Is Grad Bad?

This book title is cracking me up! I always said that if I wrote my tell all memoirs about grad school, I'd call it Grad School: It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time.

Of course, I do think that grad school was a good idea, both for me and my husband. My graduate degree is in English, and my husband's is in Engineering. He has a job that he would have had a much harder time getting if he did not have at least a few fancy letters after his name.

Mine has opened doors for me that would have been harder to open without it, even though I have the dreaded Humanities degree. Plus grad school was FUN! We had a grand ole time for the most part, and are in contact with friends that we met there. (Networking, anyone?) I get kind of bummed out by all the "Grad school is stupid, expensive, and pointless" talk that I frequently see.

I went for all the wrong reasons. I hated my job, I was bored, and I missed college. Grad school was an escape for that. It was a way to quit my job for a noble reason. I did not quit because I hated my job, I quit because I had an opportunity for higher learning! That sounds much better on my resume. I did have a job lined up for me at school. They paid my tuition and a stipend in exchange for my skills as a teacher. It did not feel like working at all. I loved it!

My husband went to grad school because the job market was abysmal at the time. He could work at Quik-E-Mart, or he could go to grad school. He choose school so he could stay on top of trends in his field while getting paid and waiting for a job. While there, he made important contacts, got to work at a major aerospace company for a summer, and presented a paper at an Ivy league school that was later published in a peer reviewed journal. It was STRESSFUL at times, but he had a great time over all.

I really hate this either/or thing that is going on about college and graduate school on blogs, in the media, etc. Either you go to grad school and DIE with the millions in student loans while using your worthless piece of paper as a blanket in your new career of street bum, or you're one of the lucky few who gets a plum job at a major big name university. It does not have to be that cut and dried. We all go to grad school for different reasons, and that's okay. Not everybody is looking for the same thing. Not everybody even knows what they're looking for! I sure didn't.

I will say that paying for your degree is not a good idea. If you really want to do it, find money. I applied last minute for a TA ship and got it. The tuition waiver was the main reason I went into teaching. My husband was a GA at a lab, and they paid better than I was getting at my hated job. We had no credit card or consumer debt, which helped a lot, so getting out of debt is a good move before you head off to gradtown. We did have my husband's undergrad loans, which we deferred and tried to pay on as much as we could while still in school. There is money out there for school, though you may have to do some digging.

Any other non-bitter grad degreed readers out there? I'd love to hear from you!