Junior English major
If you’ve recently thought about pursuing graduate school during the next few years, then you’ve probably already suffered from several panic attacks. Figuring out in which program you want to enroll, in what city you want to live and how to find funding can make you want to rip your hair out and purposely fail your last I-Series course, just so you can stay at this university as an undergraduate Terp forever.
But there’s no avoiding it. You must face the stress and ask yourself: Is graduate school really worth it?
For anyone journeying on to the medical, law, STEM or business tracks, you’re going to be OK. Your fields are highly competitive, but with another degree in higher education, you will be one step closer to securing whatever ridiculous, life-changing, seven-figure job awaits you in your dreams.
If you are applying to graduate school in the arts and humanities college, well, you’re applying to a sinkhole of even more debt and disappointment.
Trust me, this sad truth makes me cry, too. As an English major, I try to convince myself that one day I will obtain my doctorate and write more Tony Award-winning plays than Alan Bennett and Tom Stoppard combined, while also teaching and raising a small army of talented university writers who will eventually prove art is what a university is founded on — not the study of plant ovaries.
But today, attaining a doctorate in the arts and humanities is an unfulfilling journey. It takes three to seven years to get that little piece of paper that will declare you a “doctor” (even though you don’t know the difference between red and white blood cells). You’ll march out of graduation with a beaming sense of accomplishment, only to realize that very few universities actually hire full-time professors anymore.
Adjunct professors are the new way of the academic world. Paying a desperate history nerd, in some cases, about $5,000 per course a semester saves the university buckets of money and allows administration to switch and swap in different candidates quite easily. Hiring adjunct professors is a way for the university to avoid commitment and an even easier way to continue degrading the importance of education.
But what society fails to realize is that education is not about getting a job. The university system has become so commercialized that some students no longer enroll in college to learn. They enroll in college to meet old men in the business school who will write them a letter of recommendation to Goldman Sachs. Students enroll in the university because they have to get a degree. Because it is expected of them. Because it’s the only way to “make it.”
Here is some advice: You will never “make it” in the world if you never learned about the world. You will never “make it” in the world if you don’t take the time to understand people, history, emotion and compassion. The world does not operate on empirical findings. It operates on greed, lust, envy, hope, passion, excitement and love — the things arts and humanities students get made fun of for studying.
I don’t read poems by Keats to improve my communication skills or to test my memory. I don’t write short fiction stories to impress professors or to publish them for money. I don’t draw, sketch, paint, act, sing, dance or recite monologues because I think it will make me a good candidate for a job as a television series director.
I engage in the arts because it teaches me everything I need to know about life. It makes me question what it means to work hard for something, to build relationships, to fall in love, to fall out of love, to be disappointed, to feel successful, to create something original, to recognize cliches. Art has taught me how to listen to others, to evaluate words, to decipher the tone of someone’s voice. I am a miniature Sherlock Holmes. I understand colors and pictures. I can tell how someone feels by the way they hold their teacup. I can figure out someone’s personal life based on the shoes he or she wears.
How are these analytical skills not worth preserving?
I am in no way saying that STEM and business programs are not crucial to education. Our world would be in shambles without innovation, entrepreneurship, medicine and technological advances. I simply want the administration to sit in one upper-level English course to see why my professors deserve to be full-time professors. If university President Wallace Loh doesn’t shed a tear after hearing professor Michael Olmert read “Because I Liked You” and lecture about the beauty of heartbreak, then fine. I will accept my fate at McDonald’s.
Katie Stuller is a junior English major. She can be reached at kstullerdbk@gmail.com.
