I've noticed many of you have graduate degrees. Would you recommend pursuing one to someone else?
Do you have a B.A. or B.S., and if so, in what subject? What are you interested in doing graduate work in? If you provide these details people can give more focused advice.
No, I don't even have that yet. I still can't decide what to do. I am closest to a History degree at this point. I am still enrolled in a school in Hawaii that has online programs. I can finish all my classes online. I love it because they are 10 week classes and I have long e-mail conversations with my professors, but this system is pretty bad for getting letters of recommendation and all of that.
Two of my favorite areas are immunology and history. I think immunology is out at this point, but history isn't.
I'm really enjoying building an online business, but I don't want to study business in school.
I think I would enjoy teaching classes part-time as an adjunct. I think I would also love doing research, but I'm certainly not going to get a full time job anywhere that supports that sort of thing, so showing students that history can be fascinating would be good enough for me. I know adjuncts get paid poorly, so this is something I'd maybe like to do as I get older on a part-time basis.
I spent quite a bit of time on the Chronicle of Higher Education forums and the people there were all pretty dead set against anyone taking on ANY debt for a graduate degree in the humanities. From what I can gather, the pay sucks and it is really hard to get a job.
I gave up the idea when I realized my average income with a PhD in history would be about the same as my husband's once he graduates with a 4 year computer science degree.
(So I took some Discrete Math and Programming with DH, and while I liked it and was good at it, I realized I'd rather "program" my sites and spend most of my time writing lol)
So, I want to pursue a graduate degree for the challenge of it and so it gives me the chance to do something interesting down the road.
One of my real life heros is an older guy who taught DH and I in a few math and science classes. He currently has something like 5 Master's degrees and 2 PhDs. He works part-time at several colleges and DH and I stayed after class several times with him to discuss life, quantum physics and his latest theories, and he was telling us how he stays under the radar with college politics because he wants no part of them. The guy is brilliant and one of the best teachers we've ever had. Part of the trade-off he makes is less money, for sure. ;D
