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I’m going to be graduating with a BA in English this Spring and I withdrew from a 5 year accelerated master’s program in public policy today.
Most people around me are going to wonder how and why I would give up the opportunity to have a master’s degree before my 23rd birthday, what I’m going to do with my humanities degree and my literary analysis out in the working world when I’m giving up my “only” directly available opportunity to bump up my potential tax bracket.
Honestly, I don’t know, but at least I’ll know when I’m out of this institution, if I’m eating dry toast and drinking tap water, renting a room somewhere, that I didn’t take out $20k in loans for a program I didn’t have any passion for or real interest in.
There’s nothing wrong with public policy, shit honestly I’d recommend it to anyone that was interested in it, but I’m not one of them, so how I ended up thinking I wanted this degree is kind of drawn out below, although to be real, I’m not sure how much of it I’ve thoroughly worked through yet.
A general idea of the degree is that it’s interdisciplinary and can set you up for all kinds of careers that require social analysis, data research capabilities, knowledge of law and government functions, etc. If you talked to someone who actually was passionate about it, they’d probably tell you it can help you “change the world.”
The interdisciplinary nature of the degree is what appealed to me, and of course being able to get a master’s degree by just tacking a year onto the end of my undergraduate career. As for the idea that working within the constrictions of government and other institutions is the solution to societal problems, that’s a conversation for another time, because I could go on for days about the logic lacking there.
So, in short, I think that half of the ideas behind this program are bullshit, and I was aware of that when I applied for it. It doesn't mean I disrespect the field, I know that these are my opinions and they're limited. I am aware that many people who work in public policy achieve that satisfaction of helping their community they're looking for, or just cash out those six figure government checks, either way I'm not judging or even saying it's a bad idea, it's just not for my stomach.
The idea of grad school always put me off, I always shrugged off people’s questions of what I was going to do with a BA in English or half-heartedly said maybe I’d “just have to go into teaching.” You see, humanities majors have an unspoken pact we share about downgrading the usefulness of our areas of study and assuming we’re going to be (relative to other college-educated people) some kind of impoverished due to our interests post-graduation.
A lot of this has to do with the general attitude towards the humanities from a growingly nihilistic world that sees the only truly viable careers being in:
a. Medicine, since no one is going to stop dying
b. Technology, because really what the fuck is left?
c. Other assorted sciences, because they fit in with the first two somehow right?
I get it, but no. As long as there is all of the above, there is going to be a need for media, marketing, publishing, communications, and education. And you know who’s going to hold the tin roof down on that withering building of careers? The humanities majors.
I was thinking about all of this while lying in my bed last night; the most important thoughts always emerge when you’re trying to just go the fuck to sleep. And the final thought that went through my mind in this process, which felt like the equivalent of ripping a hangnail off of each lobe of my brain, was that the only reason I applied for and wanted to go into this master’s in public policy program is because of my communications job at the grad school making it a comfort zone for me, and that I have been convinced for years that I can’t “do shit” with my BA in English.
I knew since I applied that I was only doing so because there was not another accelerated master’s program I could get into at this point in my undergraduate career, that I worked there so I had an easy-in, I wasn’t mentally ready to go into a two-year program, and I was scared of the penniless existence I imagined past the blue cap and fake photo smiles that are coming in May. I’m scared of commitment but scared of fluidity too, and it makes my decision making a type of whole-milk-half-stirred-into-coffee murky.
But you know what’s even fucking scarier? That I almost took out massive student loans with the only end goal being bumping up my tax bracket and abandoning the fields I actually hold interest in (journalism [environmental and labor studies specifically], document analysis, literature, teaching, communications, graphic design, web development).
As much as it’s the easiest scapegoat, I wouldn’t be honest with myself if I tried to say this blunder of mine was the fault of all of the people that think my field of study isn’t worth any time, but there’s no denying it permeated my perception a little more than I should have let it.
Naw, a lot of it is my own selfishness and money-hungry nature, but also keeping myself in a comfort zone. The last thing I realized that solidified that I was withdrawing from this program is that I’ve never lived a life not in school. I graduated high school a year early, plummeted into community college, and am about to enter my senior year since I transferred to a four-year university. I haven’t given myself a chance to figure anything out other than how to work full time while maintaining my GPA. I know if I do I’ll figure out what I want eventually, or I'll at least get closer to it, but I'm not resolving shit sitting in an uncomfortable desk chair for another year.
I’ve spent the past year thinking I was unhappy with studying English, that I had no interest in any of the fields my degree prepared myself for, but really it’s just a healthy burn out at the end of a four-year grind of not knowing myself from a wood plank.
I need to fucking know who I am before I commit to anything, and so far all I know is that I like to write even if it doesn’t sound like I do, that the only thing that I’ve been excited about in the past year is the thesis I’m working on this year with a history professor doing literary analysis, and that the armchair anarchism I’ve held onto since reading Kropotkin and Chomsky isn’t going to sit well with me discussing policy methods surrounded by kids who want to further the arms of government or work for NGOs.
I may have lost a lot of myself through this, but I’m still holding onto my combat boots and my worn out notebooks and I’m running from all the shit that made me think what I enjoy isn’t good enough because it won’t get me a stack of receipts from whole foods instead of walmart.
- original graphic image by the author