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The Habit of Graduate School
My Third Graduate Degree, and Middle Life Learning
I am two semesters away from my third master’s degree. Earning mastery. Again. A third time. I’m talking about fourteen semesters of school after getting my regular, college undergraduate degree. At this point, graduate school is basically a morning routine. An expensive one. I need a bumper sticker that says, “My other car is a tuition payment.” With all the financing, I could have had a beach house and a nice Audi. Instead, I have ACH withdrawals. Can’t those be somehow crowd sourced? Wait, is this the Democratic National Committee debate? (It’s OK. Graduate school jokes are supposed to be dense).
Three masters degrees? What can I say. I have three times the lifetime earnings of those with no degrees. No, wait. That’s not true. I was thinking of debt.
Anyway, if I was making so much money, why would I go back to school? Then go back yet again? And again? Maybe it’s a quest to constantly refocus on the thing that will unlock the inner me. So watch out, world. I’m almost ready. More likely this recurring matriculation is a product of unreconciled wanderlust. Or a desire to make up for undergraduate shortcomings. I did fail Shakespeare. And the Humanities. And Piano. And Astronomy. And almost Linguistics.
