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| Fri, 09-10-2004 - 11:58pm |
Well.
Here's the thing.
I can't do graduate school.
It is not for me. I have been absolutely miserable. I can't sleep. I cry all the time. I have no motivation for anything. I can't focus. Its just gotten really bad. I can feel myself slipping farther and farther. I would sink so low every time I had to go back to Radford. Part of it was leaving here, leaving Kim and Amanda. But the bigger part of it was going there. I hate my job. With a passion. I hate school. The pressure to get published and present at national conferences is intense. Especially for the GA's. They want us in one of the national journals by next spring and presenting next fall. I can't do that. It doesn't interest me. At all. The work really isn't all that hard, there's a LOT of it, but its not so hard. It just bores me to tears. I've always been much more interested in application of the law than the theory and cause behind it. And different graduate schools have different emphases. Where I did my undergrad was very much application focused, and since I had friends in that grad program, I saw what it was like all the time, I even took a grad level class there ~ and loved it, and that's what I was expecting here. Radford isn't a BAD school, per se, its just a bad fit for me. Their entire basis is in criminological theory and research methods of current theories. I hate that stuff. Add to that, the only purpose for getting a master's in criminal justice is to use it as a building block for getting your PhD. Which is at least 4 more years of the same crap. And I know I can't do that. I know it. It would be enough to send me over the edge.
So.
I've decided not to see this through to completion. Kim and I have been talking about it quite a bit the past few days. And I finally emailed one of my former professors, a lady who I count as one of my closest friends and best mentor/advisor, and I told her how miserable I was. And I told her what I felt like I should do and what I wanted to do. And she agreed with me. So I've decided to go to law school. I'm going to take the LSAT very soon, so if need be, I can take it again. I'm going to apply to a couple of different law school around here and see where I can get in at. I'm going to finish the semester here, and probably the whole year too. We'll see. I'm not certain about spring semester yet. My goal is a fall enrollment at UVA Law. Just having made the decision to not finish this has done wonders for me. I'm already feeling a lot better.
But at the same time, in some ways, I feel like such a failure. Have you ever been in a position where you have worked soooo long and so hard to really reach a goal that you want more than anything, only to finally get there and realize its not at all what you really want? That's where I am now. I think back over my time as an undergrad, when I always knew that I wanted grad school to be my next step. I think back over the past year especially. Its been almost exactly a year since the injury/surgery and I think about all the tears and pain and effort and time I put in last fall, making sure that nothing stood in the way of graduate school. I remember semesters of 24 credit hours, working 4 jobs, making sure to keep my GPA up. I remember the ansticipation/excitement/nervousness of applying to different graduate programs, waiting on GRE results, waiting always waiting to find out if I got in, if I got my assistantship. And getting accepted. I was so happy. So excited. But now I'm here. I have everything I ever dreamed of. And I hate it. And

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Courtney,
Count me in--You are definitely NOT a failure! You are in fact a success in recognizing your unhappiness before you jump in and try to make yourself happy. In my experience that doesn't work in the long run, it just makes you more miserable. As Kim said the academic world is not for everyone. It is competitive in ways I never could have imagined before I started my graduate program. I grew up thinking that at 18 I would know exactly what I wanted to be "when I grow up" and then
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