One Semester Down
Yes, you can go back to graduate school at any point.
If you had asked me in May of this year if I would consider going back to school — the answer would most definitively been no. I had just gotten back from a backpacking trip around South America, and was ready to settle down into a graphic design job for a few years after getting a long-time travel goal crossed of my bucket list.
I moved from Denver to Boulder and took a job in the area so my significant other could start their graduate program at CU Boulder. I missed Denver and watched my boyfriend drown in class work and told myself repeatedly that it was only for one year, we just had to survive one year of this.
And then in July I attended a UX workshop at General Assembly and was introduced to a professor of UX design at CU Boulder. It wasn’t my first rodeo hearing about UX, but for some reason this time it resonated with me that hey, maybe people can learn this stuff in school. Which lead to me following Google results one day and stumbling across the Masters in Strategic Communication Design at CU. I looked at the application deadline with about a month to go before the program started, and for some reason thought, hey, I can still make that.
And here I am — after a whirlwind first semester and frankly a force of nature I don’t understand that got every piece of the puzzle in place for me to attend this Fall. People in my cohort talk about shadowing the program back in the Spring, and here I am having no clue I would be doing this 3 weeks before classes started. And boy, am I glad I did.
Here are some takeaways I have after finishing my first semester, to anyone working full time jobs and worried about transitioning back into ‘student’ life:
- You don’t have to quit your job. You can do it all. You are probably going to cry a lot and learn to (barely) function on 3–4 hours of sleep, but if financial reasons are holding you back, it is possible. Work ethic and a strict schedule are going to be key to success. You will have to also accept the fact that you will probably not have the time for some of the passion projects and other activities other classmates will have time for. I’ve learned just how far I can push myself this semester working and going to school, and in doing so have found that I am capable of a lot more than I first thought.
2. Lean on your classmates. I feel like I really lucked out and ended up with amazing, kind, talented classmates. We all support each other and half the time turning in assignments feels like a group effort of giving each other feedback and swapping talents to help each other succeed. The first day of class one professor mentioned finding a classmate you can count on to help you if you are falling back, and I feel like I’ve found a dozen of them. You’re all in this together, so you shouldn’t have to face these challenges alone.
3. Soak up everything you can from your professors. I don’t know if it’s just that my graduate program is run studio style, but every week I work with professors who genuinely care about our projects and push us to constantly improve. I’ve learned that my projects improve exponentially the more feedback I seek from my professors, and that it opens up new opportunities and connections. These are people who are eager to help and want you to succeed, so go to their office hours, bug them after class, work on side projects with them — they will be invaluable resources to you throughout your career.
4. Do something for fun. Sometimes I sit back and deliriously think how fun and inspiring graduate school is. There is something so freeing and motivating about having time to just learn new things. Working full time in your career can lead to periods of time where you don’t learn anything new. Maybe you’re killing it at your job, but it doesn’t mean you’re learning new skills necessarily. Graduate school is a great time to do projects you are passionate or curious about.
I feel major FOMO at times that this may be my only year to do crazy, wild experiments, learn new skills and read the giant stack of books waiting for me. But at the same time, I’m looking forward to my Christmas break not to just have a rest from homework, but mostly to tackle some projects that I’ve been inspired to start during my first semester. Is it weird I’m a little sad the semester is over?
5. Fail early, fail often. This is something my professors say to us over and over again. It’s a key part to rapid prototyping and getting to a minimal viable product quickly. But it applies to everything. At work, failure can mean reprimanding, or worst case, getting fired. But in school, failing is just an opportunity to learn and improve (ok, I guess there’s a such thing as grades, but do people really care about grades in grad school?). You’re failing in a safe space, and are probably surrounded by really talented classmates and teachers, who can help you turn that failure into a success.
6. Study on campus. Sometimes grad school can feel like a second job to me. By that I mean commuting to class each day from my part-time job and then going home to my apartment 20 minutes away can make me feel like I’m not really a part of a community in a way undergraduate made you feel. Because of this, I’m trying to make a conscious effort to just go to the studio for a few hours over the weekend, or hang around to work on projects after class. It almost always turns into a brainstorming or feedback session with other students, and it’s the time in which my relationships with my classmates have developed the most.
You can easily get through grad school showing up just for class and going home to your personal life right after, but I think you get so much more if you stick around to be a part of the community happening outside of class.
7. Assess often. We have a class called Re:Lab, in which we are effectively in groups working on developing start ups to solve different problem areas in design (I’m working on design for social impact). A practice we have in this class is frequent ‘What’s Working’ and ‘What’s not Working’ sessions, whether as a class, or in our small groups. Discussing what is working and what isn’t openly can make major strides in getting rid of road blocks for you and your team. This is something I try to implement into every aspect of my life to decide if I need to pivot (priorities, homework, relationships, etc.). Learning to be effective at knowing when to pivot is a valuable skill, and I think assessing your progress often is key to developing that skill.
Looking back on my first semester, I still sometimes feel like I have no idea what I’m doing. What I can say is that for the first time in a long time, I feel like I’m on the right track and that I’m genuinely inspired every week by the challenges presented to me. And for now, that’s exactly where I want to be. See you next semester!
