Don’t Go to Grad School
I might be something of a cliché. I did my homework as soon as I got home from school most of my childhood. I applied to eight colleges, getting into three and getting wait-listed at five. I took the SATs twice, the ACT once, and passed six AP exams. I did everything that my teachers, guidance counselors, and parents told me I needed to do in order to be a good, successful adult. And at 29, I live with my mother.
It never crossed my mind to follow another path; perhaps work for a year and think about what I wanted to do. I needed to keep up my momentum. If I was going to be an independent adult, there was no room for slowing down.
I had a lot of plans that I thought were designed to make sure I did not end up where I currently am: underemployed and living at home. I got a B.A. from a private college in Boston, with a double major in History and English, in three years. This was followed by something even more ill-advised. I got a M.A. in History. This was all part of a convoluted plan to build a back-up plan while building an interesting CV for medical school. It’s embarrassing to even type that out.
Long story short, I burned out as I was finishing my final semester of graduate school classes and failed my final exams. My advisor, a professor whom I admired with almost religious devotion, believed I was an insult to the program. It was agreed that my exams would be retaken the following semester.
My psychiatrist, of whom I’d been a patient for nine years, ordered a neuropsychic evaluation to determine if my OCD was co-morbid with anything besides my Tourette’s. Additional medications were discussed.
I spent the summer studying and panicking about facing the oral exams again. I had a meeting with my advisor and asked if I might expand the written portion of the exam into a thesis instead. I’m not sure if she thought of what she said next on the spot or if she had worked on it beforehand when I sent her an email proposing the change. “No matter how many drugs you pump into your body, you will never write a thesis. You just don’t think the right way.”
Grasping at the last threads of my dignity, I asked if she was calling me an idiot. Her face contorted into a pained expression that merged with a full body shrug.
I didn’t tell anybody what she had said. I didn’t want people to know that I was stupid. Painful as it was, I was grateful to her for informing me of incompetence. The realization that my advisor was simply a bitch would come months later with a help of my shrink, my school therapist, and the graduate student support group I attended.
The next nine months were spent trying to get my OCD to overcome my Tourette’s and ADD symptoms and produce stellar notes for my next exams. I ripped my cuticles to shreds over the revised copy of my research project, which was an unglorified thesis. Arguably the same amount of work, but with less support from the department.
It all came to a finish that June, between June 6th and the 13th of 2014. I marked June 6th on my calendar as “D-Day”, only later realizing that it was in fact the 65th anniversary of the Allied invasion of Normandy. My oral exams took place on Friday the 13th. As you probably guessed, given that I wrote above that I did earn my Masters, I passed. My advisor shook my hand from across the large oak table. It was the closest I’ll ever get to feeling like Ben Affleck in a movie about WWII.
I went to graduate school to feel smart. I had never felt dumber in my life. The diploma was meant to be a permission slip of sorts to exist in a world populated by people much smarter than me. All my manic scrambling to accomplish intellectual status resulted in stagnation. I’ve worked jobs related to history, mostly as a tour guide in various places in my town of Newport, Rhode Island. The food and beverage industry made me the most money but not by much and made me consider sex work. Currently I work in real estate appraisal. The sound of my keyboard as I type reports soothes my nerves.
One can say there’s no point in regret. I don’t exactly regret that I have a Masters degree. What I do regret are the years of stress, self-loathing, and feeling of pointlessness during and following the whole affair. In the years since, I’ve met people who have been newly accepted into graduate programs. The first thing I say is “Congratulations.” The second thing I say is “I’m sorry.”
