There’s going to graduate school, as in “Um, I think maybe I’d like to be a professor someday.” And then there’s Going to Graduate School, which takes place on some other planet:
To keep options open, I applied to five graduate schools in five different fields. Having loved the work of art historian Meyer Schapiro, I applied to New York University, where he taught; second, I applied to the interdisciplinary program in social thought at the University of Chicago, which sounded fascinating; then to Columbia University’s program in English literature, and to Brandeis University, to study with philosopher Herbert Marcuse. What intrigued me most, though, was Harvard's doctoral program in the study of religion, which offered opportunities to study Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, and Hinduism, so I chose Harvard.I’ve learned a lot from Pagels — from The Gnostic Gospels (1979), Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (1988), and The Origin of Satan (1995) — but I gave up on this book (a memoir of ideas, I’d call it) early in the third chapter. The writing is just not good enough: awkward sentences, glitches in chronology, missing details. For instance: Pagels’s choice to apply to graduate schools follows a post-college stint at the Martha Graham School. And yet Pagels mentions nothing about a background in dance before or during college. Also missing: the college major (and minors?) that made this range of grad-school choices possible.
Elaine Pagels, Why Religion?: A Personal Story (New York: Ecco, 2018).
But it seems to go without saying that Pagels (a Stanford grad) was accepted to all five programs.
comments: 6
I was an English professor for at least 41 years (instructor an additional 6 years), and I can't really remember what I was thinking when I applied for graduate school in 1970 or 1971. It's hard for me to imagine that I was thinking, oh, I'll become a professor. (I had entered college in a 5 year journalism program that would have ended with a master's degree, so it wasn't a tough sell for my family for me to pursue a master's in English) But, during my senior year as an undergraduate, my university held a meeting for those interested in pursuing graduate studies. The professor in charge said in a condescending voice, don't go to graduate school in English just because you like to read books. That was fifty years ago, and I've thought often about what he said, and I'm still puzzled by it.
I went to grad school for a professional MA in mass communication, thinking it would help me get a job as an advertising copywriter for nonprofit organizations (don't even ask where I thought that would be). I chose a program that also had a Ph.D. program because I thought that meant it was a better program... little did I know that for ad copywriting, you want to stay as far from the academic as possible. If I was serious about that, I should have gone to a portfolio center (if those existed at that point). Then while in the MA program, I was enticed into the academic MA and Ph.D. program by a professor who pulled me aside and in our conversation literally referred to the way Catholic priests recruit young men into the priesthood.
I know about that warning and the ethos of “professionalism” that goes with it. Yuck. I was happily non-professional, not even “Um, I think maybe I’d like to be a professor someday.” Just “I guess I should go to grad school.”
DN3, I missed your comment earlier. Your approach to grad school reminds me of mine (i.e., no offense, naive).
Definitely naive! I've always said that by the time I finished undergrad I knew where I should have gone to college, and by the time I was mostly done with grad school I know how I should have gone about figuring out going to grad school.
I guess that’s one more way to think of college as a learning experience. :)
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