#lanterheart

ah yes the sideblog with a great url i don’t use nearly enough... maybe i should get back into that— but it’s fine! i post about my gradventures here so i don’t mind at all! ask away! 

i chose the phd over the masters for a few reasons— first, getting a phd in the u.s. is “free”... ish... they pay you a “living” stipend since you’re committing to a full time job for 6+ years, and they take care of you tuition and give you university health care, so financially it was more feasible for me to do the phd since getting a phd was a something i’ve known i wanted to get in my life— education is super important in my family especially being first gen so there was no doubt in my mind about it, and i felt like i had the stamina to keep me going through school immediately after undergrad (which uh... if i could have done a gap year i absolutely would have but it just wasn’t possible for me)

i didn’t have a masters first— i went in immediately after the summer i graduated with my ba— and i know a lot of people go for a masters first to see if they even want to commit to another 6+ years of that work (because it’s so. so much work. it’s completely different from the undergrad environment and experience so getting an idea of that environment before committing, or even training for it, are great reasons to get an ma!) or they need it for another job they want, etc. but i was certain i wanted to get my phd for myself so it made more sense financially and timeline-wise for me to just go for it!

so i had really strong convictions from the get go— i knew i wanted to get a phd for me and myself alone, while being fully aware that the job market in academia especially the tenure track professor job was and is garbage (and even worse now with a pandemic) and i’m probably not going to land a job at the end of this and every grad student and prof ever telling me not to do it since grad school is... so much and not great if you’re getting a phd. but getting paid (albeit a small amount) to dive into work i’m passionate about in a field that i enjoy and me feeling like my work matters and means something even if it is a drop in the ocean was enough for me to convince myself to do something like commit myself to this for so long! teaching students and helping them learn and grow and strengthen their writing and help them find their voices and support them in any way i can, trying to aspire to the amazing grad student mentors i had in undergrad, emulating the amazing classroom experience and knowledge my professors had given me in undergrad, and just wanting to explore this range of knowledge i get paid to work on felt like a sweet gig— and then you experience the environment of academia and the reality of the situation hits with all its toxic work environment and imposter syndrome and impossible amounts of work to keep up with, and feelings of utter loneliness, etc. etc.— but even through that, the thing that keeps me going is the idea that i might be able to write one good article, help one student with their writing and themselves, read books i have yet to discover or learn about things in ways i hadn’t thought to consider before!