The other day my mother suggested that I go to grad school.
The very suggestion caused me to choke on what I was eating at the time, taking me back to 2008, when the stress from studying for the GRE was so overwhelming that I would punch the wall in my sleep.
My mother has rarely ever made any suggestions about my career or education, other than in college, when she told me to graduate in 4 years or I'd have to pay for the additional years on my own. Her making this suggestion made me wonder if she thought that I was doing enough with my life. Obviously not if she'd ask me to revisit that hell.
But I must admit that I have toyed with the idea on my own. I can not go through my social media feed without yet another friend announcing the earning of yet ANOTHER advanced degree.
So, against the knots in my stomach, I visited a grad school website. My throat got tight. I felt nauseous. My eyes were starting to water. As I scrolled down on the page, looking at the admissions process, I wanted to scream. There were all those familiar words: GRE, transcripts, deadline. I threw my phone across the room. All this emotional distress, and I hadn't even gotten to the bottom of the web page.
A close friend of mine who went to school to be a shrink now wants to go back to be nurse. We are 30. Apparently, this is the time when we are to jump ship and find something new when our old career isn't working.
I don't think that I want to give up on being a journalist just yet, and I totally don't want to face the horrors of going through the grad school admission process again!
Were does that leave me in the work force? Who knows. What I do know is that I in no way desire to put myself through another year of wall punching. #selfpreservation
