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So many thoughts....

I took a few months away from here to focus on school, and it really didn't do much to help. I've had two professors tell me I don't seem interested in my field of study, and one tell me to look into doctorate programs (which look awesome, but I'm the one in college from a family of trade school people and am totally overwhelmed).

Someone please give me a direction in life, or post pictures of yummy Greek dishes to make me smile.
 
I don't know much about edgumukashun, so here's a yummy greek dish.



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Ok, serious question: Are you genuinely interested in your field of study? Not like "you think it's cool now", but can you see yourself enjoying it in 20-30 years with things like a family and a mortgage?

If so, could just be a "growing pain".
 
Anyone can do a doctorate, you need to sacrifice a lot of time and sacrifice it to a tiny portion of a field of research.

If you aren't that interested in the subject, that could be an issue, keeping motivated through the attrition is hard enough at the best of times.

If you do decide to follow it, you need to be selfish at times, a lot of things can (and will) fall by the wayside while you study.
 
I no longer advise doctorates to people, in the current academic work environment. Too many schools are hiring adjuncts rather than replacing tenured emeriti with new tenure-track lines. Saying you want to make a living as a professor is getting more and more like saying you want to make a living as a rock start or athlete. What IS your field of study? If you have a professor suggesting grad school, you must at least be showing some promise. That may suggest directions to go in.
 
I no longer advise doctorates to people, in the current academic work environment. Too many schools are hiring adjuncts rather than replacing tenured emeriti with new tenure-track lines. Saying you want to make a living as a professor is getting more and more like saying you want to make a living as a rock start or athlete. What IS your field of study? If you have a professor suggesting grad school, you must at least be showing some promise. That may suggest directions to go in.

While I agree that climbing the academic ladder is pretty insane when it comes to competition, that has resulted in more post graduate degree holders going for jobs which require fewer qualifications. A PhD can certainly help in that situation (I took mine on because the job market was saturated with experienced degree holders who had lost their jobs in the recession), even now, jobs (not just academic or research based) which advertise for a BSc will have a lot of people with PhDs applying for them.

Though my experiences are limited to the sciences in the UK, but I believe it's a fairly similar story across the EU and US at the moment.
 
I believe that a person should take at least one year away from college/university before starting graduate studies. A little time in the "real world" helps you get perspective on what you really want.

Those who take the time off and truly decide that is what they want tend to do better in their graduate studies.
 
The financial change of going back to school can be off-putting for some.

But beyond that, I agree, to an extent (not the route I went, I was offered a PhD position by my MSc project supervisor).

It also depends on timing, if you have a specific field, institute or academic you wish to work with - if there is funding for a graduate student this year, there may not be next year etc.
 
Ok, serious question: Are you genuinely interested in your field of study? Not like "you think it's cool now", but can you see yourself enjoying it in 20-30 years with things like a family and a mortgage?

If so, could just be a "growing pain".

Yes, I decided my major eight years ago, and the deeper I get into it the more I love it. I always wanted to be that relative who couldn't come to holiday dinners because she was gallivanting around the world, and with a doctorate I could.

I no longer advise doctorates to people, in the current academic work environment. Too many schools are hiring adjuncts rather than replacing tenured emeriti with new tenure-track lines. Saying you want to make a living as a professor is getting more and more like saying you want to make a living as a rock start or athlete. What IS your field of study? If you have a professor suggesting grad school, you must at least be showing some promise. That may suggest directions to go in.

Anthropology major (psych minor), I was thinking of doing Psych in grad school so I could become a adjunct professor at the community college level, but my adviser suggested that I look into doctorate programs and I'm giddy at the thought of being an anthropologist.

Fairies Wear Boots on a loop. The universe will come into focus.

How did you know what my Halloween costume is going to be?!?!?
 
Yes, I decided my major eight years ago, and the deeper I get into it the more I love it. I always wanted to be that relative who couldn't come to holiday dinners because she was gallivanting around the world, and with a doctorate I could.

Anthropology major (psych minor), I was thinking of doing Psych in grad school so I could become a adjunct professor at the community college level, but my adviser suggested that I look into doctorate programs and I'm giddy at the thought of being an anthropologist.

Well, both of those fields require graduate school if you want to work in them. You're going to need at least a master's in either field to teach at a community college and most likely a doctorate to teach at the university level. If you go into any applied field of psychology (e.g., clinical, counseling, I/O, community, school, etc.) you're going to need at least a master's and if you go into the research side (e.g., social, personality, cognitive, legal, bio-comparative, etc.), you're going to need a doctorate. If you want to be a practitioner, a PhD or PsyD is probably where you're going to end up eventually.

It is kind of ironic that you are an anthro major with a psych minor, since the former discipline largely comes from an anti-positivist/constructionist ontology and the latter is pretty firmly rooted in post-positivism. If your interest is in cultural anthropology more so than say physical anthropology or archaeology, don't discount sociology programs either. In a good soc program, you should get a good helping of both constructionist and post-positivist perspectives and walk out of it as both a good statistician and a good ethnographer (that's a lot of "goods" in one sentence lol). Related - and you probably know this - if you are serious about going to grad school for any subfield of psychology, make sure you take at least one methods course and one stats course in your minor.

With that said, only you can answer the question of whether or not you should go to grad school. It's all in what you want to accomplish and where you want to go with your career. I know I said that you need grad school to work in anthropology or psychology, but nothing says you have to pursue those careers. I know attorneys with biology undergraduate degrees.

I will say this. Going for a doctorate, whether it's a PhD, PsyD, DEd, ThD, or whatever, requires a true love of the discipline and you need to be an autodidact. As Mohawk said, it requires a great sacrifice. I'm currently ABD with two or three more chapters to write on my dissertation. Many of my friends from college own their own homes and are pretty rooted in their careers at this point. I gave up a lot of stuff to pursue a doctorate, and I wouldn't change it for the world. I made the decision to pursue a PhD before the first day of my freshman year of college. I don't need it for my career, but I'd rather have it than not have it; although, in a world where you need a bachelor's degree to serve coffee anymore, I found it really annoying that I had to justify my doctorate to a lot of hiring managers and search committees to counter the BS "overqualified" argument. But it's been a very personally and intellectually fulfilling experience. I'm fortunate (or smart?) in that I picked a dissertation topic that I love, so working on it is not as painful as it could be. With that said, I should be doing data analysis right now, but I'm hanging out on Talkbass and I'm gonna go watch Marc Maron's show on Netflix. :D

My last piece of wisdom for what it's worth: It's not uncommon for people to question if they've made the right decision or not or their worthiness when it comes to graduate, especially doctorate level, study.

P.s. I also came from a family of blue-collar workers and understand feeling overwhelmed. I didn't go to college for four years after high school. The reason I didn't go is that it was communicated to me by people like guidance counselors and such that since I wasn't an academic track student, then I wasn't groomed for college. I'm not making excuses, but I simply didn't have the cultural capital to understand the whole academic process.
 
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