different experience, and she likely would have been working with a different student.  She encouraged me to get a PhD from early in our relationship.  As I began to apply to PhD programs, she had contacts at the schools I was looking at and made jokes about academic lineage.  It just feels like right now I am very well-situated and I've gotten into places I don't know I could get into a second time.

 

While I complain about work like every grad student, the late, late nights rushing to finish research actually are almost thrilling, and while teaching still scares me (I've not had experience yet) I do love when I explain things to people and it clicks.  Also, I enjoy writing and have found it is one of my greatest strengths, which makes me want to keep doing it--hopefully in an impactful way.

 

Like many, I will be the first PhD in my family, as far as I know.  It's interesting that many here seem to come from non-academic families, because it seems like academics often breed academics.

Edited March 10, 2013 by nackteziege

[WhyPhD]

I want to be a university professor, so getting a PhD is important to get there. I hate to have any other kind of job, except for gynecologist!

[Deadmeat]

Many reasons... but the biggest one for me personally is... I would always regret not doing it, its a personal quest.

[pears]

i've wanted to be an archaeologist since kindergarten. 19-odd years later, i still love dirt and old things and what i jokingly refer to as "mental masturbation" (aka learning for the sake of learning), but my academic and work experience in recent years have made me see the field in a completely new way. in short, i can keep mentally masturbating and make peoples' lives better, but i need to go to grad school to get all the know-how and the piece of paper that seem to be prerequisites for doing that.

[bamafan]

So I can hit on undergrads obviously.

[Deadmeat]

So I can hit on undergrads obviously.

 

Can I change my answer to this? lol!

[NightGallery]

I love music and anthropology, and the best way to obtain a career writing and researching within those frameworks is to earn a PhD in ethnomusicology. The fact that I enjoy writing and research as much as I do only adds weight to my resolve to pursue a doctorate. Aiming high, living large, and living NOW. Believing that my own passions are what I excel at. That's why.

Edited March 11, 2013 by NightGallery

[daw0518]

I'm a Psych major, so my junior year of college I had this realization that I would not be able to do anything worthwhile with my bachelors degree & needed to go to graduate school. I started getting involved in research & by some miracle found the McNair Achievement Program at my university & was well on my way.

So originally, I started on this long & arduous journey just because I realized a BS in Psych was pretty much useless, but I think now it's a lot of things unrelated to academia. One big one for me is making people proud. Like one of my very best motivators in life is the thought of my loved ones being proud of me for my accomplishments, & since no one in my family/extended family had even gone to college, graduate school & the idea of me potentially getting a Ph.D. is HUGE to them.

 

Another is definitely money. I come from a low-income family & I'm determined to change my life so I don't have to live the way I have up until now.

 

My last two are pretty average - one being that I want to continue growing as a person & I think graduate school is the best place for that, & the other being that I want to make an impact on the world somehow.

[Andean Pat]

To break to trend of the acceptance/rejection topics in here, how about some soul searching while waiting it out?

 

I posed think question to myself and I thought it would be good for anyone to seriously think about it: Why? Why put yourself through writing all these essays, taking GREs, spending hundreds of dollars, stalking grad-cafe, go on tough interviews, etc... All to spend 5-6 years of your life to putting even more pressure on yourself until you finally get through it? Most people do fine without a PhD... why do you need to do it?

 

Don't answer like you're telling me, or like you're writing a SOP... what's the reason you used to convince yourself that this is right? Imagine you're trying to convince yourself from 9th grade that this is what you need to do. Have you ever put these feelings/ambitions into words? Think about it even if you're a lurker, or you don't want to share for everyone to see. You might learn something about yourself. 

I believe that growing up is like finding out Santa does not exist: You leave a state of innocence and become hold of a piece of truth which makes you 'more grown-up'. You sometimes wish you could be as innocent as you were when you believe in Santa, but you know that your present view of the world is better because it is more realistic. When I realised I wanted to be a historian, there was no coming back. It is IT. I agree with you in that mediocre/ambition dichotomy and also surprises me the amount of people that are OK with not being the best they can be.  

 

My soul digging started when I left High School. Until then I wanted to be everything: doctor, hotel manager, teacher, writer... I applied to several programs abroad but got no funding (no wonder, if I barely knew what I wanted to do!). The following year I switched major four times looking for my prince-charming of courses, and I've founded it! I did my whole undergrad working full time as a teacher in primary and secondary schools, and I thought that my calling was there. 

 

The morning after defending my thesis, I was drinking some coffee with my advisor and asked her "now what?". And she said: "now you decide what you want to do, you need to find your passion". I thought she was kidding, I mean, my career was already boosting at work (I work in excellent schools). After a month or so, I was writing papers to submit to journals and conferences. I realised I love teaching, but I cannot live without doing research. And then I understood it: I got into history not because I like dead people or because I like books. It's because I am very, very curious. 

 

So, here I am, because I want to continue learning! I can't help it!  

 

For me, this is the culmination of a very long love affair with insects and their kin. :-)

 

But before that, I was all about dinosaurs (honestly, what little boy isn't?). When I was in kindergarten, the teacher organized a career day, in which we all sat in a circle and discussed what we wanted to be when we grew up. The night before, I made sure that I could pronounce "paleontologist" correctly (yes, I practiced for this), and when it was my turn to share, I proudly proclaimed that that was what I wanted to be. My teacher, however, called me out right in front of everyone else and said, "That's not a real job. You can't get paid to do that." Then she tried to encourage me to be a police officer or doctor or construction worker like everyone else in the class. I was totally crushed... she quite literally snuffed out my dream because I was impressionable enough to believe her. I actually got a little depressed over this... I packed up the dinosaur books that I was learning how to read from, stopped playing with my dinosaur toys, and asked my parents to buy me new non-dinosaur bedsheets. I honestly thought that I'd have to be a cop or fireman even though I didn't like those professions at all. My heart was with the dinosaurs, but I let my teacher convince me that dinosaurs were "just for the movies." 

 

Next year, my quirky first grade teacher decided that hamsters and turtles were boring and went for spiders as her class pets. She collected a few from around her house, put them in cages, and did a little spider biology unit to teach us about them. Most students thought it was icky, but I loved it! I relished my week as spider monitor, during which I had to observe the spiders every afternoon and record their behaviors in the class spider journal. After the school year ended, the teacher even let me keep the surviving spiders for the summer! It was great... in the years to come, I read more and more about spiders and other arthropods, and became more and more hooked. I eventually decided that I wanted to be an entomologist when I grew up so that I could learn more about these animals forever.

 

And that's what I've been working towards ever since! I joined a spider biology lab during my second semester of undergrad, churned out a few interesting projects there, and then proceeded to a master's program where I investigated a different type of web-building insect. Now I'm applying to PhD programs so that I can continue the dream! The end goal is a job in academia, with an equal mix of research (because it's interesting) and teaching (so that I can inspire people in the way that my first grade teacher did).

 

Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if my first grade teacher didn't step in and encourage me to be passionate about something again. Maybe I would have really tried to be a cop or construction worker? Sometimes I also wonder what life would be like if I had decided to get back into dinosaurs. In any case, I'm doing this PhD because I like bugs. But I'd also like to think that I'm getting revenge on that terrible teacher who crushed my childhood dream way back in the early 90s by working hard to follow this second dream. I recently got my dinosaur toys out of the closet too... just because. :-)

 

[bTW, the kindergarten teacher was eventually fired after numerous complaints from parents about her teaching style. She deserved it!]

 

Lovely story, and truly a disastrous teacher that one! I've taught in Year 2 (boys only schools) for several years and I loved it when they came with out-of-the-box occurrences. In fact, we did a unit on "Under the sea" around "finding Nemo": everyone ended up wanting to be a Marine Biologist, a submarine builder or a diver. No one wanted to be a dentist

[zabius]

I've taught in Year 2 (boys only schools) for several years and I loved it when they came with out-of-the-box occurrences. In fact, we did a unit on "Under the sea" around "finding Nemo": everyone ended up wanting to be a Marine Biologist, a submarine builder or a diver. No one wanted to be a dentist

 

That's awesome! The school system needs more encouraging teachers like you.

[Biostat_Assistant_Prof]

Because Im fascinated with statistics applied to medical research and to accomplish my career goals I need a PhD

[child of 2]

I just want to be a fucking scientist

[margarets]

I work in an environment where, because I don't do the same thing they do, and because they don't actually know anything about me, a lot of my co-workers have assumed I'm a moron.  For extra irony (or whatever it is) these same people have community college diplomas, and sometimes not even that.  They screw up all the time, I pretty much never do (or if I do no one has told me about it), but in their eyes I'm the dumb one.

 

So I want to go to grad school so I can rub it in their stupid faces.  The hitch is that most of them probably barely even know what grad school is or that it is generally a smart-people thing.  So they will probably still think I'm dumb!

[Andean Pat]

I work in an environment where, because I don't do the same thing they do, and because they don't actually know anything about me, a lot of my co-workers have assumed I'm a moron.  For extra irony (or whatever it is) these same people have community college diplomas, and sometimes not even that.  They screw up all the time, I pretty much never do (or if I do no one has told me about it), but in their eyes I'm the dumb one.

 

So I want to go to grad school so I can rub it in their stupid faces.  The hitch is that most of them probably barely even know what grad school is or that it is generally a smart-people thing.  So they will probably still think I'm dumb!

 

Do you think that doing something to rub it on other people's faces is the best reason for doing that? I've found that when you do things for your own reasons, regardless other people's reaction, you are more confident in that decision and you are more successful. Are you in grad school now? If you are, and you are doing well, you probably have other reasons for being there, like passion for your field or something of the sort .

[margarets]

Do you think that doing something to rub it on other people's faces is the best reason for doing that? I've found that when you do things for your own reasons, regardless other people's reaction, you are more confident in that decision and you are more successful. Are you in grad school now? If you are, and you are doing well, you probably have other reasons for being there, like passion for your field or something of the sort .

 

I have other reasons, but the final push to get serious about applying was a comment a co-worker made about my "learning curve" re: a certain task she assumed I couldn't do.  Bear in mind that this task is something taught in community college to people who just got out of high school (and isn't difficult anyway).  With two degrees under my belt, I think I have demonstrated my ability to freaking LEARN.

 

But I work in the bizarro workplace.

[lib87]

My ideal career is helping people. Going to school for an MSW is exactly how I want to do it.

[juilletmercredi]

I want to help people without working directly with people.  I'm a behind-the-scenes kind of person; I really wanted to work on issues of human interest and impact, but I didn't want to be a doctor, nurse, counselor or clinical social worker.  Then I discovered public health, and especially applied public health research.  I'm really passionate about a variety of health issues and I want to continue to use the research tools I'm learning to solve those health problems - but in a very applied way.  Public health is a really applied field, and I wasn't interested in discovering basic theories about human behavior.  I wanted to use those basic theories and apply them to work within health and health care, and use my research to influence policy and legislation.

 

My goal is to work for a government agency or think tank as a researcher or research consultant.  I want to do that for 10-15 years, and then pursue a degree in public policy or public administration and run some research agency(ies) or go into policy analysis.

[child of 2]

well... more specifically, a scientist that helps address the world's sustainbility issues such as petro chemical deriveratives, mostly polymers, which typically require high energy demands, processes that produce a lot of wastes, and when turned into a product, gets a 1 way ticket to a landfill, often behind the curtains, in a third world country. Have to hand it to Apple for that one, they come up with new shit every year, and people flock to them.

 

There are currently research involving biodegradable (recyclable) polymers that could potentially be not only a greener, but cheaper alternative to conventional plastics, electronics, etc. Polymers is also a big player in fuel cells and photovoltaics, which are currently already optimized; they're just trying to make it cheaper than fossil fuel (good luck with that one  ).

 

shit, maybe I should've put that into my SOP....

[margarets]

well... more specifically, a scientist that helps address the world's sustainbility issues such as petro chemical deriveratives, mostly polymers, which typically require high energy demands, processes that produce a lot of wastes, and when turned into a product, gets a 1 way ticket to a landfill, often behind the curtains, in a third world country. Have to hand it to Apple for that one, they come up with new shit every year, and people flock to them.

 

There are currently research involving biodegradable (recyclable) polymers that could potentially be not only a greener, but cheaper alternative to conventional plastics, electronics, etc. Polymers is also a big player in fuel cells and photovoltaics, which are currently already optimized; they're just trying to make it cheaper than fossil fuel (good luck with that one  ).

 

shit, maybe I should've put that into my SOP....

Did you, in some form?  Though I rather like the way you've written it here.

[margarets]

My goal is to work for a government agency or think tank as a researcher or research consultant.  I want to do that for 10-15 years, and then pursue a degree in public policy or public administration and run some research agency(ies) or go into policy analysis.

 

This is pretty much the environment I am in, and I very specifically chose not to do a master's in public policy or admin.  The stuff I see every day... no way they are teaching that in grad school, which means they really aren't preparing people for what lies ahead.  Better to read Shakespeare, Machiavelli, Dilbert, and watch Yes Minister, and anything else along those lines.

[child of 2]

Did you, in some form?  Though I rather like the way you've written it here.

 

From what I remember, I didn't mention anything about my future career other than that I wanted to work in R&D. I spent 80% of the essay talking about my research and teaching experience. I only had positive feedback from the professors who read it for me. I was told to emphasize my research experience... I mean people can talk all they want about making the world a better place, but the cold hard truth (for chemical engineers anyway) is that one way or another, people end up doing process design, or something completely unrelated to their PhD thesis. It seems the real exciting stuff only happen at research universities and national labs. Outside, in the private sector, it's all about the bottomline... and not getting sued. Ridiculous...