Past as Prologue

Ten years since I started undergrad, I continue to be struck by how different my current grad-school experience has been.  Submitting papers in … paper form vs. submitting everything to online dropboxes.  Solitary archives vs. group work, group work, group work.  Studying under the West Coast sun vs. … celebrating East Coast days where it at least doesn’t rain or hits fifty in January?

My whole strategy is different now.  Back then, my strategy amounted to how I approached most buffet tables as a youth: grab whatever dishes look most appealing, and don’t look back (okay, I still do that sometimes).  We had distribution requirements, but I was fortunate to satisfy most of them through classes I was deeply interested in taking.  I took up an interdisciplinary major, ethnic studies, that was a dabble of psychology, of anthropology, of public policy.  A year abroad in South America gave me the most powerful experience of my life (especially, as Mark Twain would have celebrated to find out, the non-schooled part of that time abroad), and transected my studies with courses that became the basis for a minor in Spanish.  The most focus came in history, where I took more courses than in any other field and wrote a thesis, on campus labor relations.  Even that last assignment was a pursuit that drew out of a personal interest—in this case, my organizing efforts as a student activist alongside campus workers. 

I was all over the map, and I loved it.  I learned a little about many things, a lot about a few, and thoroughly enjoyed almost all of what I signed up for. 

There have been times as I look back that I wished I’d thought through things more.  I rarely stepped back, as an undergrad, to see what all the work added up to.  It wasn’t that I was undisciplined in my studies—I worked really hard.  But I didn’t consider the benefits to learning a discipline, a particular method with which to approach things (with the possible exception of history; but I took no methods classes).  If I could do it all over, there isn’t that much I’d change, I don’t think, but yeah, a few classes here and there.

While taking classes of interest as a grad student, I’ve tried to also be mindful of attaining more concrete skills and knowledge within certain areas.  I came in with goals: bolster quantitative skills, learn about anti-poverty policy, study cradle-to-career initiatives.  I’ve approached the buffet table differently: rather than grab and go, I try to pair complementary offerings.  I took a very, very intensive stats-class-slash-half-time-job in the fall, and am in … another very, very intensive stats class now.  I studied social policy in the fall, and have an internship in policy for the spring.  I researched a parent-education program in the fall, and am now taking a course on family and community engagement.  I wrote a paper on the Strive educational continuum in the fall, and hope to study similar initiatives in the next few months.

Throughout the experience, I’ve tried to listen to my own questions and concerns and answer them: How do you set up a good parent-education program?  What are the pros and cons of cradle-to-career programs?  And so on.  While I don’t have quite the unbridled approach of my undergrad years, I’ve tried to retain the joy and curiosity that marked those years.  May is fast approaching; when I graduate, I hope I can look back and say I’ve had just enough of the freedom of youthful discovery, and just enough of the discipline of career preparation.